Customer Reviews

D-Link DIR-655 Extreme-N Gigabit Wireless Router

5 star:		(962)
4 star:		(324)
3 star:		(147)
2 star:		(138)
1 star:		(293)

 

 

First off, the really tough thing about wireless routers is that your performance can vary dramatically from someone elses. Whether its your hardware, your software, spyware, configuration of your house, your ISP, what type of cordless phone you use, or a myriad of other things, your experience may be entirely different from your best friend's. So, this isn't so much a review of the router as it is a review of my experience with it.

The Good

This router has all of the bells and whistles with the exception of dual band broadcasting. QoS, WISH, VPN, Port Forwarding, all levels of security, etc. It has Gigabit wired ports. You cannot get anything more elsewhere without doubling the price. It is all packaged within an attractive set up that provides hope that this will be your last router for quite some time. Set up is easy and straight forward. And, most importantly, you literally cannot get a faster router when within 30 feet.

The Bad
I really wanted to keep this router but I couldn't. My main problem was heat. After a few hours of use (just being on at all), this router was almost too hot to touch. I actually exchanged it figuring it must be a bad router but the new one was the same way. And, more importantly, when it got hot, I got intermittent lag via my wire machine on my internet traffic. Games that played flawlessly on my old Buffalo router started lagging; video started stuttering; downloads started pausing. Diagnosed it with my ISP as being on my side of their modem. When my old router was plugged in, all problems went away. D-Link tried to help me but there was a language barrier and no matter what we did with QoS and WISH, it didn't go away. I had to return the router.

The Ugly
FYI: Blue lights are pretty but REALLY bright. Seriously, you could read by them.

Like I said, I really wanted to keep it but I had to replace it instead. Your experience may vary so I would encourage you to try it because it is a very feature-rich router. Just keep your old one handy just in case.

P.S. Owned it for three weeks before returning it.

Im sitting on this thing right now. Man oh man...im getting a "very good" signal where my connection used to be dropping...

I used to have a few problems with WiFi. The first problem was obviously the range...as I said a few moments ago, the DIR-655 fixed that...I mean, even though it claims 6x range, but I was going to be happy with just a 25% improvement...I seriously think that this router increased my range 50-75%!

I used to always be frustrated with the lack of settings in many routers. Some would have QoS (Quality of Service...something that can prioritize important internet activity like Voice Over IP...internet phone) but it didnt really work. Some would be lacking in semi-advanced routing features...others would barely have any non-novice features at all...This one has plenty of options for the advanced user to have a lot of fun screwing with settings. The most beautiful thing about it though, is that there is a wizard in the interface so that even the most novice of users can set up a great network with strong security. It also has context sensitive online help...what that is, is when you are trying to adjust settings and you dont know what something means, there is a little help button right there that you can click to get an explanation right then and there! Its kinda like the Yin-Yang of routers...

I want to mention that I have been looking at draft-N routers for a few weeks now and have been reading the reviews. The reason that I am writing this review is that it was so hard for me to find a good review on this router. Cnet doesnt even have an official review (as of 2/13/07) but it does have very positive user comments. From my homework though, (user reviews, and more importantly official reviews from Cnet, engadget, etc) every Draft-N wireless router has some kind of problem. Some dont work well in environments with more than a couple neighboring networks, some dont have good throughput, and some dont have better range. Again, I didn't want to buy this one because I couldn't find any solid review on it. After going through a couple of different Draft-N routers, Let me help you out. This is the one.

BTW...im not running an "N" wireless adapter...this thing even increases the range of "B" and "G" signals. GREAT JOB D-LINK!

Very satisfied. Smaller than expected. Fast enough to play HD-DVDs wirelessly to my notebook (Dell Inspiron E1505, 802.11BGN, 945GM, Core Duo (2) 2GHz, Vista Premium, Arcsoft Digital Theater, D-Link DNS-323 NAS). Great speed and coverage. Also handles HDTV perfectly via HDHomeRun device.

Don't forget to upgrade firmware.

Update 11-Nov-2007: This router may be my biggest gadget surprise this year. It continues to perform better than expected, completely solving all past wireless issues and handling all tasks such as streaming HD-DVD.

