Hi,
I wrote about the DMZ-function and my opinion about it (http://forums.dlink.com/index.php?topic=1649.0)
I have to say I'm very disappointed about how the DMZ-function works, as the router keeps blocking stuff from my computer even after DMZ-hosting my IP, that's kinda lame and damn annoying.
And it's also very disappointing that there is clearly noway to completely disable the firewall on this DGL-4500 router. When you turn of the SPI and set the NAT to Endpoint Independent settings, the router still keeps blocking stuff. So the last option is DMZ-hosting your IP-address, which then are supposed to be threaten like the router isn't there at all, so there should be no restrictions or blocking of any kind.
But the router keeps blocking things from my computer.
Even the cheapest routers on the marked these days got a decent working DMZ-function which makes your IP-address have no restrictions or blocking of any kind. But this rather expensive DGL-4500 got no such function, as the DMZ-function is functioning right now I would say it's broken.
It's quite disappointing that with my new expensive DGL-4500 router I'm not able to bypass the firewall, no matter what settings I use considering I'm able to do that on our old router which we bought for several years ago and did actually cost less than the DGL-4500 when we bought it.
The lack of possibility to bypass or completely disable the firmware is unbelievable, this is something you can find in almost any router today. And as it's stated that the router is supposed to have a DMZ-function, which by D-Link themselves is described to work like this "DMZ means "Demilitarized Zone." If an application has trouble working from behind the router, you can expose one computer to the Internet and run the application on that computer. When a LAN host is configured as a DMZ host, it becomes the destination for all incoming packets"
And clearly the DMZ isn't working like that at all, and as there is no other way to get pass the firewall, I would almost go as far as saying that this router doesn't deliver what it promise.
The DMZ-function really needs to fix in a firmware update, and that fast!
Or at least there should be implanted some other option to bypass / completely disable the firewall.
Or else this router is completely useless for people like me, which get stuff we are depended on blocked by the router, and there is no way for us to fix it without simply thrashing the entire router.
Why does the router block the connection of the Age of Conan Patcher in the first place? That's just stupid.
Another thing is that from day one I've had some issues with the internet connection dropping every now and then. I can't stay logged on to Live Messenger for more than like 4hours before the connection being dropped at least once. This is a non-existing issue with our old WRT54G or if I connect myself directly into the modem. So it's clearly the DG-4500 which drops the connection, and that makes me wonder why?
It's not a big problem that the Live Messenger drops the connection every now and then, I can live with that. But that is not the issue, the issue is that the router keeps dropping the connection for no reason.
I also keep getting my connection dropped when I download a few things at once, I was downloading drivers etc for a re-installation of my computer two days ago, and every time I tried to download Logitech SetPoint, QuickCam, GamePanel and the Microsoft Office 2007 Service Pack 1 at once, my connection dropped after a few seconds every single time! I restarted the downloads, then connections got dropped again! I then tried to connect myself to our old WRT54Gv5 and then the connection didn't drop! So there is clearly something not working as it should with the DGL-4500.
When I try do download all the things one-by-one it did work, the connection dropped once, but after that I manage to get them all when connected to the DGL-4500. But all at once, that was impossible, connection dropped every single time! That's god damn annoying, the log doesn't seem to say anything about it either, just about it has blocked some packages (oh really, what a surprise?)
This also happens a lot when I try to download GTA and GTA2 from Rockstar Games, the connection keeps getting dropped while downloading!
These two major issues makes the entire router completely useless for me.
I'm not able to bypass / disable the firewall, that's the least I could expect for an expensive router like this. The DMZ-function is a joke and the damn router for some reason keeps blocking harmless connections, which is a pain in the ass because I'm not able to update Age of Conan (which is a big deal!) This is supposed to be the ultimate gaming router, how covenant isn't it that the router blocks the Age of Conan Updater then?
And on top of that, the router clearly has some huge issues with handling much traffic at once.
The connection gets dropped every now and then, and every single time I'm trying to download a few things at once, the hardware of the router is quite okay so I'm pretty sure this is a firmware issue.
And as D-Link DGL-4500 doesn't support third-part firmwares (which is quite sad, as that would make their products way more attractive and useful) there is no way for us customers to fix these problems on our own, and as these are major issues and in the light of that I think we should be allowed to expect a firmware update within a decent time that address these issues.
The DIR-655, which is a cheaper router have got several firmware update since we've got our last.
And it got by far a better firmware than we currently got, and many of these issues are non-existent on the DIR-655..
So why don't we get any update? All we've got is an old firmware for last year, and a non-updating old BETA firmware. And both got the issues that I've been describing, but the DIR-655 seems to got at least one of them fixed. How come that a cheaper router, with almost the identical hardware as our DGL-4500 get all these updates, and all this attention and we get nothing?
I've heard someone claiming that our DGL-4500 is rather good, well clearly it's not, not by far in my opinion as my DGL-4500 being rather useless for me in the current state.
I would say that the quality and state of our current 1.2 firmware is somewhat comparable with the DIR-655 v1.05 with some minor tweaks. Every DIR-655 firmwares release since v1.05 are superior compared with our firmware. Both their v1.10 and v1.11 is better than ours, and the latest v1.11 is starting to look rather good (still the DMZ-function is a joke though), also the latest DIR-655 BETA firmware is way better than our v1.02 and BETA firmware.
It's not just that the DIR-655 gets way more attention, more and better firmware updates, but even our BETA firmware doesn't seem to get any of the fixes and improvements as the DIR-655 user have been getting and still are getting.
I feel it's a bad customer treatment to leave customers that have paid more for their product with an older firmware, and it doesn't really seem like we can expect any good firmware in the nearest future either.
As the DGL-4500 got almost identical hardware, and therefore almost the identical firmware I can't really see any reason why we never get updates when the DIR-655 gets it.