Most Helpful Customer Reviews
|
|
133 of 140 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Linksys Has Some Competition!, November 10, 2008
I am a Linksys person and I teach a Wireless course using Linksys products. I have been using Linksys products since their 802.11b wired routers first became available. I recently purchased the WRT610N and after trying this D-Link, I am sorry I chose the Linksys WRT610N.
As my first D-link product, I failed to realize D-link uses a 192.168.0.1 network address for its router. I am used to 192.168.1.1 on Linksys products.
PROs:
It is a Dual-Band wireless router, just like the WRT610N. It allows you to schedule wireless access. It has a great manual, which even tells you how to hook up one router to another for extending coverage. I was surprised to see this. I like being able to adjust power output of wireless radios. I love the idea of Guest wireless internet zones. It allows guests, such as friends, to get on your network without having access to local resources or giving out your normal SSID/Password.
It clearly has more options than the Linksys WRT610N, which can be seemingly less user freindly and requires more knowledge of networking. The web configuration screens are similar to Linksys screens though. Anyone familiar with Linksys can find their way around. I did not try the setup CD. Instead I manually configured it using the web interface.
I did not experience any of the instability issues I had with WRT610N. With a Lenovo T61, Apple TV, iPhone, two Macs, a PS3, and a PC connected to a Buffalo LinkStation Gaming Adapter, I needed to find the least common denominator wireless settings in order for all of these devices to connect and stay connected successfully. There were just too many disconnects, which necessitated the least common denominator approach. This approach meant I had to choose "Mixed BG" instead of "mixed (which includes n), had to set channel width to 20, and had to use Tkip WPA only. The D-link allowed me to use all three speed grades (B, G, and N) with WPA or WPA2 (becuase it autodetects the best encryption method available with client devices). I was also able to set the Channel Width to auto (40 or 20 depending on the clients).
CONs:
It only allows up to 63 alpha characters for the wireless passphrase/password. I prefer 64 hex character passwords.
The menus are a bit more complex, which could be an issue for some.
Only one person at a time can access a USB hard drive attached to the D-Link wireless router. Many can access the USB hard drive hanging off of the Linksys WRT610N.
OVERALL:
This is a great wireless router. I tested it as a drop-in replacement for my Linksys WRT610N (after changing the subnet to 192.168.1.x) and it performed admirably. If you are looking, I would consider this strongly before purchasing any other brand.
|
|
|
68 of 77 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
D-Link HAS to be paying people for these positive reviews, May 30, 2009
A couple of months ago I purchased the DIR-825 because on average it received better buyer reviews than the competing dual-band N-compatible routers. At this point, I'm really struggling to understand how this is possible, because the DIR-825 fails in so many areas. I've designed wireless home networking products for almost the past 10 years, and while I'd hope that my experience and familiarity with top brands should equip me to make good purchasing decisions, in my confidence I apparently overlooked some fundamental requirements. In the DIR-825 I got a router that had what I was looking for (configurable QoS, dual-band 802.11n support), but also had a lot of other "features:"
- Randomly disconnects clients every hour or so. This happened more in 5GHz than 2.4GHz, but it definitely happened in both spectrums, and did so often. The router's logs did not indicate any reasons for clients being removed. My theory is that there were frequent signal strength hiccups that caused clients to think the router had vanished. They always reconnected about 10 seconds later, but that's long enough to disconnect you from most online games.
- Renders Vonage VOIP calls completely inaudible, even when the wireless network is quiet. The Vonage router is the only wired networking device in our house. We had it plugged into the DIR-825 so we could take advantage of the router's advanced QoS capabilities, but it was an absolute nightmare. We never got VOIP to work right so long as it was 'behind' the DIR-825, regardless of QoS settings and various other tweaks mentioned in the D-Link knowledge base and forums. We ended up having to put the Vonage device in front of the router (which fixed Vonage but had side effects on the rest of the network).
- Auto-channel Select Feature DOES NOT WORK. The auto-channel select feature, which is enabled by default, is supposed to automatically choose the least congested WiFi channel in your band. I have access to some very expensive sniffing and spectrum analysis systems that tell me that the absolute best 2.4GHz channel in my house is number 4, and the absolute worst is number 1, which literally has 10 different SSIDs beaconing on it as I write this. The DIR-825 ALWAYS selected channel 1 (and it wasn't just a matter of what it reported in the admin UI; sniffers reported it in Channel 1.) Not only does this feature appear to do the opposite of what it advertises, it's also known for randomly disconnecting clients. Unfortunately, disabling it did not fix our problem with that.
- Doesn't work with BitTorrent. I know all about port forwarding, TCP, UDP, UPnP, I followed forums, FAQs, and step-by-steps, but I never got BitTorrent to accept incoming connections properly. (And note that I hardly ever have BT running, anyway; it has nothing to do with the other issues noted here).
