Rating: 
Summary: Inexpensive Home Network
Review: I purchased the DI-604 to share my Road Runner internet access with both my HP N5495 laptop and a Emachines T1220 system I purchased for my children. I removed the "Residential Gateway" (as D-link refers to the router) from the box. Plugged it in, connected the cables, and went through the setup without changing any suggested settings. Whole thing was operational in around 10 minutes and both systems are able to access the internet through the Toshiba PCX2200 cable modem. Been up and running for a week without any problems. Both systems running Win XP. HP Laptop is PIII 1.06 Ghz with 512 meg and the Emachines is a Celeron 1.2 Ghz with 256 meg. I am sharing a Canon S600 printer off the laptop using a Parellel cable and sharing a Canon S300 via USB from the Emachines desktop. Moving files between systems is effortless and fast. Have even played Motocross Madness 2 and Midtown Madness 2 between the systems via the network and it works great. I have Zone Alarm Pro on both systems and that works the same as it did before the router was installed. I noticed that the firmware version on my router was V1.1 so I went ahead and updated to V2.0. Firmwear updated fine although I did have to unplug it and plug it back in afterwards for it to reset. All is still fine after update. Overall my experience with this item has been fantastic.
Rating: 
Summary: The DI-604 is not a mature product.
Review: The advertised functionality of the DI-604 looks great and works -- sometimes. The firmware revision on the two devices I examined was 1.0 and incompatible with my DSL modem (I use Earthlink DSL). You can download and patch to version 2.0 but that still didn't fix the incompatibility between the gateway and my modem. I contacted Dlink technical support 4 times (twice by phone and twice by email) and all of the conversations dealt with the DI-704 configuration tool (completely different from the DI-604 config tool). I also own a DI-704 and a DI-704p and would recommend either of these devices over the 604. Dlink is a good company and they will bring this device up to speed - but its not there yet (7/13/02).
Rating:
Summary: A great value
Review: This is an excellent network router for sharing a brodband Internet connection...you get a top-performance Ethernet router, built-in firewall, basic content control functions, and ease of set up. I was able to get it up and running in just 5 minutes. One caveat: this is a cable router, so you'll need to run cables between the router and your PCs (up to 4). If that doesn't bother you, this is the best consumer router you can get... and the price is totally sweet.
Rating: 
Summary: Options Galore
Review: The D-Link 604 is a nice piece of hardware. Whether for cable/dsl connection, you'll get an easy connection. My network was setup using a D-link within a D-link and everything still worked fine.Update the firmware, and you'll notice a lot more options opened up. The only problem I have with it is that AIM's direct connect doesn't seem to work.
Rating: 
Summary: Overheats, then fails
Review: I have had two DLink routers and both have died from overheating. I use my router every day, about 3-5 hours altogether, only doing normal web surfing and minimal to moderate downloading. The first router completely failed, had lasted about 2 years so I thought it had a good run. Bought another Dlink, because hey they *are* cheap. It's been a little over a year and the thing is overheating just like the first one. You can feel the heat just rising off the cheap plastic box. It works intermittenly and will probably fail completely soon. Besides spending money twice on something that died so easily, I had ALWAYS had trouble with the advanced features such as opening up ports and even using the DMZ feature. I could never get my router to open up correctly to outside traffic. I'm going to go with a Linksys, hoping it will last me a little longer and will perform more reliably.
Rating:
Summary: Great little router!
Review: We picked up this little router about a month and a half ago - it was one of the cheapest around, and reading around technical reviews it was also one of the highest-scoring routers I found. It's been running solidly since we got it, connecting up 4 PCs and handling some pretty heavy use. And all, apparently, without breaking a sweat - it's still working just perfectly.
It's fast to set up. 10 minutes from getting it out of the box, we had 2 PCs hooked up to it and running fine. You may need to configure the PCs to connect to it, but they give you simple instructions on how to do that. So no trouble at all.
It's simple to manage, too. The filters offered are simple, and lack some features that would be nice to have (it'd be nice to be able to use timed schedules on all the filters, for example, or to be able to apply filters to specific machines in the network), but they offer a lot of functionality for those who want to use it. You can block specific URLs, or URLs that contain a specific word (so you could, for example, block all files with of a specific type from being downloaded) - or if you want to be even MORE strict, you can limit the networked PCs to only accessing URLs from a list you set up. It's really easy to do.
