well..bit the bullet tonight and did the upgrade...here are the results...
first off...big thank you to dhlee528 for the recovery info...mine too failed on the update to the first file...and your fix got me up and running again...
my big concern was speed, so I tested before and after and must say...folks were right...
was over 4mbps up before the upgrade, and 15-20 down.
after the upgrade..I actually saw a bump in my download speed...testing the same two sites over and over consistently got me above the 20mbps range...and ever subsequent test (while playing with the router settings) made the number go a bit higher...
will say, makes me wonder if that stuff is being manipulated by companies like comcast to make themselves look good.
I also used the FCC test site as well, though not sure if it randomly picks it's test servers, but also was over 4 mbps up.
sure enough, after the test...down was crap..wouldn't go over 1mbps...
looking around, and playing with a few settings, ended up at the QOS upload speed setting...
normally is always set to auto...and getting the crappy upload speed on both test sites, that auto showed either 1024 or some message about not being able to measure.
so..started going up by 1024...and sure enough...it was the magic fix...
ended up setting mine to 5120, and that got me my continued nice download numbers, and above the 4mbps range again..so left it there...may test higher later...but at least I'm back to where it was before the upgrade and then some on the download.
I even turned on advanced dns for the first time just for fun..and the improved speeds held...
I think dlink intentionally or unintentionally changed that detect for the worse...not sure exactly how it does it's measurement, or what the real impact may be on QOS capabilities..but that seems to be at the heart of the slow upload speed.
other than that, so far so good..
will report back in a few days with how some longer term testing is going and I've had a chance to look around to see if there's anything interestingly new and can see how my wireless network is doing.