Does anyone else hate their D-Link router?
 

I just picked up a DI-624C Wireless router for my desktop and cable modem, and a wireless G cardbus for my laptop, and I've got to say, they suck beyond belief. Security seems to be something they thought of at the last second and added on as an afterthought. My laptop can't connect to the router with the G card from the next room! However when I use the built-in B card in my laptop, it works just fine. The only way I get a good signal is when I have the laptop next to the router. I have to use WEP, because WPA isnt' possible unless I have a "radius server" added to my network. Something I didn't find out about until I had it all hooked up. The only reason I updated to the 802.11G network was to get WPA.
My first router was a Microsoft wireless 802.11b base station, which I got as part of a kit, and it was so easy to use. The security features were great, with SSID disable and MAC filtering easy to find. I'm awfully tempted to get it back out and hook it up, if I can't get this D-link piece of crap to behave.
Anybody got any advice?

You should be able to select WPA without a Radius Server. Linksys allows you to set it up very easily in fact, though I don't know about DLink.

Just take the DLink back and get Linksys. My $0.02

Try WPA-Personal, AKA preshared key.

I don't own a D-Link router, but I've worked with them for work, and with D-Link wireless cards, and I am not impressed. Pick up a Linksys or a Belkin, they're very easy to use and more reliable and higher quality than D-Link. If returning the D-Link isn't an option, you might look around on the web to see if you can find any custom firmware for the D-Link that will make it's features easier to use and access. Hope this helps.

[a bit off-topic]

I bought a standard d-link NIC a year ago, it gave me nothing but problems....returned it twice, still had problems with all 3 cards. Their tech support persistently tried to put the blame on my ISP [adelphia].

Ended up with a linksys - got online in 10 mins...

so, the point...Return the D-link.

catcha back on the flipside,
will.

There's a reason D-link products cost around/< half of what linksys/belkin/netgear/etc cost. D-Link products suck ass.

Now that you mention D-link, I have a external Wi/Fi card for my notebook and it's been dropping the connection when I travel lately. I still can't figure out why........

IMO, ALL wireless gear sucks. DLink is cheesy though, but their little switches are nice.

I have a D-Link router and it's working fine for 2 years. I got it because it's cheap. I'm a cheap person when I can be :) It's not wireless because I like wires, they look so cool ;)

dammit, i just ordered a d-link wireless router too

I have the DI-524 wireless router and I haven't had any problems with it.

I know it's heresay, but my pal has a D link. To say he only "hates" it would be an understatement.

when i first started getting into networking stuff i used d-link. had problems daily. Switched to all linksys and havent had 1/4 of the problems. i will never buy a nother d-link product.

i've had a wireless router from them for a while...it failed at being wireless, so we used it as a switch instead. it failed at that, too.

since, i've gotten netgear and linksys. I liked the netgear a little better...but that's on ease of configuration.

Mine seems to work fine for me. I don't know about WPA.

I like D-Link routers, to be quite honest.

I absolutely abhorr Netgear, but Linksys is above and beyond.

Wireless cards are all crap.

I have a good mix of consumer gear from various brands. The great products in that class are rare, but the only brand that sees permanent bench duty here is D-Link. Not a single piece of their stuff in service. Lots in the closet. WAPs, routers, cards of various types. "Enterprise Class" my foot.

Oh they can be made to work, for simple things, for a while, but I won't put them in front of anything important. A week later the mysterious customer calls begin and too often that means a site visit. The rule has become: if you want it to co-exist with other brands, use any feature depth, or aren't comfortable giving it a hard reset every couple days, avoid D-Link. "But the box says..." Thptpht!

My prejudice built over time. For eons I retained the hope that the-next-firmware-update would take care of problems. In truth it usually causes as many or just rearrages buttons. I finally realized D-Link develops code using the infinite monkeys on acid principle, and gave up on them.

Thanks for all your comments. I think I will get my microsoft B router out of the closet and hook it up again. At least I can secure that to my satisfaction.

I've got a D-Link switch that works fine. Of course, I guess it's not really hard to make a switch work just fine given that it doesn't really do that much.

We did have a D-Link router for a while that worked just fine (not great, just OK), but got a nicer Linksys one when we needed more capability.

