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[arod]

Post you feedback and comments here.

[iconeater]

First let me say THANK YOU!

Now...

Who among us are going to be the Ginnie Pigs? If there are not enough volunteers I'll put my money where my mouth is, but I'd like to know a few things first.

Can this firmware be Downgraded?  If so, to what limits.

Should this Firmware be done with a complete config redo or can it load saved settings without issue?

How many Official testers from Dlink are there? Are they testing all hardware versions?

I know you stated you've done basic testing to insure it wont brick devices, however in the off chance it does will you be giving RMAs?

Again Thanks!

[Agent007PR]

Hi,

I jumped the gun and flashed. It took at least 7min after flashing count down before it booted. I restored configuration with no problems. Wireless signal at 94%. I'm seeing a lot of TX dropped packets in the wireless as well of RX packets. Any thoughts? Thanks for the beta hope it fixes our problems...

[arod]

I'm assuming Reinvented already upgraded. He's a trusted Beta tester outside of D-Link. It's totally up to you if you want to upgrade and wait for other peoples feedback.

This firmware can be only downgrade as far back to 1.20
You should be able to load a config from 1.20. However, since 1.20 is apparently buggy I would do from scratch anyways.

There are a couple D-link testers for the DGL-4500 firmware. We divided them by router class.

Packet drops can be caused by anything in you wireless environment.. Test out the performance and see if you notice a difference

[Reinvented]

Hi Ru-Fi-Oh, and others,

I just flashed to it.  Immediately, I noticed some quirks with the CAPTCHA authentication.  One being, it kept telling me that I did not have enough permissions to perform certain actions such as making a GameFuel rule.  Even though I was logged in as an administrator.

That is actually VERY annoying, and should be addressed.  However, in my honest opinion, and maybe some others - take it out.  It's absolutely useless, and is only a hindrance for users who cannot read it very well, and it's not a very good way to stop people from breaking in.  The rule of thumb is you should have a good strong password for it, and that's it and you should never have to worry.

The conditions for it to bug out may be leaving it on, and rebooting it later after some major changes to the settings.  Again, take it out.

Gaming has yet to be tested, as I just finished a few minutes ago. 

I will update my post with more stuff as it shows up. 

One of the BIG things that we should test right now is UPnP functionality, as it hasn't been working.  In my opinion, this is the reason as to why the router stops responding to WAN and even LAN.  Try it out with uTorrent (it should be fine).  Do however make sure that in order for you to get UPnP to work properly, you need to make sure there is no port forward rules for it, and that UPnP is checked in the uTorrent client.

Update #1:

Okay guys, I've already finished by battery of tests for the router.  So far, the wireless portion still unfortunately sucks.  Whether it be 2.4 GHz N/G mixed, or G and B mixed, or G only.  Encryption I've always left the same (WPA/WPA2 and AES/TKIP), since this will kinda be a standard for those who have legacy clients who can't quite support WPA2 or AES only.  The wireless speeds suck still, and performance drops off almost immediately. When I test, I do not even bother with 5 GHz, since it's 1) limited to a certain number of channels, and 2) because the range sucks indoors.

I fired up uTorrent, and UPnP does seem to be working properly!

Note here:

[INFO]   Fri Jun 12 17:29:48 2009   UPnP added entry 255.255.255.255 <-> XX.XX.XX.XX:32711 <-> 192.168.0.102:32711 UDP timeout:0 'uTorrent (UDP)'
[INFO]   Fri Jun 12 17:29:48 2009   UPnP added entry 255.255.255.255 <-> XX.XX.XX.XX:32711 <-> 192.168.0.102:32711 TCP timeout:0 'uTorrent (TCP)'

So there, we have it adding entries for both TCP and UDP.

Now, as I move onto my tests, I play a few games here and there.  My life mostly revolves around work, but I have tested playing Battle.net games, and some FPS such as Battlefield 2142, L4D, and CSS. 

Latency is still the same of course, until you end up having huge spikes at times.  Our goal is to get wireless performance ON par with the wired portion.  It hasn't done this for a LONG while.

If you guys can, please test out gaming over wireless, AND wired.  See if you notice a huge drop off in performance.  It is however a wireless gaming router, and should perform as such.

If you use a mix of N/G and 2.4 GHz, please list out your settings.  Mine are as follows:

Channel: Channel 11 - 2.462
Channel Width: Auto 20/40 Hz
Transmission Rate: Auto
Security Mode: WPA-Personal
WPA Mode: Auto (WPA or WPA2)
Cipher Type: TKIP and AES
Group Key Update Interval: 3600

My theory is that N is just completely messed up, and for some reason in the Status page, it ALWAYS shows a channel difference of 4 channels, since 802.11N requires channel bonding to TWO channels.  I have a feeling that it has problems with that.  So if I choose a channel of 11, the secondary channel will be 7.  This might be WHY it has performance problems. 

Now, as far as the rebooting after 3 or 4 days, I've yet to see that.  Normally after my tests, the symptoms would show almost immediately while playing a game.

More will be updated later!

Update #2:

Gaming is still having lots of disconnect issues, and high latency.  I do have QoS turned on, and setup my rules appropriately.  But, I still get random spikes, and I managed to get disconnected twice in a row, within a span of about 2 minutes.  Gaming was okay for first 45 minutes or so.

