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D-Link DI-524 Wireless Cable/DSL Router, 4-Port Switch, 802.11g, 54Mbps

D-Link DI-524 Wireless Cable/DSL Router, 4-Port Switch, 802.11g, 54Mbps

List Price: $69.99
Your Price: $52.24
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Thank you, Jack Szwergold . . .
Review: . . . for the tip on resetting the WAN from 100 to 10. I spent an evening tearing my hair out trying to get one of these units to connect to my DSL, and was just about to return it when it occurred to me to check the Amazon.com customer reviews. It's unbelievably dumb that they ship these things this way.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: DI-524 VPN Passthrough
Review: Connection to Checkpoint VPN as well as others is only partial - requires that UDP encapsulation be forced on SecureClient. Still no VPN access to Exchange Server, can't map network drives.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: disabling ssid broadcast and enabling wpa failed
Review: Disabling ssid broadcast doesn't work - the ssid is still seen by my laptop.

wpa doesn't work w/the dlink DWL-G630 card though I suspect it's the card's fault.

Returned for another brand's router and card. Disabling ssid broadcast works, ie, the ssid is hidden. And wpa works very for a few hours straight so far.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: FIRMWARE NIGHTMARE
Review: DON'T DO IT!!!!! Current firmware 1.05 is flawed notorious for disconects......waiting for new release....

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Hope you're patient
Review: Either I'm stupid or the reviewers who found this thing easy to set up are just lucky. I fought with this thing for several hours and two calls to customer service. Both useless, by the way. The instructions are beyond horrible. They're inadequate clues at best. The encryption process is cruel. You have to do it in the proper order - I believe the base computer you're using for set up and then the your wireless computer. No mention of the order in the directions. Learned by trial and error. Do it backwards and you lose your connection. No instructions for the event you just want to set up your wireless computer without a base 'setup' computer. Having never done encryption I didn't realize that I supply the encryption code. Finally figured that out. Possibly the others out there are just as bad. Now that I've got it set up, it generally works fine. I also set up a d-link wireless printer adaptor. Equally frustrating and directions better but left out one very important fact.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: piece of junk
Review: Even when it was working it would drop the signal every 30 minutes. However, just over a year of having it, it suddenly stopped working. No power at all. Call customer support - tough luck it was over the one year warranty. You get what you pay for. Stay away from this piece of junk.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Firmware Disaster
Review: Firmware version 1.05 doesn't work. The router hands out new DHCP addresses to every wireless device every few seconds, so obviously your connection will drop continuously like so many people have reported here. This isn't a fluke, it's a well-documented, reproducible problem that has been discussed at length on hardware forums like BroadbandReports.com. Flashing back to old firmware 1.03 solves it, but that version introduces another issue with buffer overflows when using P2P file sharing.

At the time of this review, 1.05 is the latest firmware version available. Incredibly enough, this horrible piece of broken code isn't a beta version, it's the final release that D-Link has been recommending for months. How a company can get away with this for so long is beyond me.

I rolled my DI-524 back to firmware 1.03 and it solved all my connectivity problems. I don't use P2P so it's actually working great for me now, which is why I gave it two stars instead of one. But I spent countless hours tearing my hair out to get to this point and D-Link tech support wouldn't admit the problem, so I can't recommend buying this, or any product, from this company. Knowing what I do now, I'd buy a Linksys instead.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Nice little box
Review: First of all, setting up a secure wireless network with encryption, connected to a wired network through a cable/dsl modem, and enabling filesharing without security holes, is not easy. This is a relatively new market, people, and this stuff is just not plug-and-play. If it is, then you probably have some major security holes. 90% of all wireless networks in the U.S. are wide open (that means most of you). I bought this router and set it up for my parents, and changed a lot of features. If you know what you're doing, you'll have no problem. If you're willing to spend some time following the wizard and possibly talking to a friend or tech support, you'll have no problem. If you want instant wireless connectivity right out of the box, frankly, you have a pipe dream. Your internet connection and personal computer are likely to be compromised in less than a week.

Tips for wireless security:
- Disable SSID broadcasting
- Enable WPA/TKIP pre-shared key (NOT WEP, which easily is crackable)
- Filter wireless access by MAC
- Change router's IP to nonstandard address
- There's more than this, but these are the basics. Read up on the internet.

The D-Link is a good router with nice features (reserved DHCP is something Linksys doesn't have unless you mod the firmware), it's small, and it looks nice. The hardware is a dime a dozen; there's nothing wrong with this router! If you want alternate firmware and a Linux shell, this is not the model for you. If you want a small, compact, cheap, nice-loooking wireless router, don't hesitate to buy it. Just know that you're going to have to spend a little time with it, just as you would with any other model.

By the way, the Broadcom chip (108 mbps SpeedBurst) is overrated for internet use. 95% of all users will not need the higher model than this, especially when your internet connection is is <3 mbps!

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: You get what you paid for
Review: I bought this at 2:00pm, returned it the same day. I didn't have any problems when i hooked it up. It wasn't until when i ran the wizard to enable the encryption that i started having problems. My internet connection was disconnected. I tried read the manual but had very little info. This item is not plug and play. Look elsewhere, even if you have to spend a little more.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Great product from Dlink again for a happy DI-614+ user
Review: I decided to upgrade my DI-614+ (which works great!) to this model so I can have 802.11g support. Some of negative reviews got me to think twice but they all proved to be non-existence for me. Maybe I got used to the user interface form DI-614+. I have no issue what so ever on setting up the box. I took precaution to reboot my cable modem after I plugged in the box. This thing supports UPnP as well, which is a must for xbox and MSN messenger (if you need voice, video, and application sharing). My only advice to people is read the quick setup (mostly illustrated instructions) and get the latest firmware.

My only wish is for DLink to provide porting of some configuration parameters among different boxes for easy upgrade. I had to manually configure all my static DHCP, filtering, and firewall customizaiton.


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