D-Link DIR-655 Extreme-N Gigabit Wireless Router
by D-Link Systems, Inc.
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Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of D-Link DIR-655 Extreme-N Gigabit Wireless Router
Customer Review: Feature rich router
Summary: 5 Stars
First of all, there are a lot of reviews listing features, so I'm not going to list them all. It has a lot of nice features, more than most need, but as needs change its nice to have.
One suggestion for anyone, visit the manufactruers site, for this or any router. I did so and read the manual fisrt, it gives more inforamtion than any review or online sale page. This way you know exactly what features you will get (or not) and what will be required in setup before you buy. Also dlink has a nice forum, I checked that out to to be sure this thing was not a dud with lots of failures reported.
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Review for Hardware version A4 - Purchase August 22 2009
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I replaced a previous dlink model WBR-2310 that after two years of perfect operation began to lock up totally. I choose the same model but the second one had poor connectivity, even on wired. My computers keep saying the cable was unplugged and then re-connected. That second one also dropped wireless and reported one of my connections at half-duplex on the same cable that worked fine for over two years. So I decided it was time to upgrade to something newer. At the time I bought the first router I only had wireless-G and 100Mbps computers. Since then I've gotten newer items. My computers and my PS3's all now have gigabit. I also have a netbook with wireless-N and a LD blu-ray player with wireless-N. I choose this model because it could replace not only my old router but also a gigibit switch all in one box. Without changing any settings in my computers, and even switching back to the cable the other router did not like, everything is running smoothly again thru this router. Setup was a breeze taking less than an hour to go thru and set everything from scratch. I used the same IPs and wireless names I had assigned in my other router, and once put in all my items are back online smoothly.
Setup was much easier. One nice thing over the 2310 is that when entering DHCP reservations, you don't need to reboot, waiting 25 seconds, each time. There is a reboot later option, so you can enter all the reservations more quickly and then do one reboot after the last one, that saved me 13 minutes of waiting. The display is nice, as it sorts the connected computers by ip. It does not however sort the reservations listing, they remain in the order entered. It would be nice if they were sorted by name or ip making it easier to review what has been enetered, but that is only a small drawback. I enter them once and rarley go back to look at them. But when performing cleaup to get rid of old devices it would help if they were easier to find.
A bonus was the guest wireless zone. This is like having two wireless routers in one. I was able to set this up, still secure, so I can all guests access. It is isolated from my connection so the guests can't get into my computers. Very nice feature. The only drawback is you can't have the guest zone have hidden ssid and if you use mac filtering, you need to turn if off or put in the mac id when you have guests. I set this up so my house-mate can have internet access and don't have to worry about him having access to my sensative data.
It has good wireless range. I have it set to medium power and get 65MBps connection inside the house, when I go out on the front porch about 35 feet away, and thru one wall and one set of windows, I still get 56-65MBps and very good signal, 4 out of 5 bars still with the router on medium power. If I walk another 30-40 feet away the signal drops and the speed dropped to only 23Mbps, but I don't plan on using my netbook sitting almost in the road. I image it would be great if I had it on full power. My house-mate was able to connect at 65Mbps, where he preiviously was at 11Mpbs on another wireless system. He should now have coverage in his room, which is directly below mine, where before he mostly got no coverage there and had to come upstairs to the dining room to get coverage, on good days. I stream a lot of netflix either to my blu-ray or netbook and the qaulity has been great since the upgrade. I suppose the three antennas help with this, especially since they recommend you put them at different angles, not all three lined up the same way.
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I Got even better performance by selection a set channel, instead of autoscan, and setting the channel width from 20 to 'auto 20/40'. My netbook connection speed increased from 65MBps to 135MBps.
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I don't know what happens when you mix wireless-G and wireless-N, so far i've got 3 wireless-N devices hooked to it, but I do have some other wireless-G items I use occasionally.
