D-Link DI-624 Wireless Cable/DSL Router, 4-Port Switch, 802.11g, 108Mbps

10 Review to this product

• 

  athooya
  October 15th, 2010 on 9:24 pm

  Rating

  This router packs a lot of features (punches) for a relatively low price. It is easy to set up on my PC through a wizard, although in my case, I have to also reset the router by turning the power off and on. After this initial setup, it works like a charm. It has great range. My router is tucked away on the second floor and I can still get good signal in the basement from a laptop with a matching d-link DWL-G650 card. My other laptop, a Mac Powerbook G4, can also connect at b mode with no tweaking on my part. Great compatibility as well.

  As for problems that some reviewers here complained about, I highly recommend downloading the latest firmware which fixes the following problems :

  1) Full compliance with the final, ratified 802.11g standard
  2) SSID broadcast can now be disabled for better security

  To the reviewer who complained that his Win XP laptop recognizes his DWL-G650 pc card and connects to the wireless network, but that the d-link’s own utility can not see the card and the network ? The problem is that Win XP assigns to the card its own generic driver. You have to download the latest driver from d-link, uninstall the Win XP driver, and then tells Win XP to install/update manually the driver from d-link! Here are the detailed steps :
  Go to control panel –> system –> device manager –> network adapter –> DWL-G650 whatever …
  Uninstall the Win XP driver for the card. Pull out the card and insert it back in. In the Windows new hardware setup wizard, click on set up/find driver manually, and then browse to the folder where you have unzipped and installed the latest d-link driver and utility. After this, the d-link utility will be able to see and configure the card and manage the wireless network.

  Overall, this is a great wireless g router with a good support site. Very satisified and highly recommended!
• 

  R. Reuben
  October 17th, 2010 on 11:30 am

  Rating

  This router is my first wireless one ever and I am very pleased with the purchase. After a lot of research, I decided on the D-Link. I have read that LinkSys routers set the standard for ease of use, but I cannot really imagine how much easier installation and setup can get! Honestly, I had the router setup in under 10 minutes with my laptop connected to my cable modem and accessing the internet via the router’s LAN port (i.e. ethernet cable). The router sports some nice firewall features. I was not too impressed with the online help however. Several options that the router offers for configuration were not described in the online help (stored in router firmware). The D-Link support site has decent information, perhaps enough for you to get most problems taken care of. However, I had an issue when using the D-Link DWL-G650 card with WAP security which after about 6 hours of frustration got resolved in about 5 minutes with a phone call to customer service. Anyway, this was no fault of the router itself since the blame lies on the outdated driver D-Link ships with the PC card. I use AT&T VPN solution to access my office network and the router works just fine. The DHCP server came up just fine and my machines were happily on the network via wires.
  Pros:
  - easy to setup
  - good security features
  - D-Link website has pretty good cust service info
  - IPSEC VPN passthrough worked without any issues
  Cons:
  - online help included in firmware not the best
  - Several advanced options of firewall etc not very well documented (ie. not that easy to use for those inexperience with advanced security settings)
  Overall, I’d give this router a 4.5 stars and would definitely consider it a good buy for both the novice as well as experienced computer users.
• 

  Steven E. Joseph
  October 18th, 2010 on 5:36 pm

  Rating

  This is my third wireless system. The last either had bad reception problems, bad connection problems or just stopped working. They both were SMC systems. They both were small nightmares to get up and running, and of course customer support sucked. I got rid of my last wireless system which was 802.11a which I bought because I thought it was much better. I am not a computer wiz I’ll admit that but this technology should be easy for people like me to set up and use. I am who they sell this stuff to.

