Customer Reviews

D-Link DI-524 Wireless 54 Mbps High Speed Router (802.11g)

5 star:		(77)
4 star:		(46)
3 star:		(23)
2 star:		(34)
1 star:		(81)

 

 

I'm not sure if the other reviewers have problems reading instructions or if they just skipped steps. Had no problems at all getting this unit set up and establishing connections between my desktop and Inspiron 5150. Take it out of the box, connect an ethernet cable between the desktop and router and plug it in. Use your favourite browser to connect to 198.168.1.1 and run through the setup wizard. Then once you've got everything set up, read through the manual, go through the various setup options and tweak as desired. I opted to go with the WPA-PSK authentication protocol because its supposed to be more secure, but if you have other devices that don't support it, you'll probably have to stick with WEP.

It can be laid flat on the desk, or propped up on end vertically using the little rubber feet that are supplied. There are 4 ethernet ports that allow you to connect via 10/100 Ethernet and the WAN port to connect to cable, DSL or LAN. The antenna is on a swivel and can be rotated to just about any convenient orientation.

The only thing I don't like about the router is that it doesn't have an internal clock, so every time it is powered off the router's system time goes back to it's default start value. It can be configured to set the time from an NTP server, but only if it's connected to a WAN network (via DSL, cable or LAN). It's only a minor inconvenience though. The other thing is that the router's web interface only seems to work properly if you use IE. Using Netscape/Mozilla/Firefox sort of works for most things, but not everything.

I've recently had the opportunity to set up two wireless networks for my friend's and now my home, all on WinXP systems. For my friend, I picked up a Buffalo Airstation on advice of the head of the tech department (not the floor salesguy) at a computer retailer, and it installed flawlessly in minutes, including a firewall, valuable 128-bit WEP security, plus --what is even more important to me to prevent hacking-- MAC filtering. For my own home, I went with a sale and got the Hawking 54M wireless G, and I couldn't get it to work. Even with tweaking (I've been doing non-networking IT for fifteen years), I couldn't get the router to connect with my ISP through my DSL connection. I went out and bought a D-Link (also 54M wireless G) on heavy discount at a different retailer, and like the Buffalo, it went up and running right away, and I easily set up the firewall, 128 bit WEP, and MAC filtering. [MAC filtering, for those of you who don't know, allows you to specify exactly which machines are allowed to connect to the router, and all other ones are shut out. This keeps the neighbors and others from hacking into your network, since WEP passwords aren't foolproof.] I like the D-Link.

I bought the DI-524 (Rev A2) after my trusty Linksys WRT54G v1.0 croaked. At first, everything appeared to work well with DI-524. Web browsing and small file transfers on the wireless intranet seemed to go without a hitch.

But once I started doing some heavy file transfers and run some bandwidth intensive applications, the problems arose. I noticed repeated DHCP Requests in the log (approximately every 2-5 minutes), dropped packets, DNS resolution failures, slow transfer speeds, and consistent problems with wireless connections. According to the log, the router would also reboot itself almost every day (the log would automatically clear itself whenever the router reboots).

I would consider myself much more tech-savvy than the average person, and I tried all kinds of settings with this router to make it perform better. To no avail, it simply did not work as well as my now dead 3 year old WRT54G.

Based on my experience, if you get this router...

- Forget running any kind of P2P application (azureus, utorrent, bitcoment, emule, limewire, etc.). The issue is not related to firewalls, uPnP, or any other router setting you would typically configure to ensure an optimal P2P transfer. Because of the router's inability to maintain a stable connection (whether PC to router or router to ISP), any kind of P2P activity will be negatively affected, period.

- Forget transferring any kind of large file (600MB+) between 2 wireless clients or even between a wireless and a wired client.

Here are some 802.11g file transfer scenarios I've tried:
Between a PC running Windows XP SP2 and a Mac with OS X 10.3.9 via Samba.
Between two PC's running Win XP via Windows file sharing.
Between a Mac with OS X 10.3.9 and another Mac with OS X 10.4.3 Server via AFP

None work consistently well. About half the time, the file transfer would be interrupted and fail, or it would look like the file was still being transferred, but nothing was actually coming through. Occasionally Windows Explorer or Mac's Finder would lock up due to the router's poor communication with clients.

- Forget about mixed wireless environments where you have both 802.11b and 802.11g devices. Max transfer speeds between a "b" and a "g" device were less than 100kbps.

- Forget about using any web browser except Internet Explorer or Opera to configure the router. There is a Javascript bug on the wireless configuration page that renders the "Apply settings" link useless in browsers like Firefox or Safari. This bug exists in firmware version 1.20 and 1.21 (the two latest). When I raised this issue with D-Link support, their official response was "Downgrade to firmware v1.11 if you need compatibility with Firefox" I kid you not, folks.

