D-Link DIR-655 Extreme-N Gigabit Wireless Router
by D-Link Systems, Inc.
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List Price: Our Price: $73.99 You Save: $51.00 (41%) Availability: Usually ships in 2-3 business days Buy Used: from $45.00 (click here) Category: CE See more product details |
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Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of D-Link DIR-655 Extreme-N Gigabit Wireless Router
Customer Review: D-Link did it again! Perfect problem solver!
Summary: 5 Stars
It came time to upgrade my home network from 802.11g to 802.11n, and retire my DI-524 that served flawlessly 24/7 for 5+ years. I also retired my desktop PC since it became nothing more than a print server and music/picture storage with both my wife and I running laptops and the TV connected with a media center. However, we have a perfect Dell 1100 USB-only laser printer we use regularly. The idea of a having to get a print server to connect the Dell 1100 wasn't the way I wanted to go, and we'd really like to have some network-available storage. So, a router with an intelligent USB port appeared to be ideal. Having just rebuilt a home network for my best friend with a Netgear WNDR3700 (all that could be purchased off-the-shelf in San Rafael, California), I WAS Not impressed with the ReadyShare USB on it. In fact, there is still constant problem transferring large media files back and forth to the 1TB external USB drive, but the size of the network and need for dual-band in that household trumps the issue. I will say that Netgear does have a vey simple, intuitive setup screen for its router in comparison.
Moreover, I cannot express enough how pleased I am that I went with the much more cost-effective DIR-655! Setup is easy, though I understand first-timers may have difficulty but if you download and read (either from the D-Link website or off the installation CD) the full instructions you'll be fine! I have a brand new RevB DIR-655 that came with the latest 2.00NA firmware loaded. I had my 802.11g WPA-encrypted wireless network down and a new 802.11n WPA2-encrypted network up and connected to all wireless devices in less than 45 minutes. I then fired up Shareport expecting a bit of a struggle with the Dell 1100 print - nope, NO PROBLEM! For each laptop, I simply removed the old profile for the printer (was accessed via the former networked desktop), installed the latest Dell driver for the printer, loaded up the Shareport utility, and we were printing!
Feeling confident now, I pulled the two 3.5-inch 500GB EIDE slave drives out of the now-retired desktop, dropped them into a pair of external aluminum enclosures (cost me $21 total for the enclosures), and hung the Dell 1100 and 2 drives off a USB hub connected to the router. The Shareport utility found everything perfectly (wasn't sure with a hubbed connection), and now we have some monster media storage accessible through the network! Better yet, unlike my experience with the Netgear with external storage, I've been able to transfer ENTIRE FOLDERS of media files in the tens of GB size without failure! Now I see a RAID setup in my future... I also have the crazy notion to connect a USB card-reader to the hub to see if we can read our microSD, SD, and CF flash media over the network simplifying exchange across our wireless devices.
Customer Review: Secretariat at Belmont is the only thing Faster!!!
Summary: 5 Stars
We bought this router because it was time to upgrade to "N" from "G", and we recently bought a Vizio Blu-ray player that was lagging while streaming Netflix on the old Lynksys Wireless "G". I reasearched only a few internet reviews on this unit before purchasing it, mainly the one in PC magazine written in April 07 [...]
This unit was on sale at the local AFB AFEES store as it was being replaced with the new Wireless N+ 300 Dual Band router, so we picked it up and brought it home. I installed the software and started to go to work setting it up, only to find that the software would not program it past the third step of installation. No big deal, I had to program the old "G" router "Old School" style, so I will do the same with this one. Dropped the address in Internet Explorer and everything came to life. Adjusted the settings as directed by the manual, and from the tricks I read on the internet and WHAT A ROUTER!!! We are hooked up to road Runner cable (Time Warner), and the router has us running between 130 and 300 MBPS on all three laptops and one desktop, and has the blu-ray, WII, and X-box 360 wireless streaming effortlessly! The wireless printer we have is "G", and thanks to the backkwards compatability of this router, hooked up easily and runs wonderfully on our home network. I have run multiple tests on every computer at [...] and we are outperforming most everyone else that tests at the site, including our cable provider.