There is a usb port which can be used for a shared printer or to use for a usb thumb bdrive to restore settings. Read the manual for that. Nice feature but I recently bought a wireless printer. I guess usb would be faster hookup but then the printer has to be near the router. I'm waiting for the ink supply to run out of my older printer, which since I don't print much is taking longer than expected then I think I'll switch to the wireless printer. But that port can also replace a wireless print server box I had gotten. So this is really 4 devices (wireless router,guest router,gigabit switch,print server) in one box with one power supply. It also supports 'green' where it uses lower power with shorter cables to computers and shuts off unused ports. You can even schedule times to turn the wireless network off, like when you are normally asleep or during work day hours to save power.
Someone mentioned the router overheating, no problem here. Even after streaming for hours. Although I have mine in a very well ventilated spot. I took the stand, flipped it upside down and it fits on the top edge of my lcd monitor, then the router sits on the actual bottom of the stand. There is not a lot of heat from the lcd and this allows good air flow thru the bottom of the router where the vent is near the front and out the top. I had my other router there over two years without problem. Plus it keep the lights within good viewing range and the hole thing out of the way. I used the stands from the old routers to hold other small items up there, like a portable slimline dvd and a usb hub.
I do agree the blue lights are too bright, even in the daytime. I have other blue light items so the blue color is not a problem, but these seems so bright, you can hardly make out the shape they are illuminating. A trick to reduce glow is tape a piece of white papar cut to size over them, it cuts the brightness down but you can still see if they are on thru the paper.
Overall I'm very pleased with this model. Most of the defaults had this working out of the box with little effort or time, it was only the customizing that took a little time, but was very easy.
Customer Review: Repeatedly rebooting by itself, klutzy interface, miserable install process for SecureSpot users
Summary: 1 Stars
When I upgraded the firmware on this router (from v1.21 to 1.32NA) did I create a bug-riddled, unusable device? Or are my problems really just a hardware manufacturing problem?
I'm a SecureSpot user, but my DLink DSD-150 -- the little SecureSpot box that filters websites for the entire network -- broke. Rather than replacing my failed DSD-150 with another, I bought this DIR-655 because it has built-in SecureSpot. That it's an N-network is just an extra nice feature, but I won't need it yet.
The installation was very frustrating. Keep in mind, this is only the second router I've ever installed -- I don't do this for a living. So when I'm greeted with an instruction poster that says, "IMPORTANT: For the wizard to work, the computer must be connected to the Internet and be online. If you have disconnected any hardware please re-connect your computer back to the modem and make sure you are online" -- I'm immediately confused. You mean, I'm supposed to plug-in my old router firstly, pop the install CD in, maybe download a firmware update or something? The instructions should more plainly explain if the old router needs to be in place before you begin the new router install or not, or whether you should plug-in your new router (and remove the bit about your computer needing to be connected to the Internet). Maybe what D-Link meant is perfectly intuitive to you; it wasn't to me. (Turns out, I just needed to plug-in the new router -- which, of course, couldn't be connected to my Internet-connected computer, as I was just now installing the new router!).
Once I got past that, I was frustrated with doing some initial configuration just enough to connect to the Internet, download a firmware update file, flash the router, then start all over from scratch again. I *hate* when brand-new devices come with outdated firmware!
The user interface is ugly and very unintuitive. Do you know where you'd look if you have a choice between "Tools" and "Advanced" tabs? If you spend a lot of time -- a LOT of time -- you'll figure it out, I'm sure. But how many people want to spend time learning the management tool for their router? The interface has lots of wasted space (a 1" banner at the top of the browser window that just says "D-Link", and when you scroll down on the page, the tabbed headings disappear because the interface doesn't use panes. The way you plug-in port forwarding settings has to be one of the ugliest implementations ever -- how can you make something so easy so ugly and hard-to-read?
As a SecureSpot user, you would think that you could just assign this new router to your SecureSpot account. You can't. Stupidly, every SecureSpot device (the DSD-150 or a router) is associated with one-and-only-one SecureSpot account. Upgrade your hardware, and you have to create a new account all over again. Is that STUPID or what??? And then, you have to uninstall the thin client from every PC you've got, only to reinstall it again using the new account you've created.
