Customer Reviews

D-Link DWL-G520 Wireless PCI Adapter, 802.11g, 108Mbps

5 star:		(38)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(10)
1 star:		(18)

 

 

Usually you should discount reviews complaining about problems with a computer add-on: they say more about the reviewer and their systems, perhaps, then they do about the product you are trying to evaluate. I think, though, that some aspects of my experience might be generalizable, maybe even applicable to your situation.

I have been a satisfied user of D-Link wireless products for over three years now. I upgraded to the 802.11g products (WAP and PCI cards) a year ago to a run a network of up to five computers, usually three Win XP or Win 2000 workstations and two notebooks. As I look around my office, though, I see boxes full of failed or problematic routers, WAPs, and cards. It seems, although I have only just realized the extent of it, that these D-Link products all fail with remarkable regularity. In the past, I have just routinely replaced them: that's how much I have liked their ease of use and their performance.

Well, that's over with my latest purchase: the DWL-G520 adapter (my second). It taught me two disturbing things about D-Link wireless. First, the adapter can really screw up your system. This one's driver (regardless of the update version) consumes 90+ percent of a very high-powered CPU. (Windows XP Home, all the latest updates, etc.) It has brought an essential machine to its knees by hugely slowing down everything it does. Disabling the adapter (which solves the problem, at the price of disconnecting me from the world) brings on the fabled Blue Screen of Death. The second disturbing thing is that D-Link support simply has not responded to e-mail messages, period. Their Web site lies when it promises 36 hour response. I can cope--I have a strong background in computing and can devise temporary workarounds--but I shudder to think how uncomfortable this behavior would make most people feel.

Those are the proverbial three strikes: consistently short times to failure, occurrence of really bad driver behavior, and hopelessly bad support. My relationship with D-Link is over; I will have to try some other vendor's offering. If you don't mind the risk of having a similar experience, and think you can cope with absolutely no support, then by all means consider this product. I hope and trust, though, that you (and I) can do better with a different vendor.

This card is just super!

I spent some frustrating hours with two -- count 'em, TWO -- Linksys Wireless-G PCI cards, trying to get them to talk to another Linksys product, a Linksys Wireless-G Router. No luck. The second one was a replacement for the first, and the insert that came with it said it had passed Linksys quality control. Maybe, but neither one played nice with my Win2000 machine.

Finally, I gave up on the Linksys PCI card, and probably shouldn't have tried it at all, given the mediocre reviews it received here on Amazon. That's when I sat down and diligently read the reviews for D-Link and figured I had nothing to lose by trying one more PCI card (one that's received rave reviews, BTW).

The D-Link card and driver installed without fuss in the Win2000 machine. It's two rooms away from the router and the wireless signal passes through a bathroom, with the attendant metal pipes and wires, etc., and still gets a 86-90% signal. It's set up to communicate with the router using a WPA-Pre-Shared-Key (WPA-PSK), the router does not broadcast an SSID, and the router only accepts wireless communications from this single wireless client. Browsing the Internet is as fast as, if not faster than, the original wired connection. Now I can get that ugly cat-5 cable off the door-jambs and baseboards.

I'm sold. Don't fool around with the Linksys PCI card. If it works, count yourself lucky, but D-Link seems to have the wireless communication network stuff figured out. Strange, my Linksys Wireless-G Router (WRT54G) is running flawlessly, handling the traffic for both a wired and a wireless connection. But don't waste time on a Linksys PCI card. Get a D-Link card.

OK. This card would get a 5 star rating, but for the fact that no card/wireless system deserves it. First, every company designs their own products only to work with their own company's proprietary devices -- This, in spite of their all using the same IEEE 802.11 configuration standards. VERY annoying. But, OK, every company wants you to buy EVERYTHING just in their brand. Secondly, to set up a wireless network takes more than just plug and play skill -- There are basics that the consumer just has to know when setting up, and then INEVITABLY troubleshooting when the network goes down. (All networks go down from time to time, no matter who supplies the hardware). So, then, what about D-Link? The signal is strong, travels well through insulated, and sound-proofed walls, communicates very well with the 624 router and affords extremely fast data transfer rates. I am VERY happy with D-Link; it has lived up to its other consumer reviews, as found in PC Magazine, and other sources. Just read carefully BEFORE installing, just as you will have to do before installing ANY wireless network system.

