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[smaug42]

I've just picked up a D-Link router based on recommendations from other owners, and... I'm not having much success getting it to configure properly.

The upstream network is fine.  I've got another router from another manufacturer that I can test with, and it works 100%, but when the D-Link is used, I find that there are some websites that I can never load, but others load fine.

Service: VDSL using PPPoE, Dynamic IP with reconnect mode set to always on
Stand alone modem: Tilgin HG1311i, and modem is bridged
Router is D-Link DIR 635, Firmware Version: 2.34EU, Hardware Version: B3
DHCP is enabled using defaults, 2 computers on the LAN are on reserved IPs
Virtual Server, set up Port 80 for HTTP, and a custom port for SSH to one of the computers with a reserved address
Firewall: SPI enabled, UDP/TCP is Endpoint Independent enabled, Anti-spoof is off, DMZ is off
Advanced Network: UPnP enabled (started disabled, but a forum entry suggested it be set back to on). Multicast is set to on.
All other settings are defaults/not used


Symptoms:  Some websites will not load while connecting via the D-Link router.  For example, http://www.speedtest.net  http://mail.yahoo.com and http://www.hvv.de will not load.  If I remove the D-Link router and connect a Netgear with similar settings/configuration, the websites load immediately.  Swap back to the D-Link and the pages never load.  But... other websites will load fine.

It's not limited to the three example websites I used here... these are just three common sites that present as an example of websites that will never load while using the D-Link router.  Other websites such as http://mail.google.com http://www.cnn.com and http://www.dyndns.com load up just fine.

This issue is consistent across Linux, Windows and Android operating systems, and was tested on both wired and wireless connections... and it shows the same odd behavior.

I'm not sure how to track this issue down... especially so considering that the issue is intermittent... where some sites load and others do not.

Any ideas?

[FurryNutz]

Are you wired or wireless connected to the router?

Some things to try:
Turn off ALL QoS or Disable Traffic Shaping (DIR only) GameFuel (DGL only and if ON.) options. Advanced/QoS or Gamefuel.
Turn off Advanced DNS Services if you have this option under Setup/Internet/Manual.
Turn on DNS Relay under Setup/Networking.
Setup DHCP reserved IP addresses for all devices ON the router. Setup/Networking
Ensure devices are set to auto obtain an IP address.
Set Firewall settings to Endpoint Independent for TCP and UDP under Advanced/Firewall.
Enable uPnP and Multi-cast Streaming under Advanced/Networking.

What wireless modes are you using? Under Setup/Wireless/Manual.
Try single mode G or mixed G and N?
Channel Width set for Auto 20/40Mhz or try 20Mhz only.
What security mode are you using? Preferred security is WPA-Personal. WPA2/AES Only. Some WiFi adapters don't support AES, so you might want to try TPIK only or Auto.
What wireless devices do you have connected?
Any cordless house phones?
Any other WiFi routers in the area? Use InSSIDer to find out.
Turn off Short GI and Extra Wireless Protection if you have it. Under Advanced/Advanced Wireless.

Turn off all anti virus and firewall programs on PC while testing. 3rd party firewalls are not generally needed when using routers as they are effective on blocking malicious inbound traffic.
Turn off all devices accept for one wired PC while testing.

Check cable between Modem and Router, swap out to be sure. Cat6 is recommended.

[smaug42]

As I stated in my original posting,

QoS, Traffic shaping etc is all off (defaults)
No advanced DNS services enabled (defaults)
DNS Relay is on (defaults)
DHCP addresses are reserved
Firewall settings are set to Endpoint
UPnP/Multicast is enabled.

Wireless modes is set to mixed (defaults)... is that relevant?  The testing is 100% done on wired devices.  I have 2 wireless devices which exhibit identical behavior to the wired devices... where some sides load and others do not.  Testing was only done once on wireless devices, and then all testing moved to wired-only.
Wireless security mode is WPA Personal
Wireless devices - Android mobile phone, Android tablet
No cordless phones - no land lines either
Loads of other WiFi routers (apartment building) - but the problem isn't with WiFi connectivity... it's across all devices wired and wireless.
I use Linux... so no antivirus utils, and my firewalls are correctly configured.
Disconnected all devices and disabled wireless... still the same behavior.
Cables are 100% OK.  I use the exact same CAT6 cabling when I swap over to the Netgear router to check the connections.