Perhaps the worst part now for me is that this stupid router is rebooting itself periodically. Why? I have no idea. So now I've got to do web searches to figure out why, because heaven help me if I have to spend hours on the phone with a D-Link tech who will ask that I tear into my network. (I might add that my old router, the steller Microsoft MN-700, *never* rebooted itself like this D-Link is currently doing).
Because of the confusing, ridiculously long installation process (especially for SecureSpot users) and because of the unwanted, unexpected rebooting that this router is doing, I think this device gets a well-deserved one-star review.
---- September 20, 2009 UPDATE
I called D-Link just to see if their support could help me. After asking me the same questions two and three times (which model of router? which version of the firmware is installed?) the technician concluded this is a bad router, and suggested returning/exchanging it. Amazon's customer service is EXCELLENT, so I'm getting a replacement router delivered early this week. (Why didn't I just return it? I'm just curious to know whether the problem is really a one-off, hardware manufacturing problem, or something else).
DO NOT UPGRADE THE FIRMWARE!!! I think I may have caused my problems by upgrading to the latest version of the firmware, which is v1.32NA. If you go to D-Link's forum for the DIR-655, you'll see a LOT of very angry D-Link customers who upgraded their flash to the latest version, only to have irresolvable problems afterwards. The upgrade to v1.32NA cannot be downgraded, which is why people are so hopping mad.
The shipped version of the DIR-655 I received had the A4 hardware version and v1.21 of the firmware. There are *two* flavors of the v1.21 firmware, one that has SecureSpot, and one that doesn't (stupid!!). I'm hoping the version that comes out-of-box has SecureSpot already installed. Although not perfect, it seems a lot people have had satisfactory service with the v1.21 firmware. So if you get this router, don't upgrade the firmware!! Let D-Link come out with a rock-solid version that won't cause you trouble.
Once I get the replacement router and install it, I'll see how it goes, and post back here.
SEPTEMBER 22, 2009 UPDATE
Replacement DIR-655 arrived today. It has v1.21 of the firmware, but there are 2 versions of v1.21 (which, I know, doesn't make sense), and the out-of-box version is the firmware WITHOUT SecureSpot. So, you have to upgrade the firmware to the v1.21 WITH SecureSpot -- an added inconvenience and just another chance for something to go wrong.
SEPTEMBER 24, 2009 UPDATE
Same problem, even with the replacement. The router just reboots itself, and tonight, after 17 hours of uptime, it began fitfully rebooting over and over in rapid succession. Who needs to deal with that junk? This replacement gets returned to Amazon. I've reinstalled my old Microsoft MN-700 g-network router. Sheesh!
Customer Review: Great product at a great value if it fills your needs
Summary: 4 Stars
In shopping for a new wireless router, I tried to make sure to only get the product that gave me what I needed/wanted most at the best price and the rest was bonus. I always read a lot of reviews from many sites before buying something, and being an IT professional, it was easier for me to weed out the bad reviews for products, and at the end, I was left with the choice of the Dlink DIR 655 or Netgear 3500. I like everything I am hearing about the new Netgear 3700, but with the price tag, the delayed order status, and the unproven dual-band technology that gets a lot of bad reviews in other products, I had to stick with only what I needed: Wireless N and gigabit speed.
What i was looking for and what I got from this:
SPEED: Of course N technology does not improve internet speeds over G, but the WISH and QoS of the DIR 655 does allow traffic optimization. The newer dual band routers claim that separating 2.4Ghz/5Ghz bands makes things even faster, but my experience with them and the reviews has shown poor performance, a high drop rate, and poor range, which brings up an important point. To get the most speed benefit out of running an N router, it should be in "N only" mode, which means that all of your wireless clients have to be N compatible. If you run a mixed network of b/g/n and you will most likely get mixed performance results, maybe even the same/worse performance as you would get with a G router and have some range issues also. Going strictly N optimizes the performance and keeps your b/g neighbors from interfering also. The DIR 655 under these conditions delivers consistently 210-270 Mbps for me(using USB Dlink DWA-140 usb adabper) on a computer over 35 ft from the router. Along with the Gigabit wired ports and the optimization features, this product gets an A+ for speed.