The only other thing I would add is about cooling. The box has an adequate cooling system, quite enough to deal with heavy traffic across it, but it needs to be positioned correctly. Make sure that the box is given room to breathe - put its rubber feet on, if you have to stand it, and then stand it on a solid, flat surface (not carpeting, or it'll heat up a lot). Ours is sitting on a single piece of floor tile. If you can mount it with an air gap above and below, though, that would probably be the ideal solution.
Lastly - remember you'll need cables! Belkin produce great Ethernet patch cables that can do the job for you - make sure that you work out where the router will be first, though, and measure the distance that each cable will need to cover. It'll save a lot of time.
All said - this is an excellent little box, especially for the price. It'll network your machines quickly and easily - across the home, none of us even noticed much of a drop in speed compared to the single PC we had hooked up to the modem before - and it's easy to manage and set up.
Highly recommended to people who are looking to share their home connection.
Rating:
Summary: Inexpensive and VERY feature packed.
Review: I did a lot of surfing of reviews here on Amazon to decide whether or not to get this Di-604. I decided... what the heck, some reviews are good and it's kinda cheap. I'll take a risk. Here's what I have to say about it:
This router is unbelievably inexpensive and feature packed. It came nicely packaged with a STATIC BAG over the router, not some cheap plastic wrap. Every page of the manual is in NICE PRINTED COLOUR. I can't believe it. For a router this cheap you would expect they'd print their manual on toilet paper like other products I've bought. I think D-Link really set a goal for making the BEST 4-pt home router for the BEST price.
I'm very picky about things, and before I bought this, I was fantasizing that maybe the router firmware programmers would add the option to select the WAN speed (10 or 100mbit), which I thought was just simply asking too much cause it's such a small detail many wouldn't care about. It turns out in one of the firmware updates that they decided to INCLUDE this. After learning this, I know this was the router for me.
Here's what happened when I brought it home: I was super worried that it wouldn't work at my house with 2 mac users and 2 PC users cause of the bad reviews. Right out of the box with old firmware (3.30) it worked FLAWLESSLY, no hassle, just simply plugging all the cables in. I couldn't believe it. I was very happy. I installed the new firmware and it's just simply working beautifully with no hangups so far. So, take my review into consideration THIS WILL WORK ON MACS (they are newer iMacs).
Also, I have REVISION E, the newest model of this baby. I honestly believe that the majority of the complaints here on Amazon are from people who bought it earlier and have the earlier revisions. Before you hand the money to the cashier (if you choose not to buy here), make sure you look at the back of the box, there is a sticker that says that revision it is (look for the letter). Don't get anything before the "E".
PS: It doesn't say on the box that it's 10/100mbit for LAN purposes, so I was a bit worried that it might not even go at 100mbit. Of course this is silly in this day of technlollogy. I ran the "iperf" network tester between two computers and the results were just as I hoped they'd be.
Excellent value and I'm very happy with this router. I used to run OpenBSD to do the job before the computer exploded during a vacation when I wasn't home to fix it for my roommates, and now I am using this puppy. Also, it's much easier to set up TCP/UDP port forwarding using its HTTP inferface. It even allows port forwarding ranges to make BitTorrenting setup easy. Google for the BitTorrenting FAQs on Dlink's site and they have a few interesting ways of setting it up.
Thanks for reading.
Rating:
Summary: The D-Link Express DI-604 4-Port Ethernet Broadband Router
Review: Product: The D-Link Express DI-604 4-Port Ethernet Broadband Router
Company Info: D-Link Systems Inc., www.dlink.com
Reviewer: Ador Charming
Date: December 30, 2004
OVERVIEW
The D-Link Express EtherNetwork DI-604 4-Port Ethernet Broadband Router is a wise choice with its no-brainer setup wizard and easily configurable features such as IP and MAC address filtering, domain and URL blocking, and a robust firewall at an extremely low price. Xbox Compatible!
Included Materials:
DI-604 Broadband Router
CAT5e Patch Cable
AC/DC Power block
Quick Installation Guide
CD w/ Quick Install Guide and Manual
4 rubber feet
If you have a high speed broadband connection to the Internet and more than one computer that needs that connection its time to get a router and venture into the world of computer networking! Fortunately it's never been easier to setup your own small network especially with intuitive products like the D-Link Express DI-604.
The D-Link Express comes in a nice retail package. Here is the D-Link manual on CD & quick start installation guide. Be sure to read the yellow insert- inside the quick start guide, this has new information on connecting your cable or DSL modem to the D-Link Express.
