Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[icemankent]

Thanks man - this will be an interesting experiment.
The 655 does "work" technically, but is horrible to configure/use via its interface.
I am living with it only because it is a "temporary" solution while I wait for my 4500 to be shipped back to vancouver, have them do the RMA thing, then ship me back a new one.
I really am starting to think that there are a ton of "lemons" out there - not too sure why Dlink has such shoddy manufacturing QualityAssurance, but it is obvious from looking through all the posts that some lucky people have the "gems", whereas many of us - for no appreciable reason at all - get lemons.

One thing regarding my 4500.
When I got it, I immediately upgraded its firmware to 1.23na.  It came loaded with 1.21.
I am wondering now, if I should have tested it first with the original firmware to see if all worked.
Perhaps I could have DOWNgraded the 4500 back to 1.21 and tested before going the route of returning it to the online store I bought it from.
Oh well, one way or another, this story is not over, and you can be sure that I'll post what ends up happening.

I just have to grit my teeth and put up with the 655 for a few weeks....somehow.....I will try to survive it.

[FurryNutz]

Ok, Ya I was looking at the dir-655 emulator just a few minutes ago..seems like its not very user friendly. 

I see there are some issues with it in that forum but nothing related to UI operations.

Here's a good rule of thumb I try to uphold when working with any piece of HW, Electronic or non. "if it works, don't fix it!" Always try the units that are already loaded and make sure it works right out of the box. Always. If there seems to be a problem, upgrading to the latest and greatest may not always fix the issue and leaving the real issue still to be fixed. (These units work great on any FW version they released save one. V1.21 had been known to be buggy for some of us that tried it. That's not saying that not everyone saw the same issue for this version. Some people on here have it loaded are are having great experiences with it.)

Always troubleshoot the issue until all resources have been exhausted with FW that comes loaded in the box. If at that point the issue hasn't been resolved, then review the details of FW updates and apply them and then test the results again. If at that point the issue hasn't been resolve then there might be due cause for calling up CS and asking for and RMA.

There is always the possibility that there are lemons out there. However going through some troubleshooting to figure out if it is needs to be done is key first. Why I'm getting my friends returned RMA 4500 from him and see whats going on with it and to test on a different ISP network system. Were looking to see if his issue travels or not. This is apart of troubleshooting.

I've talked to some people about our issues and the majority of the time issues stem from user configurations and setup. The rest and seem to be a small part and agree with you to a point that there are some HW failures on this unit.

BTW, Vancouver B.C? Was curious, I'm headed to Victoria B.C. for the holidays. 

[icemankent]

Yeah I bought it online from a company in Vancouver BC - I am in Ottawa ON, so shipping is an unfortunate reality.
There are NO local retailers in Ottawa that sell the 4500, unfortunately.

[FurryNutz]

Well hope it gets figured out man. Let us know how it goes.

[Hard Harry]

Update:
I bought a dir-655 last night (as a temporary replacement until I get new 4500).
What a nightmare !!

I cannot wait to return it to the store (but have to wait for my replacement 4500 first).

The dir-655 is buggy and slooooow !!!
(No wireless restarts, though from what I can tell from their cryptic logs !).
The web interface on the 655 is at least 5 times slower (no joke) compared to the 4500.
Almost every change/update you save on the 655 requires a restart - typically 30 seconds or so (wasted).
At first, this 655 was not "seeing" any hard wired or wireless clients.  I had no idea why - it almost seemed that it was not aggressive enough at giving out dhcp ip addresses.
EVENTUALLY, it populated itself with clients, so then I decided to reserve ips for these devices.
I almost ripped this router off the desk and threw it into the garbage it was soooo frustrating to set up.
The router got confused about ip addresses and what was dhcp vs reserved so many times that even after "saving" the changes, things did not set up correctly.
I actually had to reset to factory settings and reboot this thing about 3 times - just to try and get it configured properly.
Even now, with all clients connected, when I go to the status screen and click on wireless - it takes (forever) to populate the screen and is hit and miss whether it actually decides to display the wireless connected clients or not.  Unbelievable !
Regarding QoS, I have set up different priorities for traffic and when I check the internet sessions, it does display the streams,  however it does not display the priority - so i have NO way to verify if my QoS is working or not.
Regarding the logs - for some reason they LOOK very different than what I am used to on the 4500.  For one, they are broken into MANY pages, rather than allowing them all to be viewed on one page, which makes navigating the info a pain.  Plus, many of the messages it displays are strange:
For example, what is all this garbage ?

Priority Time Message
info Dec 14 21:05:12  [ 5641.620000] m_table count= 1 Del 01005e00 00fc000b 
info Dec 14 21:04:14  [ 5583.620000] m_table count= 2 Del 01005e7f fffa000b 
info Dec 14 20:54:28  UDHCPD Inform: add_lease 192.168.0.67 
info Dec 14 20:54:24  UDHCPD Inform: add_lease 192.168.0.67 
info Dec 14 20:48:56  [ 4665.780000] m_table count= 2 Add 01005e7f fffa000a 
info Dec 14 20:48:45  UDHCPD sending OFFER of 192.168.0.55 
info Dec 14 20:48:18  [ 4627.470000] m_table count= 1 Add 01005e00 00fc000a 
info Dec 14 20:48:00  UDHCPD sending OFFER of 192.168.0.97 
info Dec 14 20:47:57  [ 4606.000000] module arch cleanup nf_ubicom_streamengine_default_classifier: OCM instruction memory free of 0 @00000000 
info Dec 14 20:47:55  [ 4604.940000] module arch cleanup sch_ubicom_streamengine: OCM instruction memory free of 0 @00000000

What a collossal nightmare.  I cannot imagine how Dlink can get away with selling such a shoddy product.
Perhaps the processor on the 655 is junk, I don't know, but I have a theory.
The HARDWARE revision of the unit is B1.
It would almost seem that Dlink does a good job on their routers with the FIRST/original Hardware revision.
When they make a newer version, the problems seem to start.

