FAQs

Dlink DIR-655 Review

Details

Parent Category: Equipment

Written by Administrator

Supplier    DLINK
Model of device    DIR-655
Suitable for Cable/DSL (requires a modem)
Date of test    23/07/2007
Firmware delivered with    V1.03
Firmware tested    V1.03
ADSL Firmware    N/A
Wireless    Yes (B,G, Pre-N)
Ethernet Ports    4 * (10/100/1000Mb)

Pre-Face

Since 802.11n was announced there’s been a flurry of routers all running versions of Pre-N wireless. Things have started to settle down now and although “N” has still to be ratified we are starting to see some good routers appear.

I’ve not personally used Dlink kit before, but have helped many people get online with their own. My honest opinion of Dlink based on feedback is that the low-mid end routers are “ok”, and the high end router like the Gamefuel/Gamerlounge are fantastic.

Throughout the evaluation of this router I have been using a Dlink DSL-320T ADSL Ethernet modem to connect the DIR-655 to my ADSL line, so all ISP username/password information is configured on the modem, not the router.

The Router

It’s pretty small and quiet, it lays horizontal, it’s not got the “iPod” look of the Netgear DG834N or the Homehub, but its certainly not ugly and wouldn’t look out of place next to your other tech kit.

4 Gig (1000Mbps) Ethernet ports and blue LED’s at the front indication LAN/WAN/Wireless activity. 3 external directional aerials, that can be unscrewed and replaced by something different if you so wish.

Setting it all up

As this is a cable broadband router (no modem built in) setup is virtually non-existent. Take the Ethernet cable from your Cable/ADSL modem, plug it into the WAN port of the DIR-655. Power up the router, then wait for a minute.

Plug in your PC, your on the internet
Plug in your Xbox, your on Xbox live, run the Xbox live test, NAT is Open

That’s it, job done.

There’s a wealth of options waiting for you inside the menu’s. As a minimum, if you are using wireless I would recommend implementing wireless security. But don’t worry, they’ve even made easy to do.

There's also the usual setup CD, which again makes life very easy. Insert the CD, plug in the ethernet cable from your PC to the router. Answer a few questions and your on-line, you can also configure wireless using the setup CD.

Web Interface/Features

The web interface looks pretty complicated (192.168.0.1) , but it’s not so bad. It’s just that there’s so much can you do with the router some might be a bit overwhelmed by it all. But that said, there’s not much need for a manual, you can navigate to everything you need to get to easy enough. Common tasks like setting up your Internet connection (if applicable) or Wireless can be done via the easy to use wizard, or manually if you wish.

There’s so many features, where do I start?? Its fair to say, that if there’s a feature you’d like or a feature you’d like to tweak the DIR-655 has it.

Want it to email you automatically when a new version of firmware comes out? – No problem.

Want to restrict access to certain websites or certain traffic (gaming, p2p, chat) at certain times of day? – No problem

Tweak the power of the wireless antennas? – No problem

I think you get the idea, there’s a wealth of options available and even more to tweak to your hearts content if you so wish. But, don’t worry there’s also plenty of wizards available to lend a hand with some of the more common tasks that do daunt some people

I won’t bother going into techno-babble on some of the features, I’ll just try to give you a summary of some of the more important ones:-

Streamengine

Please Note: The DIR-655 firmware and QoS menu has changed since this review, if you would like to know how to configure QoS for your Xbox for this router please look here

QoS – Quality of Service. Most people don’t know what it is or even care. But these days, more and more people are doing more and more with their routers at home. Making internet voice calls, streaming video, downloading large files, emailing etc etc.

Most home routers don’t care what your using. They will just send out data onto the internet on a “first come first served” basis. Which means, if you’ve a busy house with a few users all using the same internet connection, there can be a bit of a bun fight!

One user could be downloading torrents and using quite a lot of bandwidth, if someone else wanted to use the internet to make a phone call (Skype etc) they could find that the call is “choppy” and the voice is breaking up. Or if someone wanted to play on Gears of War online, it could be laggy because of the torrents downloading.

Streamengine sorts this out, it will decide which traffic should go out onto the internet first, voice, video and gaming are important as they don’t like delays as it’s noticeable, so they go first. Any other traffic like, emails, web surfing, torrents etc etc go later, as your not bothered (nor will you notice) if there’s a few second delay with those types of applications.

WISH

Dlink have had a system like Streamengine used on the Gamefuel routers, so it’s not new, what is new is WISH.