Update 7-Apr-2011: Another reviewer reports that the device's adapter is no longer dual voltage. References to voltage have been removed? Interested in a versatile travel router? I recommend TRENDnet 300Mbps Wireless-N Travel Router Kit TEW-654TR (Black). It's wireless, remarkably small, 100-240 volts, has an Ethernet port.

Wow! I used a Linksys RT31P2 for the last year or so. It was a piece of junk!! Would slow down, get constipated, and finally died. Since we are Mac family (I have been an IT consultant too long to stay PC) I used the Airport Extreme (802.11g) for a while also. It was reliable.

BUT WHEN I PLUGGED IN THIS D-LINK ROUTER, I realized that all my previous routers had been huge bottlenecks. Over the Airport, my upload speed on Comcast cable modem increased from 4Mbps to 20Mbps. Wow. Didn't even realize Comcast had opened up that much bandwidth. [...]
So in my house we have a wired Mac, wireless Mac, wireless TiVo, Vonage adapter, Airport printserver, Airport iTunes, and they all work fine. I am currently using 802.11g and WPA2 since I don't own any 802.11n stuff yet. Signal strength for 802.11g has doubled on the fringe areas from 30% on my Tivo adapter to 60%.

I bought the D-Link vonage ATA adapter and plugged into one of the ports. I was concerned my phone calls would get choppy since the ATA is behind the router. HOWEVER, THE D-LINK ROUTER HAS SOME VERY GOOD QoS FEATURES AND USING THE AUTOMATIC SETTINGS, THE VONAGE CALLS ARE NOT CHOPPY AND EVERYTHING WORKS FINE.

Build Quality: This router is built a lot more solid than many other routers I have seen, especially the Linksys P.O.S. I just placed in the trash can (best place for it really).

Summary: Gigabit switch is awesome. Router can do SPI and even some deep packet inspection such as H.323 (Netmeeting) compatibility and QOS stuff while maintaining lots of speed. It is VoIP aware and supports SIP and QOS is tuned for VOIP. It works great in a Mac environment and I'm sure would in a PC environemtn also. VERY extensive router setup settings for the home user including INCOMING filters, flexible DHCP server with ability to reserve IP addresses for specific MAC addresses (nice). Will email you the log files, and automatically checks D-Link's website for firmware updates. Overall an awesome router for the money.

Here's my experience with D-Link and this router: The router stopped working after two weeks. Tech support said it was dead. It could only be exchanged or repaired, not refunded. The exchange/repair process required that the router be returned with an RMA. The RMA required that everything that came with the router be returned or there would be charges for the unreturned parts. The items and charges are as follows and are from the RMA email I received:
1 x DIR-655
1 x Bottom Foot(Stand) ($5.00)
1 x Ethernet Cable ($10.00)
3 x Antenna ($15.00)
1 x Mounting Kit (Routers,APs & Small Switches) ($3.00)
1 x CD ($12.00)
1 x AC Power Adapter ($25.00)
1 x Copy of Proof Of Purchase
Once D-link received the router it would then at D-link's discretion either be repaired or replaced. The repaired or replaced router would then be sent UPS ground. All this time, the customer is without a router.
The router itself, when it did work, required technical support as the installation disk that was provided with it did not itself work properly. The technician had a difficult time solving the problem and gave nonsense advice. He also got the serial number wrong. This had to be corrected by another call and wait on hold before the RMA was issued.
D-Link is another one of those "our product, your problem" companies. Shop elsewhere.

I previously had a Linksys WRT54G and was moderately satisfied with it until it started exhibiting signs of 'cheapness', like general flakiness, inability to load the web management (it'd load a blank screen), etc. After getting frustrated enough, and desiring a router with gigabit ports, I started searching, until I came across the DIR-655.

The first best part (and there's more than one) of this router was unpacking it. Honestly, it's the sexiest networking device I've seen in a long while. There's a button hiding stealthily on the right side, if you take note, but no mention is made of it in the manual. Also included in the package is a little black plastic stand, so you can stand the router on end - that's pretty standard for D-Link, and I like that. They threw in a Cat-5 cable, was that a joke? What am I going to do with a Cat-5 cable on a gigabit router? That's very amusing.