Even Furry noted that his 4500's are on A1 (which work fine), and most problems are on devices with A2 (which mine is).

This dir-655 is on version B1 - so who knows "what" they've done to the hardware to make it this excrutiatingly frustrating to work with.
In the store, they only had 655s with h/w rev B1, so no luck there.

I only hope that I get my replacement 4500 soon, so I can take this white albatross back to the store for a refund - as its buggy behavior is making my blood boil !

Yea, that does sound like one of the firmware bugs people were talking bout on the DIR-615 forums. I don't like some of attitudes on the forum though so fair warning. Anyone that uses racial stereotypes in their rants should be banned. ::shrug:: JMHO.

BTW, whats the hardware revision of your DIR-655, I suspect you have a import. From someone who has used a 655, I can tell you that log is not normal at all.

[icemankent]

The 655 is hardware verion B1, running firmware 2.00na.
I checked (all 22) of the boxes they had on the shelves and they were all the same.

[Hard Harry]

Well I dug around, and looks like the B1 was first release in Taiwan.

Picture of both

Looks like the B1 was released there first, but with a firmware update 11/26/10 while the newest firmware here is 9/16/10. The main different looks cosmetic, a different case and lights to match the newer look. Who knows what is under the hood though. Also because the router came out in Augest in Taiwan, how can the first Taiwan firmware build have a build date of 11/26/10? Unless they shipped with the firmware of a different hardware revision. And I am wondering if thats what it is. If the B1 has the latest firmware of the A3 just with a different name. Its over 6MB so it appears to be a stock firmware, so its hard to say. All I really know is those logs look like firmware errors. Anytime you can see under a GUI's skirt like that, its not a good thing.

PS. Awsome Icon.

[icemankent]

UPDATE:
They are (finally) sending me a new 4500 (the company I bought it from).
I got an email that they have just shipped it via Purolator (from Vancouver to Ottawa).
I estimate about 4 days max.  Meanwhile I will continue to enjoy my Netgear WNDR3700.

WHEN it arrives, I will NOT upgrade the firmware right away.
I'll set it up like the last time and babysit it.
If this one gives me the same wireless restart BS, then I will send this back and swear off D-Link for good.

BTW, I know many on here feel that there must be some magical combination of (configuation settings) that will make these routers behave.  I am starting to believe that if these routers were worth anything at all, they would not be so flaky as to be affected by simple configuration settings - which the router enables you to make in the first place.

It shouldn't be this difficult to make the router perform properly.

[FurryNutz]

Well that maybe true however not all or everyone has issues. Sorry that you've had a bad experience. I hope this one will be fixed. I enjoy mine. I do understand that there are some lemons out there. Just bad luck I guess. Better luck is out there. Let us know.

[LookIntoMyEyees]

I was helping a user through private message, he has the Dir 615 and Port forwarding was not working for him nor did my rules. I even tried DMZ but so far nothing worked out. I guess the router deserves a replacement. Anyways, he might purchase a 4500 the best routers available!

--
Chris

[icemankent]

I received my (new-replacement) 4500 a couple of days ago.

I did not upgrade the firmware to 1.23 (it came with 1.21 loaded on it).

I manually configured the router (instead of loading the config file I had for the previous 4500).

I am HAPPY to report that in the 4 days it has been "up", I have not had ANY wireless restarts.

If things continue to work properly, then I will not upgrade the firmware to 1.22 or 1.23.

The only mystery that remains is if my whole wireless restart issue was due to a bad wireless radio in my first router, or if it was due to the 1.23 firmware.
I guess I'll find out when the day comes that I am either brave or stupid enough to upgrade the firmware.

Lastly, can someone please let me know about the "wan slowdown" issue that 1.22 fixed ?
How did this issue manifest itself - ie, how long did it take to happen, and what did it look like, what was the fix for it, etc - (if the symptoms were not intuitively obvious).

[FurryNutz]

Good to hear man. Glad you got it back and it's running well. I would save off your Configuration to file and keep it safe for later use.

Some people saw the wireless hang and WAN slowdown and hang on v1.21. Some of us didn't. I did. Seem to crop off after being on for like a day or 2. Then I would come home from work and nothing would get connected to the Internet. Would have to power cycle the router to fix it. After I beta tested follow-ons for DLink, finally v1.22 fixed those issues and remains fixed in v1.23.

If your having good experiences with thats loaded now. KEEP IT! Don't upgrade until you really need to.

Gonna give up on the DIR-655? 

[icemankent]

Yeah, I gave up on the 655 as it was garbage from day 1.

I returned it before my 30 day return expired - then replaced it with a temporary Netgear wndr3700).

Now that I have a working 4500, I have returned the the Netgear.
I am now liking my 4500 - again.

So far so good !

[FurryNutz]

YAAAAAAAAY! 

[LookIntoMyEyees]

O snap, can't be left out. YAAAAAAAY!

--
Chris