D-Link Forums
The Graveyard - Products No Longer Supported => Routers / COVR => DGL-4500 => Topic started by: Beeder on February 19, 2010, 05:23:03 PM
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I hear lots of love for firmware version 1.15, so when I recently purchased two DGL-4500's (both A2 H/W, one from NewEgg, one from CompUSA), I upgraded from the factory installed 1.14 FW to 1.15.
I do a lot of online gaming and video calls over Skype. For the most part, 1.15 was golden, but I did notice the following:
1) A high number of wireless errors (amounting to about 10% of the total number of packets TX+RX), especially in the router that's in a crowded wireless area (around 16 other A/P's visible).
2) Wireless restarts, which would occasionally caused dropped video calls in Skype. These usually only happened during Skype calls, typically every 20 minutes, with call drops occurring roughly every 90 mins or so.
Other than that, transfer rates were high (over 10MB/s on the internet, roughly 4 times what I was seeing with my prior Linksys routers) and online gaming (Xbox Live) worked phenomenally, no connection issues on my side. I have never had a random router reboot at either location.
Given the low risk of trying 1.22NA firmware since I am able to downgrade it (thanks to someone on another site), I decided to go for it.
Here are my results so far (very early).
1) Wireless errors in the crowded area are now down from 10% to about 0.5%, much improved in 1.22NA. These always accumulated rapidly, so despite the approximate 1 hour uptime so far, it's definitely improved.
2) No wireless restarts in Skype yet, but too early to judge. I'll post back in a couple of days.
[update]
1) After 24 hours, wireless errors are about 1% of all packets received vs the 10% I had with 1.15. It should be noted that these errors only occurred with 1.15 in a crowded wireless area (more than 16 nearby access points as reported by Netstumbler)
2) Still no wireless restarts in Skype after more than 8 hours of video calls on 1.22 vs. 3 per hour with 1.15.
3) Bandwidth is not degraded at all with 1.22 vs 1.15. Effective wireless throughput is about 10% higher on average, most likely due to fewer errors in my crowded wireless area.
How about anybody else out there? How does 1.22 work for you, especially if you've been on 1.15?
I should note that I took the conservative approach to upgrading the firmware, resetting the router to the default config and upgrading its firmware through a sole wired connection (everything else off), manually reconfiguring all settings after installation.
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http://forums.dlink.com/index.php?topic=10859.0 (http://forums.dlink.com/index.php?topic=10859.0)
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I dropped back to 1.15 from 1.22NA and the performance is way better. I still get wireless packet drops but I think it's my neighborhood or the other equipment causing the packet drops. Performance is great tho. I'm on A1 hardware though.
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FW version v1.22
Connection Up Time :2 Day 23 Hour 35 Min 34 Sec
Sent :4,152,963
TX Packets Dropped :2940
Received :2,232,012
RX Packets Dropped :6
Errors :32,522
Error Rate: Errors/(Sent+Received)*100% = 0.5% (v1.15's error rate was over 10%)
0 wireless restarts in 16 hours of 2-way high quality video Skype calls (v1.15 would have restarted at least 48 times during this period). NO call drops.
Occasional loading included high-def Hulu playback, 3 streams, 3 separate devices DURING skype calls.
FW v1.22 passes the test.
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i dont have the same luck as you
Sent :993637
TX Packets Dropped :2618
Received :1137565
RX Packets Dropped :709
Errors :51304
Connection time = 1 Day 4 Hour 19 Min 12 Sec
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Your numbers are still much lower as a percentage than what I see with FW1.15 (I see 10%+, yours works out to only 2.4%). I wouldn't worry about it.
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I have very good performance, A2 hardware, 1.14 firmware (see below), although wireless could be better (0.07% error rate ;)). My only real problem is that I have lots of hardware (>40 IP addresses), but 1.14 only allows 24 IP reservations. I would like to upgrade to firmware that addresses this (which was not a problem for my DGL-4300). Does 1.22NA allow more than 24 IP reservations?
Connection Up Time: 6 Day 11 Hour 10 Min 22 Sec
LAN Statistics
Sent :158357319
TX Packets Dropped :11
Collisions :0
Received :164159560
RX Packets Dropped :0
Errors :0
WAN Statistics
Sent :88444280
TX Packets Dropped :0
Collisions :0
Received :150883097
RX Packets Dropped :0
Errors :0
Wireless Statistics
Sent :54415909
TX Packets Dropped :823
Received :27577530
RX Packets Dropped :60614
Errors :57399
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Hardware a2
firmware 1.22
uptime: 8days 2hrs
LAN Statistics
Sent :1479226
TX Packets Dropped :2
Collisions :0
Received :865071
RX Packets Dropped :0
Errors :0
WAN Statistics
Sent :8552352
TX Packets Dropped :0
Collisions :0
Received :40765771
RX Packets Dropped :0
Errors :0
Wireless Statistics
Sent :13430421
TX Packets Dropped :13558
Received :12288958
RX Packets Dropped :31548
Errors :44224
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trying to update to firmware 1.22NA, but it says failed every time.... ???
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This FW downloaded direct from DLink?
DO the following.
Log in and go to System/Tools and Save off your current configuration
Go to System/Tools and do a factory reset.
The upload the FW. You have to unpack the FW file from the ZIP file that you downloaded first. Apply the .bin file using upgrade option and browse out to the .bin file.
After it loads and reboots the 4500. Perform another factory reset again.
Then restore the 4500 from the saved config file. That way you don't have to re-type and re-configure anything. Or start over clean if you like.
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firmware 1.15
A1
LAN Statistics
Sent :4459761
TX Packets Dropped :8
Collisions :0
Received :3336318
RX Packets Dropped :0
Errors :0
WAN Statistics
Sent :12142576
TX Packets Dropped :0
Collisions :0
Received :15748302
RX Packets Dropped :0
Errors :0
Wireless Statistics
Sent :6171479
TX Packets Dropped :0
Received :5021003
RX Packets Dropped :46
Errors :110434