  I read reviews and decided to get this system with the D-link DWL-G650. I held my breath when I started setting it up. I was waiting for the minute when I would realize that I would need to call customer support. That didn’t happen. This system did almost set itself up. I have a 2.4GHz phone and it doesn’t seem to effect the range. I live in a brick house and I just went outside in my driveway, on the other side of house from where my wireless router is set up and I was getting almost 100% full signal strength. The online interface is very easy to use and the instructions are easy to follow. I did upgrade the firmware before I set up any of the hardware and the 108Mbps system is up and running. I can’t say if this system will work tomorrow, but today I am very suprised at how it works.
• 

  gimmiemycoffee
  October 19th, 2010 on 10:17 am

  Rating

  I have this router along with the laptop adapter from D-Link. I can be anywhere in my home and get a strong signal. This was easy to set up and works seamlessly with my wifes laptop that uses 802.11b still. When she isn’t isn’t home or when her PC is off it seems to me that I can get slightly better transfer speeds.

  I am mainly concerned with everything working well across both “B” and “G” not so much with the speed capabilities.
  This router, like other D-Link products I’ve tried, has a simple and intuative interface that allows you to change a wide array of things so you feel more in control. Or you can just leave them as default and be on your merry way.

  For me, it has worked as advertised and it feels good. It isn’t very often that you can get something this complex in features at such a low price, and on top of that so easy to use.
• 

  Anonymous
  October 19th, 2010 on 7:09 pm

  Rating

  The Dlink DI-624 router/wireless AP is working great. I bought this when I bought a new Mac w/ Airport Extreme (802.11g)… It plays very friendly w/ both Macs and PCs, and Dlink is on the few companies out there who specifically advertises that they support mac (I know they all do since it’s not software specific, but it’s nice for them to at least give effort!!)

  The Router is very good… it was setup w/ my cable modem in moments, with a few more minutes of looking around (didn’t touch a manual except to learn the default login procedure) I was able to have the router configured to my specific private IP address range (this was replacing another unit, so I wanted to keep everything the same). I was also able to setup the unit to email me logs of renewals/connections (just to be sure my neighbors aren’t using it!)

  The wireless has been flawless so far… the speed is quick, while I haven’t done any exact measurements, I can say that’s it’s a big boost over 802.11b from what I’ve seen so far.

  The range has been great too… the unit is setup in the utility room of my basement, the room where my laptop is most often used is also in the basement… but I’m able to go the top level and still have connection… looking forward to nicer weather so I can go outside with it!

  It’s much bigger (physically) then I expected… but it’s on a shelf next to my furnace so what do I care… but if you’re going to have this sitting on your desk or shelf, keep the size in mind.
• 

  Senor Zoidbergo
  October 19th, 2010 on 9:03 pm

  Rating

  I did quite a bit of research on wireless routers before finally going with this product from D-link. Security wise, you shouldn’t have to worry, b/c not only does it have WEP and WPA-PSK features, it should be fully compatible (thru a firmware update) with the new security standards coming out with the 802.11i upgrade this summer. It also allows VPN passthrough, so I was able to connect to my company’s network from home.

  I am pretty familiar with computers, though knew nothing of wireless routers on my setup. The setup was easy, and the web interface easy to use, though I have yet to explore all the different options. Overall speed is very fast (used in conjunction with the wireless card DWL-650), around 40 MBPs on the first floor (80% signal strength), and ~ 30 mpbs (70% signal strength) upstairs. Range is good, although strangely, I only get a 60% reading 1 foot from the base station. I live in a large brick house, with perhaps one other wireless connection from my neighbors.

  I did encounter the trademark problem of initially having the router reboot every few minutes back to April 1, 2002. If you read the boards carefully, it’s recommended that you do a full factory reset (some junk leftover on the memory needs to be cleared out), and make sure that you hold the button in for at least 30 seconds, leaving the power on, then off, then on again. By then, the load firmware page should appear on the web interface, and you can load the latest firmware (2.48 I think). (After loading the firmware, it doesn’t tell you when it’s done, so you’ll have to go ahead and reboot both your computer and the router.)

  Also, disable any built-in internal wireless cards you might have; I had an Intel Wireless Pro 2100 on my IBM Thinkpad that was causing problems with the functioning of the DWL-650.