I elected not to run the software included on the CD. There's no real need if you know what you're doing. However, for more advanced users I'd recommend connecting the router to your computer, but NOT connecting to your internet connection (cable modem), and just spending a few minutes familiarizing yourself with your new sweet toy and all of her options.

Now for the good stuff: This router is amazing! The main 'Setup' page is basically divided into 2 parts for each section, a 'wizard' for quick-and-easy setup, and a 'manual' page. Basically, if you're a beginner, stick to the wizard pages. If you wanna get up and running fast, go through the wizards, you can always go back later and manually tweak the settings to your liking.

Connectivity is top level. I tested it by transferring 25 GB of large files then 25GB of small files between two hosts connected to this router, both using 10 feet of cat6 each. 100% success, no packets lost, no fragmentation, and the transfer was about 4% faster than the same transfer straight through on an unmanaged gigabit switch. Internet connectivity was great too. Thanks to the built-in SPI firewall, all the 'network noise' (thanks to all the other 'dirty' hosts on comcast's network) is effectively eliminated, and honestly speeds up my internet activity significantly over what I'm used to when using the WRT54G. Checking the logs revealed the dirty details of all this crap that's filtered out, and I like it gone.

Wireless-N connectivity was also good. Not much can be said here, it works like it should, and I have no complaints.

Administration is also very nice. As usual, the router is administered via browser, and while that's cool, I'd also like to be able to ssh into it and take care of business via CLI, but alas that is not to be. But otherwise, the web management is well designed, fast and easy to understand. This router also checks periodically for firmware updates and notifies you via email if you have the email settings enabled.

Other items of note: VoIP works flawlessly, as does all online gaming that I tried. Latency is noticeably reduced (on my favorite server, from about 80ms to about 60ms avg) in Half-Life 2 deathmatch. torrents worked fine. So far I have no real complaints about this router. It's now my most favorite part of my network.

Overall, I give this 5/5. Honestly, I'd easily say it's worth the price I paid for it (at the time it was $140), and for my network it is a perfect match. If you're a 'normal' computer user, don't buy this just to impress your friends; the features and complexity would be lost on you and are not worth the price.

PROS:
-DHCP Address Reservation
-Easy administration
-Quick Setup
-Email logs
-Incredibly easy port forwarding and per-application settings
-SPI + NAT + WPA2. Nuff said.
-Great documentation and help files.
-Port forwarding scheduling.

CONS:
-No SSH or CLI administration.
-Reboot required after changing most settings.
-No matching high quality D-Link cable modem to go with this.

Congratulations, D-Link, on crafting yet another incredible piece of networking equipment. The DIR-655 is worthy enough to sit on my desk, instead of crammed behind it like the Linksys was!

It was high time to get network speeds up to Gigabit levels, and the need for speed fed my willingness to risk going with draft-level, pre-standard 802.11n tech. With two desktops and two laptops on a home-biz and home network, routing was critical. Age and traffic-level burned out my last, wired router from the L-word company. Two teenage daughters tortured the replacement wireless WRT-350N Linksys WRT350N Wireless-N Gigabit Router with Storage Link to death with incessant instant-messaging. To keep that router UP required thrice-daily re-starts. Tweaks inspired by the manual, FAQs and Forum did not definitively fix it. When two generations of firmware upgrades did not help, it became evident I needed another, real solution. TA-DA! In walks the D-Link DIR-655 D-Link DIR-655 Extreme N Wireless Router . BAM! It sets up in a trice, works right out of the box. It's working! Log-in to the router web interface and dig in for a few minutes. Create a secure password. Want security? ZOOM! Use the wizard to set-up respected WPA2. Clone a MAC Address? Push a radio-button. Apple user? No problem, since all of the setup wizards are resident on the router, and use the same web interface, it works the same across platforms. I was tempted by the Apple AirPort Extreme Base Station Apple AirPort Extreme Base Station (Gigabit) MB053LL/A , in fact, I run an older version with NO PROBLEMS. But the D-Link DIR-655 had four 10/100/1000 (Gigabit) W/LAN ports and cost less besides. It's performance ranked first among six n-draft routers, did great in mixed (b, g and n) environments and only fell to the middle of the pack over long ranges (according to reviews at C-NET and elsewhere). Users gave it high marks for satisfaction. (Users gave my L-word router the finger). So, this li'l white router the size of a paperback book, with its three antennas and blinking baby blues is so reliable and cute, I could just kiss it. And, kiss that L-word router good-bye.

