Do D-Link routers suck?

[Pliablemoose]

I just installed a WRT54GS, replaced a WRT54G (long story), but the reason I went with Linksys is that I owned a Belkin for several years before the Linksys, resetting the Belkin was a near daily routine, before I upgraded, I paid close attention to the reviews and Linksys has the best rep, especially if you want to hack your router.

My Linksys routers have been bulletproof, only problem I've ever had is when the cat lays on the antennas & changes their orientation

There's a big thread in Hot Deals about hacking Linksys routers, and the current best deal is ~$49 after 3 $10 mail in rebates from Best Buy.

 

[StinkyPinky]

I used to work for a PC store that sold only D-Link routers. They are terrible things and I strongly suspect that a turd with an ethernet port in it could rout packets better.

They never work like they should.

 

[NightCrawler]

My D-link has worked great for 3 years.

 

[cruzer]

You can add me to the list of D-Link wireless G owners that can't get it to work stably in secured mode. I leave it unsecured(meaning unencrypted) but I can still use MAC filtering, hope no one in the building can crack that. Also I had to use third party drivers(ASUS) for the PCI card to play nice with SP2.

 

[murphy55d]

I have a DLink 704P wired router and it works just fine.

 

[Kelemvor]

LinkSys compared to DLink is like comparing a Lexus to a Kia.

 

[CptObvious]

I've had a D-Link wired router (DI-604), a Linksys wireless B and a Netgear wireless B router. The D-Link worked OK except it was a pain to set up with another router for a LAN.

The Linksys had better signal strength than the Netgear I have now (2 antennae vs. 1?) but had quirky setup. For example you had to use a CD to install the router every time you reset it and the MAC filtering page was counter-intuitive. They might have fixed this but the Netgear interface is a lot easier. I also got the Netgear for $18 AR which was a plus

 

[Superwormy]

I had a D-Link wireless G router for 2 weeks then FLOP, wireless signal completely died.

Web admin interface SUCKS.


And my new Linksys 54G has a signal about twice as strong.

 

[Kev]

D-Link is absolute garbage. Avoid at all costs

 

[Amused]

My D-Link a/b/g wireless router, gigabit switch and gigabit NICs have all been flawless.

 

[ArmchairAthlete]

Had a D-link wireless router die on me.

 

[nakedfrog]

Originally posted by: Nik
YES. D-Link is the ghetto hooptie of computer hardware.

LOL
For some reason I get the mental image of a router that's got tacky carpeting stuck on top, badly done pinstripes down the sides, and the antenna being held on with duct tape

 

[FrustratedUser]

My D-Link works fine.
I was bitching about bad connection to one of my wireless rigs but some investigation (thread in Networking) cleared the D-Link from my suspicions. It turned out that incoming traffic to that machine was slow, everything else was fine. Still haven't figured out why. That rig is now dead after a OS reinstall fubared.

 

[MaxDSP]

Originally posted by: Amol
i bought an extreme G dlink router off of newegg last week . . .

it worked for a while and then . . . POOF . . . wired connections stopped working . . .

im in the process of RMAing it . . .

:Q...you wouldnt be talking about the DI-624+ would ya? I have the same 802.11g xTreme G router and after a couple of months, the wired connections kept dropping, but the wireless kept working flawlessly. On the other hand, my DI-604 has been working steadily for the past couple of years, and the couple of problems I have had with it were easily solved, either through firmware or something. In my experience with Dlink support, they were really prompt and useful; they sent me an email reply to a problem within 20 minutes that fixed my issue. Granted, all it really was was instructions to upgrade the firmware, but it still solved my problem regardless.

However, in the future, I think I'll go with Linksys

 

[FrustratedUser]

Originally posted by: Xionide
working with a dlink this weekend. The thing didnt work at all. Completely useless garbage. Hope my netgear router comes soon.

Did you have problems sharing a cable connection?
It took me 2 days tro figure out my problem. The WAN setting was 100Mbit, didn't work with the cable modem. After I changed to 10Mbit it worked just fine.

 

[Ynog]

Guess I'm having luck with my D-Link stuff.

I have Extreme G router, PCI card, PCfor the Extreme G, a PCMCIA card and I connect through the wired port.
I have had ZERO problems. The range is much better than the linksys router which kept droping my wireless clients.
The wired ports haven't had any issues. I guess I better knock on wood.

My only complains have been that their DYNDNS updater has not manual timeout. Meaning the only time it sents
something to dyndns is when your IP address changes. If it doesn't they won't update it, it would be nice if it had
a timeout to update your IP address so dyndns doesn't think your inactive and deactivate your account, if your IP
address hasn't changed in 25 days.

Besides that I haven't had any problems.

 

[Ausm]

Originally posted by: Zenmervolt
Dunno about their routers, but I've had no issues with my D-Link cable modem in the 6 months or so I've had it. As for routers, I'm very happy with my SMC 802.11g router. The SMC isn't the coolest looking thing in the world, but the singnal strength is great and it's been rock solid.

ZV

Right on! The SMC Barricade is butt ugly looking but VERY stable.

Ausm

 

[Phoenix86]

Linksys' firmware is also opensource...

