USTommyMC

After messing with the DIR-655 yesterday and discovering a few problems, I am sad to say that I must return the router. I encountered way too many problems while setting it up and I was unsatisfied with its performance.

The router’s feature set was very impressive and I really liked its security options but it had too many bugs or problems that I felt I didn’t have to deal with. My current router is also a D-Link (the DI-634M) and it works wonderfully. All I really wanted was just to upgrade to 802.11n and Gigabit Ethernet.

So what were my problems? Well for one the router wouldn’t get an IP from the cable modem whenever I had to reboot it. I actually had to connect the cable modem back to the DI-634M, let the DI-634M get an IP, and then connect the cable modem back to the DIR-655. That right there is not feasible if I ever sold the DI-634M.

This connecting back and forth is because Time Warner binds your computer’s MAC address to their service and only that MAC address can connect to the Internet. Luckily manufacturers know about this and let you clone your computer’s MAC address on the router. For some reason this wasn’t working too well on the DIR-655.

The other problem was speed. I do a lot of bittorrenting. I use Azureus as my client and with 802.11g on the DI-634M I was getting up to 800Kps in download speed on a good torrent. With the DIR-655 with 802.11n I wouldn’t get anything more than 40Kps. That is extremely unacceptable. I’m sure it is a problem with security settings and I know I could have figured it out eventually but with the rebooting issues it would have been a hassle.

So my only choice is to return the router and research something else. Its sad that my first experience with 802.11n had to end up this way but I’m not one to take this first impression as a lasting impression. I’ll try again at a later time and for now I’ll stick with what works.