DURABILITY: Still in my first week of ownership, but most of the reviews seem to fair well for this product. Among several consistent reviews, I stayed away from the Linksys/Cisco line of products because of heat complaints and associated breakdowns. I did not see any heat complaints for this product in the reviews, but it was in the back of my mind as they are using higher performance components in routers these days. To this point, there are no heat issues, and runs about the same temp as my Netgear 624 router. A+ so far.
RANGE: Probably MY only real gripe on this product, but none of the N products I have seen live up to the range hype or even the same range as the long tested G products out there, and this product is no different. In mixed mode, I compared the DIR 655 to my Netgear 624 on 4 different wireless adaptors (Belkin usb, Dlink DW-140, Netgear 311, and a built-in adaptor for HP notebook) and the Netgear network always has the highest signal, regardless of where placed in the house and regardless of OS (32 and 64 XP, 32 and 64 Vista, and 64 Windows 7). Even in N only mode, I don't get much improvement. I had hoped for better, but got what I already knew about wireless N. The point here if anyone is reading is that if you don't need N speed, go with a less expensive G router for range. The range is still decent enough with no drops, so I give it a B.
SETUP: Hard one for me to guage because I don't have a simple network and I have more IT experience than most people and shouldn't have any trouble, but... My network has the 2 wireless routers connected to another wired VPN/firewall device that makes my setup a little different than for most folks. Using an XP 64 system, for some reason I attempted to go through the setup wizard included on the software CD 3 times with some failures regarding that the router's username/password had to be reset to factory defaults, which I reset twice only to get the same message. Once again, my network is a little complicated, and I believe that my VPN/firewall device was doing the talking here. So I canned the software wizard and did it the way I should have started and finished setup in less than 10 minutes. The push/connect feature is useful in setting up clients for those who don't use a passphrase. In browsing around the wide array of features/options on the router, I could easily have seen myself playing around and testing various configurations for another hour or so to set up things I don't necessarily need. I could see how some of these settings could be entrancing for some people, but I did take a few moments to browse the help links on one of the setup screens and it was a lot better than Netgear and Linksys products. I give it a B
RELIABILITY: I have not had any reboots or drops to this point in time. I think the product has been out long enough that the firmware is updated enough, and since it works with no issue, I don't plan to go out and seek updates unless I need them for something. I give it an A+
EXTRA FEATURES: I haven't dove into these too much as of yet, but the Guest VLAN is a cool feature for those who need it, as are the WISH, QoS, and other features for optimizing traffic. This should especially appeal to gamers, streaming media, VOIP users, although some better products (more expensive) may be a better choice for gamers and VOIP users. One feature that may be cool for some that I may not use is the Sharepoint USB connection. I have a NAS device and a network printer, so it is of little use for me, but in reading the reviews, the Dlink is the only product that supports USB printers also (unlike Cisco/Netgear equivalents). At this routers price, A+.
To conclude, I am happy, and at less than $100, this was a good choice. For my purposes, the Netgear 3500 and 3700 may have offered a little more range, but the 3700 is untested, hard to get, and far more expensive, and the 3500 had some less consistent reviews than the DIR 655. Since the range is good enough to cover all corners of my house with no drops and >200Mbps speed, the only thing I can get from greater range is some uninvited neighbors and interference.
Customer Review: Product actually works well but support is beyond horrible.
Summary: 3 Stars
I purchased this product to replace another dlink router simply because of the faster "N" wifi speed. Upon installing it didn't detect my Verizon FiOS internet connection. I know Verizon uses DHCP so the connection should be detected by the router as soon as you plug it in, so after I verified there was nothing wrong that I did, I called dlink support. After several hours of very annoying questions that were designed for someone with no technical experience, they finally told me the router had a problem and asked me to reflash the firmware (basically means to reinstall it's operating system). I did as they said and still had the same problem, so they told me to replace the router. Amazon was happy to send me a replacement and even shipped it the fastest way possible, but the new one had the same problem.
I then did a google search for "Dlink dir 655 Verizon FiOS" and got thousands of hits. The first one I opened had the same problem and the simple solution as follows...
Reinstall old router and click "release DHCP", the install new router.
It was that simple and it worked!!!