We do not have the overheating issues that others have written about, and the unit is actually cool to the touch on top, and just mildly warm on the bottom. We have it located about a foot away from the cable modem as the directions state to locate it to allow it to breathe well. I do agree the blue lights on the unit are very bright. If that bothers you too much, utilize the stand it comes with and the lights will be facing down and that should eliminate the problem.
The options with this unit are wonderful, including the security mesaures, QOS and prioritization with "WISH". This is THE router if you are running multiple wireless units, need large home reception, and don't want to break the bank upgrading your home network.
CON- only complaint is that I tried to hook up a network hard drive ot the USB port in the back of the router, and it requires an installation code that WD could not provide. So if that is something you are interested in, make sure you purchase your network product that has the installation codes for the router.
Overall, VERY PLEASED with this router, and would buy one again in a minute. I am especially please that multiple different types of connection adapters have success connecting to the router with great reception and transmission speeds. Well done D-Link!!!
Customer Review: Very nice router
Summary: 5 Stars
I just upgraded my home network by replacing an 9-year old Netgear RT314 router with a D-Link DIR-655 Extreme N Gigabit Router D-Link DIR-655 Extreme N Wireless Router. I was fortunate to receive an A3 revision with the 1.11 firmware already loaded (I wouldn't touch the recent 1.20 firmware). I also purchased 2 D-Link DGS-2208 8-port GB switches D-Link DGS-2208 8-Port 10/100/1000 Desktop Switch that replaced a single 10/100 switch.
Prior to installing the DIR-655, I logged in to the RT314's web server (192.168.0.1) using IE and printed all of the configuration settings. Next, I used IE to display the web pages (192.168.100.1) of the Motorola SB4200 cable modem (I have Road Runner Business Class) and printed all of its settings (I plan to get Time Warner to replace the SB4200 with a DOCSIS 2.0 cable modem in the near future). I was particularly concerned that Time Warner would detect the changed MAC address and interrupt my service, but that was not the case.
I disdain unnecessary software installs, and so disregarded the quick setup CD in favor of using the DIR-655's wizards and manual configuration web pages. My setup method is to leave settings at the default unless I encounter conditions that require a change. The steps I took were:
1) Changed the default Admin password
2) Disabled the wireless component (bought for future use)
3) Reserved the assigned IP Address for my print server
4) Configured the router's time and enabled NTP
5) Enabled email logging of the logs to my personal email address
I felt the router rebooted in a resonable period of time after the configuration changes - certainly quicker that the RT314 it replaced. My overall impression is that web pages load more quickly (and this is with the SPI firewall and NAT translation enabled) than previously.
I compared before and after performance using PingPlotter and Speedtest.net. PingPlotter results were nearly equal before and after. Speedtest.net indicated an increase in download speed from 7Mb to 7.3Mb, but upload speed remained constant at 960Kbps.
I also tested my Windows VPN connection to my workplace - VPN passthrough appears to work by default.
All of this took about an hour. I am pleased with my purchase, its performance, appearance, and ease of configuration. I had internet connectivity immediately after plugging everything in and powering the DIR-655 up.
Now if I could just figure out how to dim those incredibly bright iridescent blue status LEDs and still achieve the WAF...
Customer Review: Excellent router
Summary: 5 Stars
I bought this router after buying a MacBook Pro which has built-in 802.11n capability (after buying the n "enabler" from Apple for $2). I wanted to take advantage of the fast wireless speed as well as the gigabit Ethernet interface on the MacBook Pro. Oddly, Apple's much more expensive Airport with draft n capability does not have a gigabit Ethernet interface, so the D-Link Extreme N seemed like a good choice as it had all I was looking for.
