Customer Reviews

D-Link DI 714 - Wireless router - desktop

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I struggled a bit to choose between Linksys
and D-link DI-714. Some people's negative
experience with the Linksys product made me turn to the D-link product even though there is not much review for the relatively new DI-714.

I opened the package today and the experience so far is excellent. It was 2 hours from the time I opened the package to
me surfing the internet from a laptop. Most of the time is spent in configuring my desktop to talk to the DI-714. I had fixed IP address with my cable modem provider. The instructions given to configure my desk top to this new environment were woefully
inadequate. Even now, I am not sure if I have set all the TCP/IP
parameters properly on the desktop. This experience of taking too long to configure the desktop to talk to the router is the reason I gave this product a 4 star as opposed to 5 star.

Once the router was given all the TCP/IP settings, setting up the laptop was less than 5 minutes and it established the wireless connection ( with D-link DWL650 ) right away. It was
a very pleasant experience.

Throughout the house, the link quality is greater than 75% and
signal strength is greater than 65%. Even at the low end of these numbers, I did not see any deterioration in speed.
I could watch video at 300kb/sec easily. It is just a cool thing to see full screen video on your lap top as you walk around with it.

My advice to D-link would be to provide better documentation on the quick install manual about how to change the desktop if it is configured for static IP addresses with the DSL or Cable Modem provider. If I just follow the instructions given, it just does not work. It says, run winipcfg and select releaseall and renewall. That does not do anything. I had to statically
assign the router IP address to talk to it first. I do not know
what the problem is.

I did not have to download any new firmware. Dlink website has great scope for improvement. When I went there to see if there is any firmware update for the 714, it is just absolutely unuserfriendly to figure this out. Even now, I do not know if there is a firmware update or not.

This is another great router from the D-Link Wireless Router Family. The difference from this one and the more popular DI-713P is that the DI-714 has detachable Antenna for future utilization of bigger and stronger Antenna. This would allow for a much stronger signal and a bigger area in which you can establish a connection. This would come in handy for larger homes, or small offices that have many walls or interference.
Although the DI-713P has a built in Print Server, you might be like me and already have a Print Server on your network. The DI-714 seems to have traded it's Print Server for an extra Ethernet Port. In my book these two trade offs are just what I needed. I just don't want to wait so long to get the bigger and better antenna.
The Set-up and configuration is very easy with the DI-714 because it is all HTML based and you can access it from any computer on the Network with a web browser. And the built in firewall is a bonus. I was running a software based firewall, but now I don't need to with my built in hardware firewall.
Everything has been coming up D-Link these past months, and I always check to see if they have something that can fit my needs first. And I highly recommend this product.

We have been running a home LAN using a combination of borrowed ethernet cards connected using isolated sections of cable TV coaxial cable inside the walls, and ethernet cable stapled to the ceiling. This has not been the prettiest LAN in existance, but until recently, it worked well and didn't need a router. Recently though, the system quit working. Possibly the rabbits who live downstairs had something to do with the unreliability of our coaxial cable.

A wireless network made the best sense for us. After doing quite a lot of online research about our options, I narrowed the field to the Siemens router and the D-Link 714. The D-Link has had nearly universal good reports. We bought it and two Linksys WMP-11 PCI cards. We had no trouble installing the router. My 15 year-old son ( the most eager to get back online) did it in a little over 20 minutes. The router defaults to settings that match our needs well. We are sharing a connection to a cable modem with a dynamically assigned IP address. We updated to the latest firmware quickly and easily using D-Link's Website. Installation of the WMP-11 cards went easily as well. The two remote computers are located about 30 ft from the router and receive a strong signal consistantly.

The router control interface is a webpage at it's default local IP address (192.168.0.1) and allows administrative access to all the router's features. One thing that I was suprised to see after the router had been on for a couple of days was the number of port scanners and other attemped incursions on our system that were detected and blocked. Without a router ( and it's firewall) we had been unaware and unprotected. I think that may explain some of the peculiar problems we have been having on our computer in the past.

In summary, the D-Link 714 was shipped quickly, installed very easily, and works very well. I highly recommend it.

I originally had the SMC wireless router, and returned it for this one b/c of file transfer problems with the SMC.

This router works without any major flaws, no problems transferring files, no prblems connecting from my wireless notebook equiped with Dell TrueMobile. Only other wireless router w/ built-in print server. (that I know of)

Only complaints about the router are:

1) Does not have DNS server built-in for local network.
2) Cannot get router to get IP dynamically from modem, must use static settings.
3) Range is not as good as SMC, but still very usable from my entire house.

Overall, I would recommend this one over the others, becuase it works. But I must upgrade to the latest firmware

After a great deal of research, I decided to purchase a DI-714 for my home network. Unfortunately, when it arrived, it did not live up to the promises made in its behalf.

I run Linux on most of my computers, and therefore, wanted a wireless broadband router compatible with Linux. For whatever reason, the DI-714 would only allow me to access its administratiive functions via a Windows computer. I need to clone the MAC address of my network card to the router in order to connect to my cable modem. Here again, the DI-714 failed to "remember" the new MAC address. I eventually found out that my unit wouldn't even allow me to change the admin password.