Basically, in case you don't understand this it means that Verizon detected my old router and would only allow connections to it (probably to stop someone from stealing my internet), so by releasing the settings, it allowed my new router to accept the connection.
The point is that dlink SHOULD have fixed this within the first 30 seconds of support, and I logged over 3hours of phone time on Christmas day and the following day and ultimately told me to replace the router.
So now I have a working router, but more problems. I used the same settings as my old router had, same WEP encryption settings, IP addresses and all the other custom settings and all my computers had internet. Among these were 3 laptops. Two of them had 802.11g wireless adapters and one had 802.11n wireless (faster), but all three were connected with the router at "g" speeds, NOT the "n" speed which was the whole reason for buying the router.
The first support person I called told me that I had a single band router and it wasn't capable of making "n" connections. I argued that the product specs claim that it does and I was very angry to do all this to only be told their "n" router can't do "n" connections. I ended up quoting from their own web page, then was put on hold and disconnected.
The following day their support was unavailable due to techincal problems, but I finally got a support person the following day who also did a lot of testing and finally referred me to senior level support where they told me I had to change my band settings from 20ghz to auto20/40ghz and it would fix the problem, but it did not.
The call time between support and holding was over 2 hours that day.
I finally went back to google and found that the wireless 802.11n standard didn't support WEP encryption, so as soon as I changed the encryption from WEP to WPA the "n" laptop connected at "n" speed.
Ironically, I had planned on upgrading my encryption to WPA anyway, but it's "usually" not wise to make more then one change at a time. I wanted to get one thing working before changing the second. Thats usually very good advice, but not in this case. However for dlink support AND senior level support to have missed this is unforgivable.
In my opinion the product wasn't bad at all, but I've never seen support this bad and I've been building computers since about 1990.
So, at this point I'm not even sure if I'm going to keep this unit because every morning when I wake up the wifi is offline and not transmitting and I have to unplug/replug the router to get it working. I don't know if any of the issues I reported already are related to that problem or not, so I'm going to give it a few more days before I decide.
I rarely take the time to report things here, but I felt for all the time they wasted of mine and the total inability to diagnose extremely simple problems warranted spending even more time to warn fellow users about the kind of support to expect if you buy this product.
Also, on an unrelated dlink issue I purchased two dlink Wifi "n" cards for my other laptops here at amazon. They arrived brand new in their boxes and when I was on hold for support, I looked them up on the dlink website to read about them, only to find they were discontinued on september 2009 and NO LONGER ON SALE in the USA.
Well wtf did I just buy them if they aren't on sale? I asked if they would replace them with models that are supported and they refused. How a company is allowed to suddenly cancel the warranty of a product without giving a buyer any way of telling by looking at the product should be illegal. There is no expiration date on the product, so this makes me believe dlink does business on the ancient principle of Caveat emptor (let the buyer beware).
For those interested, the cards I mention are dlink DWA-642
http://www.dlink.com/products/?pid=DWA-642
I also asked the support person for some information as to why they were discontinued. I did get a good price on them so I just wanted to know if there was some kind of defect that they weren't able to fix with a firmware upgrade and the only answer I got was the support person reading the text from the website... "This product has been discontinued and is no longer supported by D-Link tech support."
So that means they won't even tell me if they work or not. As I'm writing this I'm pondering if I want to try one of them or just ship them back to amazon.
So, all things considered it's not a bad router, but I'd have to advise you to avoid anything sold by dlink. For all I know this will suddenly be discontinued and not supported without warning.
Customer Review: For the price, excellent buy
Summary: 4 Stars
On seeing that this product has been reduced in price, I figured I would post a review to help others looking for a new router.
I have had this now for over a year (Hardware A4 version, 1.21NA firmware) and with some small caveats, am very happy I bought it. No router is perfect, and this one is flawed in some respects, but at less than $70, it's a steal.
First the good. At my firmware level, I have had absolutely no issues with performance or reliability. Many router owners have to live with the occasional need for a hard reboot, but this one keeps on going. Reboots are required for many of the Advanced routing feature settings to be edited, but once you are set up, you stay up.