This product did not disappoint. I got all of the speed I was looking for plus the extra range I needed for a difficult spot where I needed the signal to go through two cinderblock walls. It also gets a stronger signal to two floors above the router location. Configuration was easy and the router has been very stable for the several weeks I have been using it. I particularly like the detailed status and logging information.
On the wireless side, I'm currently using the router in a mixed g and n setup. I had some reliable wireless b cards that I would have continued using, but there was a problem. Security is not a major concern in my location, so I would have continued using WEP except that it is not supported in the draft wireless n standard. I moved to some D-Link g cards that were on sale and they perform very well and I can now use both WPA and WPA2 simultaneously with this router. Mixing b with n would probably seriously degrade the n performance anyway. As it stands now, my wireless n performance is excellent where the signal strength is strong. My Internet download speed is typically close to 27 mbps on a wired connection and I get the same real throughput on the n wireless. Even g does not do that in a real Internet benchmark.
The router comes with a cat5 cable which should not be used for a gigabit connection, so be sure to purchase any cat6 cables you need as I did. I also purchased an Intel gigabit Ethernet card for my Windows PC to enable fast transfers with the Mac.
I upgraded the router firmware a few days ago and it works fine, but the only problem was that it would not load my saved configuration, so I had to input my custom settings again. This was an annoyance, but also a flaw that I saw with my old DI-624 router. There are likely to be more upgrades especially because the n spec has not been finalized.
The wireless n works fine with the Mac. The other issue to note for Mac users is that the router's web-based configuration application does not seem to work with any of the browsers I have on my Mac, so hopefully you will have access to a Windows PC to do the setup. (Presumably a Parallels Windows PC on the Mac will work, but I have not tried that yet.)
Bottom line, this is the best consumer router I have used.
Customer Review: USB port didn't work
Summary: 1 Stars
Bottom line: it didn't work the way it was supposed to so we're returning it
We bought this router for our two computers. One is a new laptop running Vista and the other is a 7 year old desktop with Windows 2000. Our two requirements of a router were 1) it should work with both Vista and 2000 and 2) it should have a USB port so that we can connect the printer. You can't share a printer between 2000 and Vista, so we've always just had the printer hooked up to the desktop. Everytime you want to print from the laptop, you have to carry it across the house to the printer. Sometimes, with the old router, the laptop was able to see and access the shared drives on the desktop and we could move and print things that way, but that only worked some of the time. We wanted to find a better solution.
My husband and I are both software engineers. If two software engineers can't get this working with our system, then it's not going to work with what we have. We spent probably 12 hours, total, trying to get the router's USB port to work with no luck.
First, I tried to set the router up using the wire connection to the old desktop. I spent 4 hours on that and I couldn't connect to the internet. I tried setting the router up with the laptop and it connected easily and hooked me up to the internet in under 15 minutes. When I then moved the wire to the desktop and used the laptop wirelessly, the internet connection was just fine. So if you are trying to use this router with two different operating systems, set it up using the computer that has the newest OS and you'll hopefully be successful.
Once I had the internet working on both computers, I installed the software, SharePort Network USB, from the disk provided with the router. Neither computer could see the printer in the USB port. To rule out that it was a printer issue, I plugged a thumb drive into the USB port and neither computer could see that either. I downloaded the newest version of SharePort, tried it on both computers, no luck. Tried many combinations of rebooting the router, the modem, each computer, etc. No luck. I installed new firmware versions, one by one, on the router and kept trying. No dice. Read many online forums. Still no luck. Tried beta firmware versions which were supposed to fix the problem. The computers never could see the USB port.
Our old router works with both Windows 2000 and Vista. We were really just hoping to have the luxury of not having to physically move the laptop to the big, heavy printer every time we wanted to print a document. However, SharePort on this new router worked 0% of the time. We're going to go back to our old router because some of the time is better than never.