- Forget connecting any kind of networkable printer to the router's ethernet port. Due to the many reboots or some other unknown reason, print jobs to my networked printer would not spool to the printer sometimes, even though the printer was visible on the network (via Rendezvous/Bonjour).

I did email D-Link support a few times raising the issues I mentioned above. Their answers never really addressed the issue, or the solution they provided was not acceptable (see "downgrade firmware").

After 3 months of tinkering I finally gave up on the D-Link and bought a Linksys WRT54G v5.0, even though I had major reservations due to all the negative comments about the v5. My worries, however, were put to rest after the first couple hours of use. Every problem with the DI-524 I mentioned above does not exist with the Linksys WRT54G v5. Comparing the two routers is like night and day - the difference is astonishing.

I've used the WRT54G for about a week now in the same environment, and so far not a single hiccup even under heavy bandwidth duress. For all intents and purposes the WRT54G v5 works as well as my v1 did, if not better.

So my "professional" geek recommendation based on the 3 months I lived with the DI-524 is to avoid it at all costs, even if you are just a basic web surfer and don't plan on doing any heavy file transfers. Don't be fooled by the low price after rebate or its compact size compared to other routers. This is not a quality product and your internet experience will suffer for it.

[...]

As a regular user, I tried all possible solutions such as moving closer, tried three different brands of wireless adaptors, choose all kinds of different configurations, so on and so forth.

As an experienced computer engineer, I tried different firmware, tried to use network strumbler,tried linux, and more.

Nothing can prevent this router from crash. You can literally tell the router automatically reboot by just looking at the light leds on the front panel. It blinks for 40-50 seconds, and whennever the traffic through the router goes a little bit higher, all leds lighted up staticly and then all shutdown. There you go, re-----booooot!

Someone may say, you get what you paid for. Yes it is CHEAP. but for this product, I would rather pay NOTHING. I won't bother to call the customer service, they could not be more proficient than me. I would not waste more time on this product, otherwise, I would ask D-link paying me for all the time I spent to disgnose this crap.

So, DO NOT BUY! And if you happened read this, and you do agree, please try to click the LINK stating that you think this comment is useful. So that no more victims would suffer as I did in the past few days.

I can hardly believe this product is from DLink. Use to trust D-Link products religiously, but this particular product has changed everything. Before my purchase, I didn't believe those negative comments and thought they were either rumors or users' own stupidity caused the problems... well, now I am among them! The router keeps screwing up, and here are just a few examples:

1. MSN messenger keeps disconnecting for no reason at all. The "solution" from DLink engineers is written for an obsolete version of the MSN messenger.

2. There is is no power switch. The only way to recycle power is to pull the plug, literally. However, 4 out 5 times when you recycle power in this fashion, the router will go into a locked-up state, where all the LEDs are lit (even for the ports without cables) but does nothing (no DHCP, no nothing). You have to keep recycling until you see the LEDs blinking

3. If you leave the sucker running for too long, it will hang during download. I was building some gentoo packages using "emerge" on one desktop computer, while surfing the net using a laptop via wireless... the emerge would get stuck in the middle of the download and I have to keep killing it and restarting emerge...

Who knows what other problems there may be... I kept urging the dlink engineers to release a new firmware, but for heaven's sake, they won't listen and till this very day, Rev D only has its factory firmware available.

I moved my previous combination, a D-Link DI-604 and an Apple Airport Base Station, to my workplace so I needed a new router at home. The previous combination worked great so I thought there would be no problem with going with another D-Link router.

The DI-524 proved to be worthless in two ways. First, and more importantly, the router kept randomly blocking webpages, necessitating repeated DHCP releases and resets. Two calls to D-Link's outsourced tech support line were completely unhelpful. I tried resetting the router, changing the MTU settings, flushing the DNScache, playing with UPnP and DDNS settings, all to no avail. Calls to my ISP were similarly unhelpful, although it was obviously not a problem on their end as plugging the computer straight into the ethernet feed resolved the problem.

Second, the router has only fair signal strength. I placed the unit upstairs in my home's home networking box and just being downstairs (right below it) would cut signal strength in half.

Since it took me two months to figure all this out, Amazon won't accept a return, and I am stuck with a half-working router.

I bought a Linksys WRT-54G router, and although it is much larger (and thus a little harder to fit inside the networking box), it works flawlessly with no blocked pages, no significant need to mess with any settings out of the box, and great signal strength (full strength or slightly below where signal was half for the DI-524). (...).