Basically... the Netgear gives me 100% connectivity, and the D-Link is something like 80%.  For any random site I pick it's a 80/20 chance it'll connect.  if I don't see immediate page load, then it'll never load the page.  I move on to a known working site.. and the page loads almost instantly (no, it's not my caching... I checked that)

So... basically everything is as suggested - I saw the postings suggesting these steps already on the forum while looking for answers, and tried to list those points in my initial posting to show that I had tried all the standard things already.  I've rebooted the router - soft and hard reset... and still the same behavior.

[FurryNutz]

What region are you located?
You don't need Virtual Server for Port 80.

I would factory reset once more and set up the PPPoE again with Always ON selected and then reserve the IP addresses of the PCs ON the router, not on the PCs themselves.

Set up Firewall for Endpoint again and go from there.

[smaug42]

I'm located in the EU (Germany)

If I don't set up a Virtual Server or Port Forwarding on port 80, my local Apache2 server will not serve up pages on request.  Same with the other custom port I use to SSH tunnel to my computer from external.  With the Virtual Servers set up I can currently see my webserver and SSH tunnel from PCs outside my LAN as expected.. this is working fine.  If I disable the port 80 forwarding, it makes no difference in the odd behavior I am experiencing.

I did a factory reset on teh D-Link router, and configured my PPPoE connection.  I set the time, set up Wireless as WPA Personal and set the Wireless password.  I reserved the MACs for all connected devices (2 PCs, NAS, 2 wireless Android devices). I set the Firewall to Endpoint and enabled Multicast.

No changes in the behavior of the connection after the reset.  I can get to some sites and cannot contact others. 

The confusing part here is the half working status.  It's not like I've got no connectivity at all... I do have SOME connectivity.  Some websites load exactly as I expect.  I type in the URL in any browser (tested several browsers with clean user profiles, aka no cache etc.) and if I go to something like the CNN site or Hipmunk, it works... but if I try to load Yahoo or HVV.de it just times out.  These are not obscure sites with high downtime... but well known sites.

If it was a complete fail in connectivity, I'd just assume a defective router, but half connectivity, half fail?  When that happens I look to settings... thinking maybe there is a misconfiguration somewhere... I cannot find it though.  I'm really out of ideas.

[smaug42]

One possible clue here... sometimes.. not always, but sometimes when a known working URL is not accessible while using the D-Link router, I will see a D-Link error page.  It's almost as if the D0Link router is redirecting to a D-Link DNS server... but I've checked and the custom DNS server settings are default (0.0.0.0)... so I assume it's using my ISP DNS... but.... I'm not 100% certain.  I do not believe I should see a D-Link error page in my browser when a webpage times out and will not load.... again this is VERY intermittent - not all timesouts show this page.. just some.

EDIT: OK, so I tried adding Google's Public DNS servers in the configuration and it made no difference in the ability to load websites that refuse to load in other tests.

Could this be a flaky router?  I would expect that if it was defective, it would not work at all vs allow data from some sites and not from others.

I've checked the router logs and they are loaded with firewall block messages... it's as if I've got an overzealous firewall.

[FurryNutz]

Can you post a sample of the log entries?
What happens if you turn off SPI as a test?

[smaug42]

The router has been taken out of the LAN, and is being boxed up for return to the shop - it is either defective, or is incompatible with my needs (for example I need to forward port 80 for the Apache server, and when I do this it increases the number of sites that are inaccessible.. it does not make all sites inaccessible... just more than if it's not doing a port forward). 

I appreciate your attempts to help me sort this out.

Now I have to decide... do I try again with D-Link or go with another manufacturer.  Is this sort of behavior the same with all models?  Other people I've talked to say no, that they've never had a D-Link behave in this way... (using other models such as the DIR-825)

[FurryNutz]

Anything is possible and could be related to your ISP network as well.
Try the DIR-825. I enjoy mine.