Extremely impressed with this router's speed, range, and ease of use. My only complaint (like others) is with the software bundled with this item. It's already out of date, right out of the package, and upon installation, it will prompt you to "update to the new version, free", and that's fine, but what happens is the new version of the software is not compatible with the firmware preinstalled on the router. This fatal combination prevents the router from functioning. You will have to download a firmware update from the Manufacturer to get the unit working again. Not a difficult task, however technical support at D-link doesn't seem to know anything about the software that comes with their product, so I ended up speaking to the technical support team at the software company, who immediately knew what was wrong. Kind of a letdown for this scenario to occur right out of the box. Fortunately, it was easy to do, and the router returned to life, immediately.

I upgraded from my dLink DI-624 to the DIR-655 because my DI-624 was rebooting every few hours and my dell laptop inspiron 6000(XP) would disconnect every hour. I have also the dell E1405 (Vista) which would get 2-7% connections on my 3rd floor.

Here is my layout: I have a 3 story townhouse with 2 houses on both sides. I am located 3 miles from NYC but am located in an area which is considered to be the suburbs. My router is on the ground/1st floor. I use my laptops on the 2nd and 3rd floors.

After my upgrade to DIR-655, I see that the new router is NOT rebooting and my Inspiron 6000 stays connected. The E1405 would get about 14% on the 3rd floor.

With my BitTorrent running/downloading, I test the following:
When I surf the web, everything is fine and fast. 6Mbs/sec
When I stream movie from one laptop to the other, I experience some jumpiness. I notice if I pop something in the microwave, I would get slowdown and crazy jumpy connection which causes the movie to hang. The cordless at 5.6GHz running is fine.
I get 100% on the 1st floor since my router is there. 54Mbs (DI624 gave me 92%)
I get about 48-64% on the 2nd floor. 36-54Mbs. (almost the same as the DI624)
I get about 2-22% on the 3rd floor. 2-24Mbs.
The above test was done with both internal laptop cards. The Inspiron 6000 is using the Intel(R) PRO/Wireless 2915. The E1405 is using the Wireless 1390 WLAN MiniCard.

My wireless settings:
WEP
Channel 1
SSID enable
N and G mode only
Firmware 1.04 (heard bad things about 1.05 and 1.1, so I will wait and see)

Conclusion:
There is an improvement compare to the DI-624 of course. But is it worth the $110+ at the moment? I am not too sure. I am thinking that I will wait until the N adapters gets to be about $40 and I will do a retest. I hope it gets better with full N. I see a 5% improvement on the 1st floor, a 0-5% improvement on the 2nd floor and a 0-200% improvement on the 3rd floor.
Yes, you should buy it if you were experiencing issues b/f like me, but if you old router was working perfectly, why upgrade unless you are going full N.

I gave it a 3 star because I was expecting a 6x more range and 300% speed improvement. But I dont see that.

I bought this router in part because I had read in a few places that it worked well with the new laptop I had purchased, but also because of the many glowing reviews on places like Amazon.

Installation was a breeze, but unfortunately my internet connection speed dropped by about 80% after installation, on both my desktop PC (wired to the router) and my new notebook. The internet connection was usable but noticeably slower. I tried EVERYTHING, including shutting off wireless capability in case of interference and adjusting every setting imaginable in the router online configuration, to no avail. And yet, as soon as I disconnected the router and connected my desktop PC back to my cable modem, the speeds were back to normal.

D-Link tech support was of little help; they would suggest a minor tweak in the online configuration, tell me to reboot the router, then call them back if the problem persisted. We repeated that cycle a few times with no progress. I spent hours tweaking settings, troubleshooting, and researching online. Nothing.

So now I have to figure out whether the particular router I was sent just happens to be defective and can be replaced, or if this brand of router doesn't "play nice" and I need to find a different one entirely. I'm no tech dummy but this has been a real chore and support from D-Link has been disappointing.

I will update my rating at a later time if my experience with this product improves.