I am using this card on a home network with a Netgear Wireless-G access point. On the same wireless network, I have a Linksys Wireless USB Adapter (WUSB54G) and a Netgear PC card (WG511).

Installation and set up of this card was easy. I installed it on a Windows 2000 desktop and the instructions were not very clear for Win2K, but I was able to figure it out without much sweat. Considering that almost everyone has Windows XP these days, this may not be a problem.

The speed and performance is good - as good as it can get. On my network (at the same distance from the access point), this card and the WG511 are equally fast. With my ISP, my download speed is about 1.2mbps and upstream speed is 200kbps. The WUSB54G is pretty slow (must be because it is USB) - I get only < 300 mbps downstream.

First, you must know that D-Link has the annoying and unprofessional habit of releasing unfinished, not so ready hardware to market. It seems that their engineering team is under pressure from marketing (typical) to deliver products before they are completely tested and ready. There are several revisions (internal designs) of this and other D-Link products. As of this writing (April 2004), the DWL-G650 has 7 of them, A1, B1, B2, B3, B4, C1, and C2 each representing a correction to a "Oops" of some sort! The DWL-G520 has 2, A and B, while the DI-624 router has 3, A, B, and C. The latest revision is what you should look for, it is usually on the sticker on the back of the box - just below the serial number.

OK, so I had the DI-614+ router, DWL-650+ PC Card, and DWL-520+ PCI card, and they worked great. I just needed the higher speed to stream music and video from my server upstairs, and wanted to use the more secure WPA protocol (not yet supported on the DWL-520+ *stupid D-Link*), so I upgraded to the DI-624 router (rev. C), DWL-G650 PC Card (rev. B4), and DWL-G520 PCI Card (rev. B). I upgraded the firmware on the router right away to 2.42 and the driver for the G650 to 2.48. The router seemed to work fine, but the card was not seeing it. My older 802.11B card (DWL-650+) was able to see and connect to the new router, but not the new card. I tried many things to no avail. I then installed the older driver 2.42 and the card started seeing the router but had trouble keeping the connection..I played with many settings and nothing helped. I tried two other laptops (different brands) and experienced the same symptoms.
Finally, I went to the a store and purchased another DWL-G650 and made sure it was the newer rev. C2 (the latest). Guess what, it worked right away and kept the connection solid. I tried FTP between the server (wired to the router) and the wireless laptop and got a transfer throughput of about 2400KBytes/sec... This is while using WPA-PSK with Super G enabled and using a short preamble. The same results were obtained with the PCI version of the card (DWL-G520).
I returned the bad PC Card (rev. B4) back to the store and kept the new one! So, just make sure that you have the latest version of the hardware.

One more thing, if you compare the signal quality/strength between DWL-650+ and DWL-G650 or between DWL-520+ and DWL-G520 you'll find that the new cards have a much lower number (worst). For example, my old 650+ used to get around 70% quality compared to 36% for the G650 at the same exact spot/direction. The difference is identical when comparing the 520+ to the G520. I have not experienced any performance issues though, the TxRate is typically at 72Mbps (not 108Mbps)! I think the new AirPlus XtremeG utility calculates the quality number differently and hence the difference, and future driver updates may further enhance the signal measurement.

D-Link's release of faulty hardware is wrong and must be stopped. The problem is that their competition are not much better. So go for what works, and buy from a place that has a good return policy. Someday another vendor will make better products and offer better support, and I will abandon D-Link :)

I have installed PCI cards before so this wasn't that hard to do, and everything went as planned thanks to the quick install guide included with the PCI card. All I had to do was follow instructions and it actually worked the way it is supposed to. Install probably took about 10 minutes total because of unplugging yout PC and opening it up.

