After monitoring the forum for several months, I decided that the latest version of the Dir-655, 1.34NA, appears to be as stable as can be expected and so attempted to do a firmware upgrade.
When I logged into the Web Admin browser page, the status bar at the top of the pages correctly identified my current firmware as "Hardware Version: A3 Firmware Version: 1.32A"
This was also confirmed on page Status/Device Info/Firmware Version "1.32A 2009/07/09".
I pressed "Check Online for Latest Firmware Version", and received inaccurate message indicating that "This firmware is the Latest Version."
My "Firmware Upgrade Notification Options" are set to automatically check online for new versions and to notify me by e-mail. I've had this router for over two years and I have never been notified that there was ever a new version of the firmware, and do not expect to get a notification anytime soon.
I downloaded the 1.34NA firmware, confirmed the content of the package being the bin level advertised, created a backup of my router configuration and proceeded to upgrade the firmware. After receiving the obligatory warnings not to touch anything or else this procedure might not work, the router uploaded the bin file, and did whatever it does to complete the upgrade. No error messages, nothing unusual in the procedure, and finally I'm back at the Web Admin logon screen.
Immediately something appeared to be amiss. The status bar at the top of the web admin pages still reflected the old firmware version. I thought that maybe the browser was loading a cached version of the the old web page. Logged on and went to Firmware Information screen and it also indicated that the firmware was still at the old version. I reviewed some other pages and noted that the router had in fact rebooted and that the router configuration had not been reset to default settings as a result of the 'upgrade'.
I performed the upgrade a second time and was careful to confirm that I was uploading the correct bin. To no avail.
Any idea what's going on? Is there any other way to determine if the status indicators are wrong and that the new firmware was indeed installed?