D-Link Forums
The Graveyard - Products No Longer Supported => Routers / COVR => DIR-655 => Topic started by: knild556 on December 06, 2009, 12:20:25 PM
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Hi guys,
If a network only has G adaptors would having this N router or any N router provide for faster speeds, greater coverage and better stability in the 2.4 Ghz band than with a G router? Or will the N router simply be a glorified G? Are there advantages to using an N router over a G when no N adaptors are on clients?
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This is only my experience: mixed mode has been a pain and never really given me the best out of the router, until I dug my old router out, stuck the 655 on N only and bridged the old router to make a seperate (and seperate channel) G network. That way as I go along I have the best of both and can phase out my wireless G devices eventually. It also helps in areas of the house the N just won't reach very well (my experience is N is a lot less effective penetrating walls etc).
Having the N router means I can run some devices that require N mode, like my Linksys DMA2100 wireless media extender. I also have my slingbox stuck on N.
As a final note though I would advise against buying this particular router at the moment as it has a lot of firmware issues and has degraded steadily in performance since the 1.21 firmware. Have a look about and you will see there is a particular king of N routers atm that is a much better buy. I say this with a tinge of sadness as my old DIR-655 used to be the bees knees until they introduced a load of bugs they cannot fix. Just check the forums if you need any convincing ;) I will keep mine until the Januiary sales anyway to see if there is a firmware upgrade that fixes things - if not I'm off and this one can go on ebay.
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The DIR-655's left are H/W A4 FW 1.21 so they should be good to go if I don't upgrade the FW. That's a really cool setup tentimes and thanks for explaining that but I'd still like to know:
Will an N router running on G band give ANY advantage to a G band only, router?
:)
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You won't get faster speeds as such, but you will most likely (especially on 1.21) get a much steadier throughput because the thing is designed to meet the rigours of much faster streams. Basically it will probably beat your old G router if you just have it on G. It has a great feature set and the QoS seems to work well. All things combined I think you will get a steadier connection, especially if you are streaming movies and stuff.
One of the things that caused me to buy the router is it copes well with lots of connections, has a big data throughput and good features. Until I upgraded from 1.21 it was unbeatable in my book.
Even with current problems and it not being as good as it was, I have it running my 50MB cable connection with a server that I use utorrent on a lot (I can get steady 4GBit downloads on), it streams my TV well and I can watch movies in my bedroom. Gaming is crap right now due to the constant stutters, but maybe they will fix it.
If you're wireless G network works well and does all you want it to though, I can't see much benefit in upgrading.
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Thank you very much tentimes, it's all clear now! :)