I guess this is tossing into the fray, but here goes:

I had an all Linksys wireless 802.11b network. It crapped out all the time. Over the course of about a year I replaced both cards (one PCMCIA, one PCI) and the router. Problems were random, mostly affecting only wireless and not wired. I hated it. Recently I picked up a D-Link DI-524 router and a new PCI card. My wife now just uses her new laptops built-in 802.11g card. I LOVE it. It drops wireless to my desktop once in a while, but it's across a couple rooms, with heavy walls in the way, and my computer low on the floor with a lot between it and the doorway. The options set was far superior to my Linksys, including the ability to create REAL firewall rules (such as ALLOW ANY ANY TCP 80) and even with time restrcitions. For security, I use MAC address filtering, so that only those wired and wireless devices in my home can access the router. It uses static DHCP for each device as well. Who needs WPA when you can have WEP (weak) with MAC filtering (strong)? The WEP keeps out non-geeks, the filtering keeps out everyone else. An additional firewall rule could be set up that could prevent communication from any IP address not owned by one of my MACs, so even if spoofing was created, they'd have to have the right IP address as well (which with DHCP wouldn't be much of an issue, but still).

As a side note, since Cisco bought Linksys, they've really been hurting the line. I originally thought the new products would be great, but each new generation now gets more flaky. I can no longer recommend Linksys products to even my SOHO clients, and definitely not to small- to medium-sized businesses.

I've had a D-link wireless router and wireless card for my laptop (cat5ed to the desktop) since September '02. Sure, it is only a B, but I've never had any problems. I did buy them because they were the cheapest and I wanted wireless, but that hasn't come back to haunt me.

I have a D-Link wireless ADSL router and it seems to be OK... took me a while to figure our the wireless bit, but yotta was right when he said you should be able to change the security mode to WPA-PSK... I did and now it works fine...

I hate my D-Link DI-704P. It can't even maintain the internet connection when i have bittorrent open, I can't stay signed in to MSN Messenger for longer than 10 minutes without dropping out, and sometimes just general web browsing times out. Trying to use the print server is a joke because it isn't properly recognised by windows.

I advise anyone reading this thread to avoid D-Link routers like the plague and go for something a bit more expensive. I am currently checking out online reviews of other routers (linksys, negear) to see what they are like, then i might unleash the fucking fury on this one.

Netgear is decent, but I'm telling you, avoid Linksys... seriously...

I have a di-624+ and its horrible. Main problem is it needs to be manually restarted every few days which is just not cool for a wireless router.

I have not found a wireless manufacturer who is reliable 100% of the time. Linksys make some very shoddy products, as do Netgear (now one of the worst!) and dlink. Linksys is probably on average the best though

I had a d-link router (not wireless) and I lost connection regularly. Which meant having to reset the connection on my computer and on the router, which was a pain in the ass, and it quite frankly never worked for setting up a household network. It drove me crazy. The instructions were awful.

never had a d link but i sure do hate my linksys! what a total pile of crap. nothing like needing to reboot the router up to 5 times a day. my last router was a linksys too and it was fine for years so i just assumed it was still a good company. didnt know it was bought out and turned to crap =/ such a waste of money.

Why all the Linksys bashing? A friend of mine has a 2xG wireless routers, I have a B wireless router and a VoIP router, my office has a B wireless router, and our office is fully switched by Linksys switches. When it comes to the switches, they have worked better than D-Link since the second we got them.

Linksys is fine. It's like most any other product in it's operating/price categories.. there will be bad ones but they are mostly fine.

They USED to mostly be fine... if you peruse tech forums these days, you'll find more people that HAVE issues with Linksys than those that do not. It's a semi-recent development, but it's a serious issue. Maybe it's bad craftsmanship, maybe bad QC... regardless, they are much elss reliable than they once were.

D-Link makes awesome products. I mean there's alot better, but it works and for most people that's all they need. My Dlink gigabit switch works wonders, and I've had a few good D-link NICs. My WRT54G made by linksys is also an awesome router, then again I bought it 2+ years ago, and it seems all the linksys problems are recent.

I have a DI-624. I have it sitting on top of a bookshelf, about 5ft above ground, and get a good signal all round the house. I like the 108 Mbps connection. I use WEP because I haven't worked out how to do WPA. The only problem I have is when I want to use my cordless 2.4Ghz phone the internet connection is lost. Sometimes it recovers, sometimes I have to power down the DI-624. But on the whole I am happy and rarely have any prob


[connection with user lost]

I have my good ol DI-624 and I find it quite adequate for home use, it's been ticking for over two years now and has only needed a reset couple times. As far as WPA on it, yea right wpa wasn't the "IN" thing back then (aka doesn't support it). All in all I'm happy with my purdy d-link