The signal strength is also quite good considering the antenna is behind a computer and stuffed under a desk. I get about 60-75% signal strength on average. sometimes if people are standing in the way I get a little downgrade in strength, but nothing that effects the speeds.

I really like the software utility that comes with this card (and the laptop card) because they are very informative. The more info I know the better, just as long as it isn't thrown at me all at once. Luckily that is exactly what this software does. It isn't too complicated or too watered down.

I'd recommend this card to anyone who doesn't want to put holes in their rental place to run Ethernet cables to the next room. Wireless is much easier and the speeds are the same, as far as internet browsing and gaming goes.

I just downloaded and installed the new firmware released by D-Link @ support.dlink.com for my G520, G650 and DI-624. This new firmware and drivers upgrades my speeds to more than double. I can now transfer MP3s or ZIP files across my network wirelessly in less than half the time as I did 2 days ago. All for FREE as well.

The signal strength and quality is just the same as before, but now when I lock it down in Turbo mode I get way fast speeds. I am simply amazed that this is all free and doesn't take any new hardware to do.

The adapter itself has been running flawlessly for a month now and I sometimes forget my PC is wireless. In fact if there wasn't a small icon in my system tray I don't think I could tell the difference.

I'm not sure about what people are saying about this card and Windows but on Linux this card is perfect. Running Ubuntu 6.06 and the card works with no extra leg work. Only thing is that you do have to bring the network card 'up' before you can scan for a network and to do that all you must do is "sudo ifconfig ath0 up". This card in Linux supports Master mode operation, so it's perfect for those wanting to build your own access point.

However, do be careful! There are a lot of versions of the hardware and one version will not work period, end of story, don't even try it. However, the odds are on your side as it was only one version out of many. However, don't be disappointed if you end up getting one of the off versions that use the T.I. chip.

Using a D-Link DI-624 as the wireless router/access point for my home network, I got my laptop linked up fairly easily but connecting to the net with a second desktop using this wireless adapter took some trial and error. I followed the manual's instructions (with latest drivers/firmwares) and got WIRELESS CONNECTION on the PC BUT CAN'T ACCESS the INTERNET!

Here's what I finally did to make it work (the wireless linked PC is a Dell 8200 running WinXP):

Removed the wireless adapter from a PCI slot close to the fax/modem.

Uninstalled first software install. Rebooted. Reinstalled DWL-G520 software. Shut off PC.

Reinstalled wireless adapter in an empty PCI slot farther away from the fax/modem.

Turn on PC, hardware detected. Install the NEWEST driver that was downloaded previously via ethernet on my new Dell 8300.

MAKE SURE the ROUTER DI-624 is properly configured!!! I had enabled WEP (write down the KEY!) and used the MAC filter (only the MACs of my router and ethernet/wireless adapters CAN access my network). I also disabled SSID broadcast (I can detect several of my neighbors' SSIDs with WEP disabled).

MOST Importantly the DHCP server was enabled with just enough starting to ending IP addresses for the number of computers in my network.

NOW enter ALL necessary info of the network using the DWL-G520 config. utility. Click the WinXP network icon for wireless networks avail. Check your network, enter the WEP key and........FINALLY, access to the internet!!!

It took some time to dial in my preferences but now my downstairs wireless PC is 3712/407 kbps down/up with a LOW (38%)signal.

Good Luck!

I purchased a D-LINK G520 card for my PC running Windows XP Pro on an AMD processor. I am using is in conjunction with a D-LINK DI-624 wireless access point. I have downloaded and installed the latest drivers from the D-LINK website. I followed the installation instructions to the letter. The connection works fine, for anywhere from five minutes to an hour.

After that, my computer freezes completely, every time. If I remove the D-LINK card and enable and plug in my regular LAN card, I have no problems. This is the only time XP has ever frozen for me, after over one year of use.

I am in the process of testing the card under Linux, but as far as I know the only available drivers are in pre-production form.

I am not certain what makes my PC different from that of the other reviewers, but if you search through you will note that several other reviewers have had the same problem. If the issue is solved, I will write another review explaining the fix. Until then, I recommend that you do not purchase this Wireless card.