Still needs some work!

Will update more, to see if it can last longer, without killing WAN or LAN.

Update #3:

Gaming is holding up - sort of.  I noticed that my link speed has dropped significantly compared to 1.15 FW.  I cannot for the life of me get it past 52 Mbps.  It used to be a solid 78 or so in Status -> Wireless, and that was decently okay for gaming.  The spikes still happen, very badly.  Doesn't quite lock me out of wan, but the latency gets so bad, that I check the tab, and it shows it's broadcasting and connecting at around 18 Mbps.  That's pretty bad, and really needs to be fixed.  Wireless gaming should be better, and not result in 7800ms of ping!  It even displays that in the Statetable, after playing a game, with QoS rules engaged, and even without now.  It's getting a bit better for sure.  When it spikes, i cannot access pages for a few seconds, but it turns back to normal.  Doesn't require a reset at all. 

So, with that in mind, we are definitely headed in a better direction.  Just more quirks that needs to be taken care of. 

[iconeater]

Reinvented,

OUTSTANDING Feedback! Although, it  me to hear as I was so hopeful this was going to be the one.

Thank You!  Looking forward to your next post.

[Puffnstuff]

Ok I've flashed to it and have restored my settings.  Only time will tell if this fw works properly and if it doesn't I'll be here *****ing about it.

[K3]

I flashed my router last night probably about 20mins after this beta firmware was uploaded. I reloaded my settings from my saved settings file and everything seemd to hum right along. I had no issues that I know of through out last evening and this morning, although admittedly my use was light. This morning I had my sons each jump on their xbox360s (Both wired connections) while I did some work from one of our laptops (wireless over an 802.11N connection). Everything was fine for about 2 hrs. Then about 10 mins ago the router froze. It was not responsive over wireless or wired, couldn't get to the admin screens nothing. Basically the exact same symptoms as before with the only remedy being to hard reset the router. So it lasted maybe 12hrs total.

This is really getting annoying. I do a lot of work with very large companies with huge networks and systems, I guess it's time to bite the bullet and bring home the same technology I use at work. I guess I'll have to switch over to something that I won't have to reboot almost every day. I'll be paying more for a real router but now it is just a business decision so I can do my work at home. I wonder how much real  Cisco tech has filtered down into their home products.

[Reinvented]

I highly recommend that you don't restore your settings from a file...the reason being is because it can get corrupted, and there's a possibility that the codes don't necessarily match properly.

[iconeater]

I'll second that, If you are up to it. Take screen shots or copy paste setting into notepad or text app depending on OS. Try a complete reset and reload settings.  If it fails in the same manner then we know 100% issue is not resolved.

[defaultPlayer]

I just experienced the same slowdown issue and had an uptime of roughly 22 hrs before it occured.  Nothing seems to have been fixed at addressing this issue here.

I've also noticed wireless link speeds are HORRIBLY the same as with 1.20.  My network connected HDTV that used to get speeds in the 240-270 mbps range on wireless-N (5GHz) with firmware 1.15 and below now only gets 6-13 mbps with 1.20 and this beta.  It's signal strength is still the same (~50%) so there's no new interference.

I am currently checking UPnP with WHS to see if at least SOMETHING appears to have been fixed on my end with this beta.  As of this moment I personally have seen no improvement from 1.20 to 1.21.

[OtilioDJ]

After dealing with the 1.20 FW fiasco I have been sitting and waiting patiently for a fix. I downloaded and flashed my router several hours ago & like so many of us who have been stymied with inoperable FW's , am taking a wait and see attitude. I will say this, I did the 30/30/30 reset and configured my router from scratch! So far so good. Like I said time will tell. I will provide as much info as I can as things develop, hopefully all good. Thanks to all who have contributed fixes  to this major problem. Your help and time is greatly appreciated.

[iconeater]

I just experienced the same slowdown issue and had an uptime of roughly 22 hrs before it occured.  Nothing seems to have been fixed at addressing this issue here.

I've also noticed wireless link speeds are HORRIBLY the same as with 1.20.  My network connected HDTV that used to get speeds in the 240-270 mbps range on wireless-N (5GHz) with firmware 1.15 and below now only gets 6-13 mbps with 1.20 and this beta.  It's signal strength is still the same (~50%) so there's no new interference.

I am currently checking UPnP with WHS to see if at least SOMETHING appears to have been fixed on my end with this beta.  As of this moment I personally have seen no improvement from 1.20 to 1.21.

I just got heartburn. 

Come on Dlink put the A-Team on this fix, not the summer interns.

[Cindy Brady]

This firmware sounds like my cousin Oliver. Oh! I hate him.

[defaultPlayer]

Just a followup to my last post - UPnP with WHS is still broken and the UPnP port forwarding rules disappear after 10-15 minutes.

Additionally, as far as the wireless link speed goes for me it only seems to give low results with 802.11n and not 802.11a.  I only use the 5GHz mode with this router since it's not simultaneous dualband and I have another AP that is used for 2.4GHz.

Sadly, none of the major firmware flaws have been fixed with this beta.