  After applying those two fixes, my network has been running flawlessly. Tech support is 24/7, and I got help from a very helpful tech that was fortunately based in the US!

  I intend to buy the signal booster and usb wireless adapter (for my printer) to eventually establish a true wireless network.

  Am very happy with the products!
• 

  A. Beckerman
  October 20th, 2010 on 4:57 am

  Rating

  I received this yesterday and got it for a a great price (…). It was lower than other comparable products and offers the increased network speed.

  Out of the box, I was able to plug it in and be up and running right away (of course without WLAN security or other customizations) despite operating previously with hard-coded internal IPs. Honestly, the hardest part was remembering how to reassign my network printer from a 192.168.1.x address to a 192.168.0.x address (ended up just using DHCP which I didn’t use previously for security reasons).

  My environment consists of two laptops (1 XP and 1 W2K) on wireless (the 128-bit WEP encryption was a snap to set up — a first for me for my WLAN), a LAN-wired Brother network printer, a ReplayTV, a Win98 desktop and an XP desktop (this computer). So as a power-user, I needed a solid device and this one seems to be doing it so far (1 day in).

  One important thing to take note: I modified all of the settings in the control administrator (awesome emulator to try out on d-link’s website by the way) and even saved the settings to my hard drive so as not the lose them in the future in case of the need for a factory reset. However, when I got to the firmware section, I was out of date by 1 revision and when you update the firmware, you CANNOT reload saved settings. So, UPDATE THE FIRMWARE PRIOR TO CHANGING ANY SETTINGS OTHER THAN THE PASSWORD (because it will continue to prompt for the password every time you click until you change it).

  Once past that, everything else was a breeze including some great extra features such as time-sync to a time server, UPNP support, DDNS updating (I can uninstall DirectUpdate now since this has built-in support for dyndns.org, easydns.com, and no-ip.com accounts if you host from your own computer).

  All that’s left is to configure the firewall and specify which ports I want to open to the outside (other than WLAN access, it comes already locked down out of the box which is great).

  Performance has been great also, but so far I haven’t run any tests or tried to compare the network traffic speed from what I had before (old router conked out anyway). There are at least no noticeable lockups, freezes, delays or other issues with the network traffic that others seem to have reported.

  So, so far, this device has been a snap to set up (total time spent, maybe a few hours, but that would be much less for someone not needing to reconfigure a network printer or for someone that follows my above tip so as not to lose extra time). I didn’t need any tech support so I can’t comment on that, but for the price, performance and features I would highly recommend this for anyone looking to add or replace a router (at least for now since it’s still a bit early to identify any long-term issues).

  Just to add to the review…since posting the other day, I realized that I was using a weaker form of security in the form of WEP and so attempted WPA-PSK setup. I had some issues with it, specifically related to DHCP, despite it seeming to be straight-forward (even after upgrading all of my NIC card drivers) and had to call tech support. They replicated what I had already done before passing me over to Level 2. In Level 2, they told me to force an IP which worked, but this is a less-than-perfect solution for wireless if you travel with a laptop and roam from network to network. We even tried the Windows Alternate Configuration that exists in SP2 and that didn’t work. A few hours later and still in the same situation…. I finally beat the computer by changing the starting IP address range to be 10 instead of 100. For whatever reason, the laptop was able to wirelessly pick up an IP in a lower range through DHCP using WPA-PSK once I made the change. Even though that was a hassle, I’m glad it’s over with and still feel pretty good about this little thing.
  