The last straw broke when I found out that, rather than the advertised wireless range of 300 feet, I could only get about 3 feet of wireless range of any kind. Even after upgrading to the latest firmware version (that actually worked, I was surprised.) these problems remained. I eventually returned my DI-714 and bought a newer D-Link DI-614+. The DI-614+ does everything that the 714 couldn't, or wouldn't, except allowing a backup modem connection (the 614+ lacks that feature.) In all other respects, the DI-614+ is superior to the 714. Its wireless connection is capable of 22 Mbps, its firewall is much more advanced than the 714's firewall, and it allows filtering of individual websites or keywords for "parental control." If your looking for a wireless broadband router, get the 614+ and steer clear of the DI-714, you'll be pleased that you did!

Overall installation was very easy, up in 15 minutes.

I found the wireless component of this product very good. Decent range (whole house), easy to setup. I hear you should use encryption to hide the backdoor of this product, and any "piggybacking" from the outside.

The initial install was very good. Using DHCP from ISP, all went together well. All my computers found the router without problems,and received an IP address.

This product goes straight down the tubes with its advanced features, which is what sold me. I cannot get its "virtual server" settings to route HTTP, FTP, Telnet traffic to internal servers. The "ALL(DMZ)" setting was the only way to get one server visible on the outside, which defeats the purpose of the firewall. I was only able to get one of three computers in the DMZ. Also, with DMZ enabled, I was not able to VPN (using IPSec) to my company's private net thru the router. However, with DMZ disabled, VPN works fine.
I am using the most updated firmware, which shipped with the product. Hoping there is a upgrade soon to fix this hunk of junk, and allow it to do what I want it to. I had a friend who bought this, and returned it in two days for the DI-713P, which he reports works much better.

Support is free, and not very helpful. Reboot the router, upgrade the firmware or send it back seem to be their favorite replys. Don't try to call the support phone number, because you will never hear back. By the time I got around to trying the advanced features, my trial period was over, lost my receipt and original packaging. Definitely re-thinking this purchase...

Although the web-based management interface might take some time to get use to, it was actually nice and pretty easy to navigate after fiddling with it for couple of minutes. Setup was painless. In fact it was so easy that I got it up and running with wireless SMC2602W PCI card in ten minutes. I kid you not when I say it's a matter of plug and play to get it up and running. As for why I chose SMC's wireless card, the reason is simple...their card required PCI 2.1 compliant motherboard whilst D-link's DWL-520 requires a PCI 2.2 compliant motherboard (hint: older computers are PCI 2.1 compliant and not 2.2). Performance was amazing even though the wireless computer was on the second floor (DI-714 is located in the basement and the wireless computer is located on the second floor). With the wireless computer I can download from the internet at 154 K per/sec (with no other computer using the net of course...and that's 1.54Mbps). File and print sharing was pretty easy to setup too. I also tested the gaming on my brand new LAN. I setup a counterstrike server on the wireless machine and got a nice 20ms-36ms ping on the hard wired machine (it fluctuates to 76ms ping once in a blue moon but that shouldn't be too much of a problem). I should also note that it was pretty tedious to setup access control. I was however able to make sure that my next door neighbor couldn't just login and use my connection. All in all I got a big bang for my buck as the alternative would have been to pay some John Doe to wire my whole house with cat5 wires for $500 (cost of wires excluded). For $200 exact I got DI-714 and a SMC2602W PCI.

One more thing, you might want to give a program called "Virtual Network Computing" or VNC for short a try. It enables you to remotely control the desktop of any computer on the network. I found it useful during setup...works with Linux systems too ;p

I bought this to replace my Linksys 4 port router/switch (BEFSR41) because I have an ibook with airport and grew tired of using the ethernet cable. Configuration and setup is easy and straight forward with the step-by-step wizzard. All setup and management is through telnet or web browser. I had some trouble with the wireless and intrusion detection until I downloaded the firmware update (ver 5.0.2, I believe). You can setup the wireless access to be freely open or restrict access to only clients with certain MAC hardware addresses. Also has an intrusion detection log and backup serial DB-9 port so one can attach a backup modem, in case the broadband goes down... The only downer would be the inability to open specific ports to specific IP numbers on the LAN, for example, 5800 for VPC, or gaming port numbers. One can only unlock port numbers for FTP, TELNET, HTTP, MAIL, or ALL (DMZ). Compatible with Airport, cheaper than Airport, and 3 more 10/100 LAN ports! All in all, super cool features, super cool price!

This is the worst product I've encountered for the computer. Not only was it a difficult installation, but the tech support disagreed with each other on various calls, although they were nice. It took 8 calls before they informed me that this product does not work with Toshiba Satellite laptops. Yes, it does not work with my laptop and they don't know why nor do they state so in the manual (let alone on the box). I took it back and bought a Siemens Speedstream and had it up and running in 30 minutes.

This Router (like most of their products) is the product of
a company founded on widespread mediocrity.

As a Network security Engineer, and even more importantly,
the guy that many people try to keep up with technologically
I have to say that D-Link has successfully embedded themselves
in the technology market. They are the company to buy from if
you don't mind paying an average price for below average
quality.

If you want a real broadband router try Linksys they cost
about the same but are better overall. I think D-Link needs
to narrow their product range and put more effort into
their product quality as they seem to be spread too thin.