Pimping the DIR-655

I figure to fill up some space in here, I should post about some new hardware I picked up, the DIR-655 wireless router from D-Link.

I used a D-Link DI-624 for a long time, and for a long time it worked great. However, it hasn't been so great lately with router-hostile protocols like Bittorrent, nor even under a fair load like large file transfers, where the thing would continually reboot itself. I've heard on the intertubes that I'm not alone in this, and that it started with a relatively recent firmware update.

Plus, I had to manually configure it to allow the remote access to my Windows Home Server, which isn't a big deal, but if it's supposed to work with UPnP, why didn't it? So I decided to look for a new router, particularly one with gigabit ethernet ports, to make a nice fast connection between my Windows Home Server and my Media Centre PC.

At first, I tried the Linksys WRT350N. In addition to the gigabit ethernet ports, I wanted to go to Draft N wireless; even though I don't have any Wireless N receivers yet, I wanted an N router so I could be prepared for eventual upgrading to higher-speed wireless. I also liked that this router had a USB port for sharing an external HD, which would have been handy for transferring files off the scattered HDs we have laying around.

The first thing I disliked about this router was the configuration interface: it's terrible, hard to follow, help is incomplete, and there's broken English throughout. The second thing I disliked was that it, like the old router, would not allow itself to be configured via UPnP by WHS. And thirdly, it, too, couldn't handle large file transfers (let alone Bittorrent) without dropping all the wireless connections every few minutes.

I tried every configuration trick known to man, and even tried updating the firmware to the latest version (a process that initially failed and turned the router into a shiny brick with antennae, but was able to recover through TFTP - imagine if a non-technical user should try updating the firmware!), but the thing simply could not perform under any basic load that any basic home use might put on it.

After a couple of days of being frustratingly thrown off the network for copying a file now and then, I returned it, and instead bought the DIR-655. This router has most of the same features - Draft N wireless and gigabit ports - though it does not support an external HD via USB capability, but that was just a bonus (it does have a USB port, though, so maybe a future firmware upgrade may enable HD sharing on it).

As soon as I set up my wireless for this new router, I was flyin'. I can run multiple downloads at once, transfer files to and from WHS, watch shows on the Media Centre, and I haven't had a single freeze-up or disconnect that wasn't attributed to just plain high bandwidth usage or Internet provider problems. Oh, and WHS was able to configure the ports via UPnP, too, and I even updated the firmware without a problem.

In conclusion, I'm very happy with the DIR-655, it is vastly superior to both my old router. I'm also extremely disappointed in it's equivalent Linksys rival. I'd never been happy with Linksys before the Cisco buyout, but thought maybe Cisco - being the market leader in large-scale commercial network equipment - would have brought improvements to their newly acquired consumer-level product lines. I'm very disappointed to be wrong about that, but can't say I didn't give them a chance.