Initial set up was relatively straightforward even though I did not use the included setup disk. There are wizards in the web interface for both wired and wireless setup. I had a few attempts because I was using some bad DNS addresses at first, but this was user error. I used advanced DNS eventually which works well. Some users have reported issues with this with some 1.3xNA firmwares, but it works fine for me on 1.21NA and is easily disabled if you need to.
Wired performance is good with my setup. I have a Windows 7 desktop (and was using Windows XP before my upgrade with this also), a Mac OS X 10.5 MacBook Pro with a Windows Vista VM on it (I often use this on wireless also). I have a VOIP telephone using a LinkSys adapter and a PS3 console. All run with no issues. Connecting wirelessly, I have a Windows Vista Dell laptop, running on the extremely useful guest access feature. This allows you to give a different account which can have limited access (i.e. no LAN access) or a different security type if needed. Very useful for visitors.
Wireless range is great, and even wireless G gives good speeds. I have tested with wireless N and can connect at 150 MB/s. It is due to the limitation of the AirPort card of my MacBook Pro that I can't connect at the full 300 MB/s that wireless N supports, so I can't comment on this side of the router's performance. What I can say is that the N range I have is good and that others on the D-Link forums seem happy with this aspect of the router.
The web UI is good and well organized. The feature set is quite extensive for the price. You have virtual routing, which allows you to route an incoming port to one of your attached devices for a particular service. One example might be to route port 22 to port 22 on your desktop PC and allow ftp to run on that box. Used with dynamic DNS (which allows you to use a free service that constantly 'maps' your router's dynamic external address assigned by your ISP to a web URL of your choosing) you can set up an ftp web site for yourself, available anywhere on the internet at (for example) [...]. Not bad for $65.
I also use this to stream HD content from my desktop to my PS3. I now use wired and can stream 1080p content without a hiccup, but with wireless G, I was able to do 720p well. The use of gigabit LAN ports helps here I think, and this is another feature you won't find on similarly priced routers widely. Gigabit is only useful for devices requiring extra bandwidth, but it certainly helps with media streaming and file shares for example.
Finally, the automated QOS (Quality of Service) is just the best I have seen. I use lots of bandwidth-hog applications, and no matter how heavy the traffic, I can still browse the web or make a VOIP phone call comfortably. And this is with default settings. I could add rules for certain devices, but I have not yet had the need to.
There are one or two caveats. Those looking to this as a cheap NAS (Network Attached Storage) or print server solution will be disappointed to learn that this is only designed to give NAS/printer access to one user on the LAN at a time, and each user has to load a software client to use the device at all. Also, this feature is reported to have problems at the firmware level I run. I simply do not use it. I am not tempted to run higher levels of the firmware after reading instability reports on 1.3xNA firmware. Common complaints are having to reboot the router daily/weekly/monthly. Using 1.21NA, I only reboot when I change a setting or my internet goes down.
Please note that this is not a dual band router. It works on the 2.4Ghz bandwidth only. Dual band routers can assign wireless traffic to either band, making your total throughput better. I have no 'real world' experience of this, but do not use wireless that heavily, so it doesn't overly concern me. If you have lots of devices using 2.4 Ghz (wireless phones/mice/keyboards, bluetooth etc.) this may be a feature you would benefit from.
For anyone out there looking for a 'best bang for the buck' router, I would recommend this one. However, I would advise caution with firmware updates. If you want stability guaranteed, remain with 1.21NA and join the forum to keep an eye on the stability of the latest build. Note that once you update to 1.3xNA, any downgrade to 1.2x or lower is unsupported (though it is possible). Only do this to use the USB port or other advanced features designed to work better on those firmwares.
It seems that 1.34NA is performing well, so it may well be worth testing out if your device comes installed with 1.3xNA firmware already. If you need to upgrade, read the upgrade instructions thoroughly, backup your configuration (via the web GUI), reset the router to default settings, perform the upgrade then restore your configuration from the backup. This has been seen time and time again to avoid upgrade issues. In many cases, I recommend screen-capping your settings and changing them manually after the upgrade.
Hope my review helps you make your decision.