- Crummy wireless range in both bands. First off, a little bit of info about the 5GHz band: 5GHz is never going to have the same range as the 2.4GHz range at the same transmit power; this is a matter of physics- higher frequencies = shorter wavelength = shorter distances/more susceptible to walls. There's another problem though- at least in the USA, you are only allowed to transmit on 5GHz at a fraction of the maximum power allowed on 2.4GHz, so really 5GHz is hit with kind of a double-whammy of suck. Note that there are a few 5GHz channels that are allowed to be transmitted at a higher power than the rest, but that doesn't mean that 5GHz device manufacturers actually do that- it only means they can. With that in mind, I can say that the DIR-825 has worse range in not only 5GHz but 2.4GHz as well than the dual-band Linksys WRT610 (which surprises me because of the Linksys's funky design), and also worse than any of the 2.4GHz-only routers we had before that.
- Is on its way to losing WiFi Alliance compliance. There's a WFA-certified logo on the box of the DIR-825, but if you've been following wireless forums you will learn that D-Link has been experimenting with removing 802.11b support from their routers, including the DIR-825, in their downloadable firmware updates. Now, I personally stopped using 11.b years ago, and you can get better 2.4GHz performance by going G-only, but WFA logo compliance REQUIRES that you support 802.11b. D-Link has not explained why they're trying to do this, but I suspect that their hardware has either become overloaded or their code so messy that they can't adequately support new requirements without dropping 802.11b support- and that should scare you.
After a full MONTH of trying to get the DIR-825 to work properly, I realized it wasn't me, and it wasn't my setup- it was just that this router sucks worse than any other router I've ever used. I promise you there's not a single setting I didn't investigate or tinker with in my quest to get reliable WiFi, but honestly, even if there were some magic combination of router settings that would make things work, the thing should have been configured to work properly out of the box. I don't have any crazy setup, just a bunch of computers, and a few game consoles and TiVos that are normally quiet.
I purchased the Linksys WRT610N Simultaneous Dual-N Band Wireless Router and am MUCH happier now. I don't believe I had to configure any special settings except for the port-forwarding stuff for BitTorrent. I have Vonage connected behind the router again, and VOIP works perfectly. Our connection strength is better on all computers in the home than with the DIR-825, and the only random disconnects we get are on 5GHZ, though they are much more infrequent than with the DIR-825. Save yourself a month of headaches and get something, anything, other than the DIR-825.
P.S. About 802.11n - Note that 5GHz support is an optional feature of 802.11n at this time, so when looking for APs or network cards, understand that not all of them support 5GHz (in fact, most don't). Allways look for "dual-band" or "5GHz" when shopping for 802.11n stuff so you have the most flexibility in your home setup.
|
|
|
87 of 104 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
5 Stars for Performance, October 25, 2008
Setting up this router is basically a breeze. The first thing you do is drop in the included CD and it walks you through each step. It's a hand holder. Step 1 remove the sticker covering the ports on the back, and then unplug this wire, and plug it in here etc. Each step of the instructions has individual screens for each of these baby steps; read one tiny step, click next, read the next etc. By the time you are done you are easily connected to the internet and the router wireless is working fine.
Now that I have said that, I also have to add that I spent 2 days working with this router due to a couple of setup anomalies, ones that are unusual due to my networks configuration. You know when someone reads you a riddle, or gives you a mechanical puzzle and you spend hours on it, and finally they tell you, or you figure out the answer, and you say, "Oh, I knew that" or "Oh that's easy". You get the idea. Hopefully these tips may help someone save a lot of time.
Dilemma 1: I run a server environment on my home network; Windows Server 03 R2 Standard with an active domain. When I installed the router I got instant internet access, but was no longer able to access the controller file server. On other machines in the network I was able to access the server files but not on the machine I put the CD in to install the router. Then I realized that DLink uses a different default IP address than the one that Linksys uses. The DLink default is 192.168.0.1 and the Linksys uses 192.168.1.1. Even though the TCP/IP properties were set to the server settings, I was still unable to access the server files. So I decided rather than reset all of the machines, including the server to the default IP of the DLink router, I changed the router IP address instead. This presented another challenge; in the router configuration, I changed the IP over to the Linksys default of 192.168.1.1, but in the next configuration box, when I set the range to 192.168.1.100 thru 192.168.1.199, it gave me an error message when I tried to save my settings. Finally after working on this for so long, I saw the instructions in the routers manual. Re-setting the IP address of the router was standard fare, so I figured, let me just try that alone. So I did, and I saved the settings. Then I rebooted the router, and noticed the IP range was automatically reset for me. Wah lah, the router still worked, and I had access through the new address to the router, and my server network was back up again.
Looking back on this it all seems like, "Of course". The beginning of my journey was confusing because I have been setting up Linksys routers, wireless and hard wired for quite some time, without any of these problems, but more importantly, I set up the Netgear wireless router which shares the same default IP address as the DLink and never had to do any of this as well. So something in the DLink automated setup changes something that prohibits me from accessing the server files which is neutralized when you re-set the routers IP address back to one that is compatible with your server's, or any devices using a fixed IP address. Anyone who wants to chime in using the comments section is welcome. Share with me, share with others, your thoughts on the subject.