Setting up the D-Link Express is incredibly easy and very strait-forward. After making all the connections, your cable or DSL modem connects to the D-Link Express WAN port, and then you will connect the supplied Ethernet cable to one of the four LAN ports on the D-Link Express and the other end will connect back into your computer.
The yellow insert and the nicely done quick installation guide, it's a hard copy! Nice!
After I made all my connections I followed the start sequence in the yellow insert and I was configuring my new D-Link Express router through my browser. The D-Link setup wizard is very easy to navigate and I was pretty much ready to run in about 12 minutes and surfing the Internet with no problems at all.
Looking at the wizard interface you will see the setup and configuration options and a "Run wizard" button in the center of the screen. Start there. You will have 4 steps and they are;
Step 1. Set your new password
Step 2. Choose your time zone
Step 3. Set Internet connection
Step 4. Restart your router
That's the basic setup. After you restart you can access the wizard again and configure your advanced options such as IP and URL blocking and even MAC blocking. There is a help section in case you run into any problems. Overall the D-Link Express router has some great security and firewall features.
Parents will love the IP and URL blocking features that effectively allow them to block certain web sites from their children and even allow children to access certain web site during a specified time period. So youngsters could play games on their favorite web site from 3-4 and then after 4 time to study! This is a very nice feature that is very easy to setup.
Adding more computers to your network is just as easy. I ran a cable to my Gateway 450SX4 notebook from the D-Link Express, booted my notebook, opened my browser and my homepage loaded right up. I did not have to configure anything, although I did run the network setup wizard on both computers.
Gamers can even hook up their Xbox to the network because the D-Link is fully Xbox compatible!
After everything was up and running I proceeded over to Mcafee speed test site;
http://us.mcafee.com/root/speedometer/test_0600.asp to see what kind of performance this little router has.
With a 150.005 KB fileset; Time Elapsed: 1.781 seconds Speed: 673.84 Kbps / 84.23 KBps
With a 600KB fileset; Time Elapsed: 1.562 seconds Speed: 3.001 Mbps / 384.13 KBps
Pretty fast and very respectable!!!
After using and living with this router for two days I have not had any drops in speed or performance and it has just performed extremely well. The D-Link Express router is a small, well built, lean & mean speed machine. It is extremely affordable, around $39. on-line and very easy to setup. I have no problems recommending this router to anyone who wants an easy to use affordable networking solution.
Testing:
Test machine: SEPTIMUS
OS: Windows XP Professional - Version 2002 SP2
Processor: AMD Athlon XP 2600 2.20 GHz
Memory: 2 x 256MB PC2700 Kingston
Motherboard: SOYO KT-333 Ultra Black Dragon
Video Card: Radeon Saphire 64MB AGP
Cooling: Thermaltake Extreme Volcano 12
Power Supply: Antec 420W PSU
Case: Raidmax Scorpio
Hard Drive: Maxtor Diamondmax 120GB 7200 RPM 8MB Cache
Optical drives: Sony DVD RW / LG CDRW
The DI-604 Specifications
Device Type Router
RJ-45 Ports 4
Form Factor Desktop
WAN Port(s) 1
10/100 Mbps Ports 4
Networking Standards
IEEE 802.3 10Base-T Ethernet
IEEE 802.3u 100Base-TX Fast Ethernet
IEEE 802.3 NWay Auto-Negotiation
Routing / Firewall Protoccols
NAT
Domain Blocking
IP Filtering
MAC Filtering
URL Filtering
Scheduling
Management Web Based
Ethernet
CAT3
CAT5
CAT6
Summary:
The DI-604 combines the latest advancements in chip technology, low-cost design and manufacturing with new, feature-rich firewall and network management controls to give you quite possibly the most advanced, yet affordable Ethernet router to date.
A big thank you shout-out to the kind folks at D-Link for making this review possible.
Rating:
Summary: Great Quality for the Price
Review: I am very impressed with this router. The instructions and setup were very simple and everything was up and running within minutes. My only complaint is that for the first day the router was reseting my cable internet connection randomly. So I emailed their tech support and received a reply very quickly and the suggested fix took care of the problem. Overall you can't go wrong with this router, especially considering the price.
Rating:
Summary: This Is Just Another Piece of Junk!!
Review: I bought the DI-604 to share our two computers at home. It completely died on me just days after the ridiculously short warranty period. Unless you are into disposable routers, stay away from all things D-Link!
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