D-Link DIR-655 Xtreme N Gigabit Router user reviews

Pros Speed is fantastic, Set up is very easy. Gigabit ports A++

Cons Coverage didn't improve much

Summary I bought this router a week ago and it took me 5mn to set it up. Very nice...You need to upgrade the firmware to 1.01 THEN to 1.02. It can't get directly to 1.02. I used to have Belkin, Netgear and recently Dlink 624. This is a major change, the connection is way more stable and I didn't have any drop whatsoever. The speed is fantastic. I'm not that impressed with the coverage though, it is just slightly better than what I used to have with my DI 624, maybe I have too many walls in-between... I live in a 3,500 square feet house and I don't know if DLink considers that a large house or not. I didn't try the WPA security feature yet but the WEP works fine for me. The QOS for my VOIP made my phone conversation more clear. I must add I use my existing b and g adapter in mixed mode and it's already very good. I can't wait to upgrade to a n adapter for my laptop. I'll share my feedback then.

Pros Feature Set

Cons Woudn't work

Summary I tried 3 of these routers. I could not set up any of them. 2 would conitinual reset and drop the LAN connection and the other once fnally set up would reboot everytime I connected my Netgear WGT 511 V1 G card. Hardware Version A1 with latet 1.02 firmware out of the box. DlLink Support was n help after 3.5 hours. I have set up 50 to 75 routersfor clients in the past and never had problems like I did with this one. I tried several laptops to configure it. Continually resets and drops connections.

Pros Never had a chance to find out!

Cons Didn't work with my computer, unhelpful customer service

Summary Bought this router to speed up my system, based on all the positive reviews. But it didn't work with my system, and when I contacted DLink Customer Service, their advice after an hour on the phone, was that maybe I needed to try a different model. They basically admitted that this model would not work with my laptop (a 1 1/2 year old Dell Inspiron 6000 running on Windows XP). Needless to say, I'm planning to return and purchase a different brand.

Pros Fast, Configurable, "Future Proofed"

Cons May Be Too Complex for First Time Users

Summary First off, I like this box. I've owned this router for a while now and find it to be the fastest most configurable "home" router I've had to date.

However, like others, I found the “simple auto installer” to not work correctly during my particular install and the only option was a statement to contact tech support, or something like that. Better for them to have an option, once a roadblock is hit, to exit and go to a manual configuration (I built a dummy “Internet” connection for the box and got past the roadblock that way)

Also, why they chose to default with 192.168.0.1 is a bit of a mystery to me. Yes, you can make arguments on both sides but, 192.168.1.1 is a bit of a de-facto standard out there. It's a silly thing but, when you are typing HTTP://192.168.1.1 and getting 404 errors you just shake your head in wonderment after seeing this default address.

The default DHCP range is also a bit large (99 station IP’s) in the 192.168.0.2 – 192.168.0.100 range.

The features and options cover just about every “home network” technology out there. Including Quality of Service (QoS), Stateful Packet Inspection (SPI/Firewall), B,G,N Protocols, and a full suite of security options.

There are so many that, and this may be the industries fault and not D-Links, auto configuration options may try to be too many things to the end station devices. Does this cause connectivity problems for users. I don’t know but, if you are only using G protocol in your network, keep things simple and select the G only option. I wonder, if you have auto/all selected, the router may attempt to “uplift” to the highest available protocol causing sessions to be re-initialized. I’ve not done testing of this, it’s strictly thinking out loud.

Additionally, Security features are rich and this is always an area that creates complexity. Are the end stations set up with WPA, WPA-2, etc..?

Why WEP is still an option is beyond me. It can easily be argued that WEP is not secure and can be broken rather easily. On a router with this level of technology, it should have been dropped.

Bottom line, unless you are willing to understand the functioning and technologies in an advanced home network, you may want to go with a less complex device. If you want to take control of just about every aspect running your home network, and get some really nice speed, this box does just that.