Dilemma #2: Setting up the wireless devices, an individual laptop to connect to the router is relatively easy if you are adding an adapter such as the D-Link DWA-160 Xtreme N Duo Dual band Draft 802.11n USB Adapter I am highly reccomending it at this point after an A-B comparison with the Netgear Adapter using it with this DLink system. I was getting drop outs with the Netgear, and not such problem with the DLink. At first I didn't like the D-Link because I was getting a poor signal only 6 feet away, but from the other side of the room it is very good. So I figure the sender and receiver parked right next to 2 cordless phone sets was the problem. It is easy to install. They provide a disk with built in installation and an instruction manual. By the way I found that setting up that adapter the manual method went without a hitch. The auto-connect button did work for me with the Dlink adapter.
The dilemma is not in using the DLink N adapter, but in setting up a laptop using the built in wireless function in Windows XP. The strength of the signal in another room, through walls was excellent but getting it to validate, by entering a security key was another challenge.
The answer was finally found, and it seems easy in retrospect, because I realized that the older laptop had a built in adapter that did not support the newer WPA encryption, it only supported WEP. WPA2 is the advanced security encryption that is incorporated in this latest release router, and I do not want to downgrade the encryption scheme so that the one laptop can connect; buy an N adapter instead, and enjoy the benefit of the wireless N, as well as more advanced security. WEP is based on the MAC address of the device, which is information that is easily obtainable by a hack.
Some additional comments: I was confused over the issue of the 5GHz signal and the 2.4 as to which was stronger, a confusion that arose from my delight in the improved performance I received when I got my 5.8GHz cordless phone, as compared to the 900MGHz. Although there may be a slight distance advantage with the 5, the real benefit was derived from the improved lack of interference in the 5GHz range. It was delightful being able to talk, while near a working microwave.
I noticed in the DLink manager application, they give you with the router, you are able to activate individually, the 2.4 and the 5. I was getting 100% signal strength out of the 2.4, and only 97% out of the 5. Then I realized the real signal strength advantage was in the N, whether you were using 2.4 or 5. So as DLink puts it, "Use the 2.4 for your data needs, and the 5 for streaming HD and video". By the way do not park your receiver right alongside a 5.8GHz phone or it will strongly affect the strength of your signal.
Overall the big advantages of this DLink Extreme Wireless N router are twofold: one because it is the new wireless N with multiple times the signal strength power and multiple times the distance, and two because it has "Gigabit" hard wired connections as well. The speed of a gigabit connection is 1 Gig (1000) instead of 100 Mbps, which for internal network traffic is a big advantage. I back up machines across the network all of the time. For internet purposes it doesn't matter because the limit of the internet speed at only 1.5 Mbps DSL or whatever, is nothing next to even the old G standard wireles at 54.
If you have one of the old original wireless routers by Linksys for example it is time for an upgrade. The improved signal strength and security is worth it. I have to share a funny story with you. A woman had the older style wireless router inviting the whole world to share her connection, on a tech call it was discovered why she couldn't get an internet connection; it was because there were 4 neighbors already patched into her router. Since there were only 4 ports which were already used up, there wasn't any space for her to log in as number 5. Now that's funny.
I know of those who install wireless adapters in their desktops, or use the one built into their laptops, and simply choose which wireless connection they want to tap into, click on it, and they are on the web. One person has 12 different connections to choose from in one apartment building. With the old routers anyone can access it. Plus if you do not change the default user name and password, as many don't, others have instant access to your whole system/network. This DLink and others use the more advanced technique of requiring a security key be inserted into the device trying to gain access in order to get in. (Plus be sure to change the user name and password as well) They can see the network signal; they just are not given an open door to use it.
One final note is that WPA is not absolutely hack proof, but do you have something that an advanced level top tier hack wants to access? If you do, go strictly hard wired and incorporate the rest of the protections available. If you have really sensitive files here is an answer. Get McAfee Anti-Theft 2009 1-User it places an encrypted password protected vault in your computer. Of course once you open the vault to use it, you may want to lock down your firewall to make sure someone else isn't sharing it with you.
Some quick performance comparisons: This DLink XTreme is also outperforming the DLink DIR628 in upload speeds. I got 690Kbps out of this DLink Extreme in upload, and consistently only got 314 out of the D-Link DIR-628 RangeBooster N Dual Band Router with 4-Port 10/100 Switch 2 Antennas and Dual Band Draft 802.11n. In regards to download speeds, I got around 1500 on download out of both units.
The 3rd comparison is the Netgear RangeMax WNDR3300 Dual Band Wireless-N Router which was faster than the DLink 628 on the upload speed by 15% but nowhere near this DLink Extreme N which was 209% faster; in actual numbers. DLink Extreme N upload speed is 655 and the DLink DIR model number 628 only achieved 314. (Measured using Verizon Online Speed test using a 1.5 DSL connection.) The download speed of all three were comparable, or within a 3% margin, meaning roughly 1450 to 1500. The upload speed of this DLink 825 Xtreme far and away out performed the others by a margin of 2 to 1. Sending your...
Read more ›
|
|
|
Most Recent Customer Reviews
|
Saving...