• 

  rbr28
  October 20th, 2010 on 6:46 am

  Rating

  I’m a systems administrator and have years of experience working with networking equipment, and this is one of the best, if not the best product in it’s category. I have always been happy with D-Link products but I was a bit skeptical with this one because of the mixed reviews. I took a chance and I definitely was surprised, as this product is even better than any of the other previous D-Link products I have used. Where can I begin…first of all make sure you get rev. C, not A or B. I have a lot of networking knowledge, but most people who would consider this product could at least have an internet connection with it in a few minutes. Despite it’s simple easy to use setup interface, the features are unmatched in any product in it’s class. D-Link is always good about releasing significant firmware updates and this prodcut is no exception. Everything you read in reviews about this product, that users complain about, has been fixed with future firmware revisions. For example, they added MAC reservations, they added an option for 802.11G only mode, they now have 108Mb/s support (although you need their network card for this). etc. I can’t go into detail in this space about the excellent features, but let me say that I have a very sophisticated home network and this is the only home router that does the job for me. Multiple VPN connections, using PTP or IPSEC work great on this thing, WITHOUT turning off the firewall (read the fineprint with other products). The product does port redirection not just port forwarding (again look at similar products). This product is also very useful if you are looking for a product that can help limit what your kids can do. More features for restricting Internet Access than any home router I have seen. Oh, and range is excellent I get 54Mb/s anywhere in my 3 bedroom house, and I get good signal strength all the way out to our street (and beyond) at about 5.5Mb/s. Mixed 802.11b and 802.11g clients also work very well, contrary to what some others have said. Anyway, I have had no problems with this product whatsoever, and it’s one of the best pieces of networking equipment I have ever used.
• 

  B. T. Denyer
  October 20th, 2010 on 8:02 am

  Rating

  I had bought a D-Link wireless router, and later found that I chose the “b” type router. What a waste: 11mbs, bad reception, the works.

  I then upgraded to this router and found:

  - I no longer have any dead spots in the house

  - NO interference with the cordless phone

  - reception across the street!!

  - true 108 megabytes per second connection, BUT ONLY after I upgraded the firmware at the D-Link site. Upgrading was FREE and EASY, took only a few minutes.

  - Plug-n-play. I unplugged my old D-link router and just plugged in the new one. Turned it on, it aquired the internet instantly and it has WORKED FLAWLESSLY ever since.

  - My wireless currently supports 3 wireless computers and 1 hooked up via ethernet. I’ve turned on the WEP and had all four computers on the internet at the same time and haven’t noticed it slow down, restart/reboot, or give us any problems. Two of the four computers were running a graphic-intense online game while I was downloading files on the others.

  - signal goes through walls as though they weren’t even there! Even down into the basement!

  On my previous D-Link, I did have to call customer service twice (for WEP setup questions) and both times were for nightmare reasons on my end. The tech was patient and VERY HELPFUL, which is more than I can say for most other products.

  Anyway, signal is GREAT, customer service is GREAT, overall ease of use is GREAT, and you can’t beat the price. I highly recommend this product for your wireless home network.
• 

  Milos Eric
  October 21st, 2010 on 10:26 am

  Rating

  Compatibility issues are always present and, depending on hardware you already have, there is a chance that any given router will not work for you. That said, I had a chance to test my DI-624 on four networks (both LAN/Ethernet and Wireless B/G) and it worked perfectly. Cable modems I’ve used were Motorola, Cisco and Netgear.

  I know D-Link’s tech support is somewhat sketchy in the US, but I don’t think this is a product you’d need support on. It self-explanatory, really. You can access it’s configuration interface from any PC that’s connected to one of it’s four LAN ports via Internet browser on 192.168.0.1. However, there’s only wireless SSID and optional password to set, everything else in plug and play. Unless you want to customize firewall, DHCP and things like that. Actually, there’s a demo of this interface on manufacturer’s site so you can check it out yourselves.

  Using DI-624 in a home network with 3 “wired” PCs and 2 wireless notebooks has been a trouble free experience. Suddenly, all 5 PCs were connected to the Internet and were in LAN. It’s range is superb – I can connect to it from the parking, which is some 300ft from my builing, and router is on the 5th floor, behind a reinforced concrete wall. Of course, inside the apartment itself, reception is always perfect. I just had to set password, though, so I wouldn’t provide free wireless Internet to entire building.