I previously had a D-Link DI-713P 802.11b wireless router which worked very well, and I got this one to have the higher speeds and extra firewall features (and the low price). First of all, to get it to work at all with my cable modem I had to do what others said here (and boy am I glad they reported it), which is to throttle the WAN port down from 100 to 10 Mbps. Then I wanted to use MAC address filtering, a really good security feature, which I'd used with the old one. I also wanted to use WEP encryption as before. With both features turned on, I couldn't get our wireless workstations to connect at all. I wrote D-Link tech support, and they got back to me very quickly, but said that these two features both "increase the over load on the data packets," and decrease the signal strength, and recommended turning off encryption! I neglected to tell them I was about 2 feet away from the router at the time, so signal strength (or interference) shouldn't be the problem. I also found that to get a Mac OS X PowerBook to connect, I had to turn SSID broadcasting back on, another lowering of security. With encryption & SSID broadcasting on, but MAC address filtering off, it works with my PCs & Macs, but my Windows XP machine reports a fluttering signal strength (and I'm not very far away), which means I constantly get those little pop-up windows that my connection is off, now it's on again, now it's off again, etc. So even though it basically works, I have less security, more annoyances, and no discernible speed improvement over my old D-Link 802.11b router, which is going to be re-installed soon and this new one is going back to Amazon.

Like many others, I also ran into the classic problem with this router. It locks up and needs to be reset at least 2 to 3 times in a day. Plug out the power and plug in the power supply, and the router would work next few hours. At some point it gave up and would never work... !! I returned this product within a month.
May be you need some luck to get the non-buggy version. It has fabulous 5 star reviews from others :-(..

I bought this wireless router and was happy with it for about 6 weeks. It was easy to set up, worked fine, and had good range (I live in a smallish townhouse so I can't vouch for how well it would work for larger homes).

Then it stopped working suddenly and nothing, including restarting it or even using the reset button got it working again. I know enough about networking equipment to tell that this was a hardware issue, not a software misconfiguration. I was tempted to just throw out the router and buy a new one, but since it was still under warranty I decided to use the form on their website and sent them a message, clearly describing my "symptoms" and the different things I had tried to get it working and see what they could do for me.

I got an e-mail back and was pleasantly surprised to read that they agreed that my router was defective and they would replace my product through their RMA process (meaning I would mail back the defective unit and they would mail me back a new one). I assumed that this meant I would just have to call them to get an RMA number to use when mailing the router back to D-Link. Little did I know that what I expected to be a simple 2 minute phone call would take up almost 2 hours of my time.

I was connected to a call center in India and was told that before I got an RMA number I would need to do a few 'routine tests' on the unit with their support staff before they could authorize the RMA. I asked how long this would take and they said 10 minutes. Over then next 90 minutes I came to understand that D-Link's support call centers are either run in a completely incompetent way, or they are purposely designed to discourage people from staying on the line to get the help they need (in my case this would prevent me from returning a defective product which would save them the cost of replacing it). During the 'routine tests' my call was dropped three times, forcing me to call back. Each time I had to repeat much of the same information and repeat some of the tests I was doing. At no point did the tech support people have me try anything new that I had not already tried and described in my original e-mail to them. At several points I was put on hold, sometimes for longer than 5 minutes. The whole thing was an exercise in frustration.

Finally my call got transferred to a higher level person, who read over my original e-mail, had me try another 'reset' (which I had already done at least 3 times) and finally issued the RMA number. (If I could have skipped the rest of the support people and gone straight to the last person that could be considered reasonable).

Next I gathered up the router and everything that came in the box with it (power supply, cd, the little rubber feet that they give you that no one ever uses) and mailed it to them (I had to pay for the postage myself). They sent me an e-mail acknowledging they received the package but with no information about when they would send the replacement - it took about 2 weeks, and I got the same model with a higher revision (E instead of D). If the new one breaks, it's just going in the trash - I'd rather spend the money to replace it with something that works, rather than deal with their support people again.

Update: After getting the replacement router, I haven't had problems with it. It seems like buying this router is a crapshoot - from the number of bad reviews here it seems like you have a pretty good chance of getting a bad unit and dealing with it disconnecting all the time.

One limitation I just found out about recently is that this router will not let you do port forwarding for more than 32 ports. If you use a router to do NAT this is ridiculously limiting (and I can't imagine why they would put this in - most routers let you forward an unlimited amount of ports). Even a single game (like Counter-Strike for example) may need to have more than 32 ports forwarded to work properly... if you're not sure how many ports you will need there is good information on portforward.com (and it will also help you figure out which routers will do the job).

The first one I bought worked great for about 14 days, then it wouldn't stay connected for more than 5 minutes. Returned it...Now the second one is starting to act up. Not sure what is wrong with these things, but avoid this model if at all possible.