 

[CVSiN]

Originally posted by: Amol
i bought an extreme G dlink router off of newegg last week . . .

it worked for a while and then . . . POOF . . . wired connections stopped working . . .

im in the process of RMAing it . . .

Same problem with the one I bought...
returned and bought a Linksys
way better router

 

[Thraxen]

Damn... I don't know WTF half you people are talking about. I've got a D-Link wireless router and it works flawlessly. I have my PC, XBox, and TiVo all connected to it. I like that fact that you can assign Static DHCP IPs to devices (based on the MAC address). Makes it easy to FTP to my XBox since it will always have the same IP. Not sure if the Linksys does that. My GF has the Linksys wireless G router and I didn't see that option anywhere when I was configuring the router, but I didn't really look long since she won't be doing any FTPs herself. Anyway, the configuration options seemed to be far better on the D-Link, but, yes, it does reset after making most changes.

Also, my GFs XBox is maybe 30 or 40 feet from the router and the connection sucks ass. I was attempting to FTP about 40 MB of files and it took me about 30 minutes to get them all over. The transfer would start off at around 800 KB/sec (which sucks to start with) then it would start tapering down until finally the transfer would stop and the connection would be lost. It's simply inexcusable that it took so long to get those files over. With my D-Link at home I was able to transfer several GBs wirelessly with no signal drops. Granted, mine is closer to my XBox than hers, but damn... 30 minutes for 40 MB? I've also got a good friend with a D-Link based wireless set-up and he can stream shows recorded on ReplayTV wireless across his network to his XBox which is about 30 feet from the router and through the same or more walls than at my GFs house. He can do that for hours with no signals drops.

 

[Qwest]

dlink router worked flawlessly....then started acting up like crazy: dropped connections, random restarts.

flashed it with some crazy firmware from taiwan....works like a champ now.

 

[loup garou]

Originally posted by: Thraxen
Damn... I don't know WTF half you people are talking about. I've got a D-Link wireless router and it works flawlessly. I have my PC, XBox, and TiVo all connected to it. I like that fact that you can assign Static DHCP IPs to devices (based on the MAC address). Makes it easy to FTP to my XBox since it will always have the same IP. Not sure if the Linksys does that. My GF has the Linksys wireless G router and I didn't see that option anywhere when I was configuring the router, but I didn't really look long since she won't be doing any FTPs herself. Anyway, the configuration options seemed to be far better on the D-Link, but, yes, it does reset after making most changes.

Also, my GFs XBox is maybe 30 or 40 feet from the router and the connection sucks ass. I was attempting to FTP about 40 MB of files and it took me about 30 minutes to get them all over. The transfer would start off at around 800 KB/sec (which sucks to start with) then it would start tapering down until finally the transfer would stop and the connection would be lost. It's simply inexcusable that it took so long to get those files over. With my D-Link at home I was able to transfer several GBs wirelessly with no signal drops. Granted, mine is closer to my XBox than hers, but damn... 30 minutes for 40 MB? I've also got a good friend with a D-Link based wireless set-up and he can stream shows recorded on ReplayTV wireless across his network to his XBox which is about 30 feet from the router and through the same or more walls than at my GFs house. He can do that for hours with no signals drops.

If your gf has a WRT54G or GS, dl the sveasoft alchemy firmware for it. Static DHCP is in there. Also, you can ratchet up the radio from the default 28mW to somewhere in the 50s to help with range issues.

Also, you will have more "configuration options" than you can shake a stick at, far more than your DLink.

 

[Thraxen]

If your gf has a WRT54G or GS, dl the sveasoft alchemy firmware for it. Static DHCP is in there. Also, you can ratchet up the radio from the default 28mW to somewhere in the 50s to help with range issues.

She has the WRT54G. I've considered trying that, but haven't gotten around to it yet. Didn't know you could up the radio signal. That would definitely be a big help. I was just surprised at how many people here seem to love the Linksys. When I was having trouble with the signal drops I did a quick search over at the XBox-Scene forums and found quite a few threads with people that have had signal drop issues with the Linksys. I was starting to think it was a bad purchase. Is there a specific version of the alchemy firmware I should look for?

 

[loup garou]

Originally posted by: Thraxen

If your gf has a WRT54G or GS, dl the sveasoft alchemy firmware for it. Static DHCP is in there. Also, you can ratchet up the radio from the default 28mW to somewhere in the 50s to help with range issues.

She has the WRT54G. I've considered trying that, but haven't gotten around to it yet. Didn't know you could up the radio signal. That would definitely be a big help. I was just surprised at how many people here seem to love the Linksys. When I was having trouble with the signal drops I did a quick search over at the XBox-Scene forums and found quite a few threads with people that have had signal drop issues with the Linksys. I was starting to think it was a bad purchase. Is there a specific version of the alchemy firmware I should look for?

Check out the big thread in Hot Deals (search for sveasoft), there's a ton of info in there, I'm not sure what the latest release is.

I wasn't a big fan of Linksys either until the release of this firmware. I still think Buffalo makes the best from the factory soho wireless equipment.

 

[ActuaryTm]

Originally posted by: Thraxen
When I was having trouble with the signal drops I did a quick search over at the XBox-Scene forums and found quite a few threads with people that have had signal drop issues with the Linksys.

Those could certainly be client-side device specific issues; especially considering the source (a console forum).