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D-Link DI-514 Wireless 802.11b Cable/DSL Router

D-Link DI-514 Wireless 802.11b Cable/DSL Router

List Price: $59.99
Your Price: $46.99
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Good support, common features, good product for the price
Review: I looked at many brands. D-Link is commonly thought of as a low-end brand, but the packaging and support would say otherwise. The product is packaged very nice, drivers work great (except for a problem with the USB 80211.B D-Link adapter on Win98 but that's another product to be fair), range is fair. Easy out the box setup, I would one problem but a quick tech call to their 24/7 tech support fixed this (and it only took about 3-minutes to get in and talk to a person), very impressed for what you get her for the money.

I'll save the performance review for the D-Link USB adapter write up, here I'll just say I'm pretty happy.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Mediocre performace: IMPORTANT CONFIGURATION TIP
Review: I purchased this router because the price was right. I should have stayed with my gut and got a Linksys -- I had connection problems right off the bat. Only one PC would connect at all, and it dropped its connection every few minutes (Using the DWL-650 PC Card).

I finally found an obscure post on a forum for APPLE users, which hinted about a preamble setting in the performance section of the config utility -- SET THIS TO LONG (Short is the default). Connection dropping went from a matter of minutes to a matter of hours and both laptops were able to connect. I was unable to find information on this matter ANYWHERE on D-Link's site.

Overall, I got what I paid for. The DI-514 works marginally well, considering I got it for around $30. Still, I wish I'd spent the money for a Linksys.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Something's messed-up about the encryption and firmware!
Review: I recently attempted to setup a D-Link DI-514 for a friend. Here's what happened:

(1) After changing settings at the router's admin page (...) AND clicking the apply and continue buttons, frequently the settings would not take effect until after the DI-514 had been powered off and on again. This looked like bad firmware to me. (...)

(2) I could not get 64-bit or 128-bit encryption to work with two known good notebooks that work on other encrypted, wireless networks. Encryption is essential for security!

(...) If you didn't change any of the settings, you are not using encryption! Anyone that strolls or drives nearby with a Pocket PC can use your wireless connection. If they monitor your network long enough, they can get your computer's MAC # then use your connection to do bad stuff while making it look like it came from you! Be careful! Also, if you don't change your admin password, a cracker can surf in through your cable/DSL broadband connection and do the same bad stuff I listed above from far away!

(3) Resorting to MAC address filtering, I went to the router's page to set that up. I entered the MAC # and clicked the "apply" button. The screen filled with error messages, and I could not log back onto the router until I pulled the power and turned it on again.

This was a "hardware version: B firmware version 1.00" brand:D-Link model:DI-514 . The release date for this firmware is Oct. 2003. (...). Tech support was squirrelly about commenting on that as well (Although I did get a *BIG guffaw* from the 877 number support rep when I said I was trying to get encryption to work on this model. Was he trying to tell me something his boss didn't want him to tell?).

I do have to give a good rating for the 877 tech support line's *short* wait time. After punching in the last digit before being put in the queue, it was only 7 minutes before the rep was on the phone with me.

(...)

BOTTOM LINE: I could only get it to work in unencrypted mode. The bargain is tempting, but the firmware design is poor and plagued with problems, and it doesn't really do all it says it does on the box. Spend a little more money and get a good wireless router. As they say "YGWYPF" and "The cheapskate pays the most in the end!"

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Works well so far
Review: I recently got this router and I had some problems setting it up. I have Windows XP with an Orinoco card, and I experienced the same problem as one of the previous reviewers who could see signal but not get any route. Once I changed my Preamble Type from short to long it worked. If they would have set this as a default option or mentioned it somewhere on their site this could have saved some time, but other than this setup problem, everything has been working well since.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Works great with my Mac
Review: I've had this baby up and running for about 8 months. Never any problems, and I use it for hours a day. It has great range and great reliability. I would note that many of the bad experiences are probably because of the PC that people are using. The Macintosh works great with this router (like a macintosh works great with everything.)

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: didnt work
Review: It Kinda worked when I first got it, but
once in a while would disconnect. I made
sure no other devices were interfering.

I then turned on WEP, and it also intially
worked, but then it really started getting flakey,
disconnecting every couple minutes.

I felt the top of the unit, it was hot enough
to cook an egg.

Even after I disabled WEP it did not work any better.

I eventually replaced the unit with a netgear 802.11g
unit and wow, so much better.

I did have a rev B unit, maybe they fixed things
for the rev C unit.

I actually used this unit without the wireless port
for several months and it worked great. Just never worked
right on the wireless port, when I got my laptop.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: You guessed it....it sucks
Review: Keeps on dropping my connection...makes it virutally impossible to work from home with this thing...I thought it was just my connection until I read the rest of the reviews. I would just stay away from this one.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Stay away from this Router
Review: Never could get it to pick up an IP address using Dynamic IP, had to type it in manually. Only then would it work. Would drop the wireless clients when any heavy traffic was experienced (and sometime when not so heavy). Finally quit sharing all together, returned it for a Netgear router, much happier.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Poor Product -- Worse Support
Review: OK. I should have done more homework in buying the router but simply took the first one the salesman handed me. The connection seems to be OK but when I tried to add a range extender, I ran into huge problems. The first extender I bought was 802.11g compatible. Tech support told me I needed the 802.11b extender. So I bought that. When that didn't work, I called tech support again and spend 90-minutes reconfiguring the I/P addresses to match. When THAT didn't work, I called tech support again, was put on hold for 20 minutes before being told that the two pieces were simply not compatible. I called customer service to find out why the tech support rep couldn't have figured out this incompatibility before wasting my time reconfiguring my system, I was told, alternately, the rep might have been new, the rep may have assumed I knew which one to buy, and that I should have intuitively known to call pre-sales not tech support with compatibility issues. Finally, I called presales to find out that the 514 router doesn't have a repeater so I actually need to buy two range extenders to get my system to work. I think I'll invest in someone else's router instead!

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Good router, great price
Review: Overall this is a good router that is easy to install and performes well. The only reason i did not give it a 5 out of 5 is because it does not support WPA (the new encryption standard) but hopefully there will be a firmware upgrade in the future.


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