Up until now, wireless has been a free for all. If your wireless laptop is downloading large emails, torrents, basically anything that taxes the bandwidth and your wireless 360 is trying to play on Xbox live… well the Xbox will suffer. Not with WISH. WISH is another Quality of Service function that specifically looks at the Wireless traffic. If it detects that voice (Internet phone calls), video (Streaming video or HD Material) or gaming (Xbox live etc) it will tag that data as “important” and ensure it gets to its destination before your emails, torrents etc. Ensuring a smooth voice, video, gaming experience.

Also, when it detects other Wireless G/B networks in the area its considerate enough not to stomp all over them by reducing the radio spectrum, aaaah how sweet!

UPnP    Yes
DHCP    Yes
DHCP Address Reservation    Yes
WEP    Yes
WPA-PSK[TKIP]    Yes
WPA-PSK [TKIP] + WPA2-PSK [AES]    Yes
WPA2-PSK [AES]    Yes
WPA-802.1x     Yes
Wireless Access List    Yes
WDS    No
Firewall    Yes (SPI)
Dynamic DNS    Yes
QoS - WAN    Yes
QoS - Wireless    Yes
Support for two or more Xbox With an OPEN Nat    Yes

Pre-N

Pre-N or Draft N is a manufacturers take on what they believe will go into the 802.11n standard when its finally ratified. What this means is, some of the features of the Pre-N device may or may not be compatible with other 802.11n products when they are released.

Wireless Speeds

I think the main reason for you wanting to buy this router is for one or more of the following:-

• Your in the market for a new router and Wireless G is getting older now, so you looking for a future proof(ish) purchase
• You need fast wireless transfer speeds between devices
• You want to stream video/music at high speeds

Now, when you seen Pre-N advertised you hear of speeds like 270-300Mbps. Please… don’t expect that. Those are potential speeds of “N”, you wont reach them.

But don’t let that put you off this is a FAST wireless router. Here’s a set of tests I carried out:-

• Equipment used: Dlink DIR-655
• Laptop with Netgear WN11B Wireless card
• Qcheck Performance testing software

All the tests were carried out with the router configured with WPA-PSK configured, using the Wireless Channel mode of Auto.

File Transfer Rate (802.11n) < 1m 33-39Mbps
File Transfer Rate (802.11n) > 6m 33-39Mbps
File Transfer Rate (802.11n) > 8m 24-30Mbps

The transfer rates were not as good as I expected to be honest, but this might be as I was using a Netgear Draft N card with a Dlink Draft N router.

Next time I’ll ask for a card to match the router! So, please don’t take too much notice of the speeds above as I’ve read of figures of 112Mbps at around 10 feet. So, don’t worry too much about that side of things

File Transfer Rate (802.54g) < 1m 18-22Mbps
File Transfer Rate (802.54g) > 6m 18-22Mbps
File Transfer Rate (802.54g) > 8m 18-22Mbps

Wireless Range

I’ll be honest I personally didn’t really notice much difference in range than my Wireless G setup. That might be just down to my house.

Wired Speeds LAN

Usually home routers come with 4 Ethernet 10/100Mbps ports, the DIR-655 comes with 4 Ethernet 10/100/1000Mbps ports.

Gig ports come in real handy when doing some large data transfers between PC’s with Gig network cards. For some reason my Realtek Family Gigabit Ethernet Card would not do a 1000Mbps, it would only connect at 100Mb, I tried everything, new drivers, forcing it to connect at 1Gb, nothing would work. One of my laptops connected at 1Gb straight away, so it must be the card on my PC, cheap!

Wired Speeds WAN

This section will be of interest to cable users (NTL/Virgin and other ISP’s that use cable rather than ADSL).

Until now cable speeds in the UK haven’t been very fast, 2Mb, 4Mb, then we went up to 10Mb. All of the current routers out there could cope with these speeds. Now Virgin Media have introduced 20Mb cable in the UK. And a lot of people are complaining saying they are not seeing any increase in speed after the upgrade. But when they connect direct to the cable modem the speed is fine. It’s all down to their router, and the fact that it cannot route the packets fast enough. Some people can only get a transfer speed of 1MB/s when on a 20Mbps connection they should be achieving 2MB/s.

With this in mind I decided to test the speed of the WAN port on the DIR-655. It’s actually got a 10/100/1000Mbps port, so physically it’s ready, but what about horsepower? Can it actually shift data that fast between the two ports. Remember this isn’t like two PC’s talking on a switch, the router has to look at each packet to decide where to route it, if there’s a firewall rule applied, apply NAT etc etc, lots of stuff. And all of that requires processing power.

I simulated the “internet” in my lab (won’t bore you with the details) and using QCheck the transfer speed was rated at 93Mbps. I transferred a 1Gb file in my simulation and it took 2mins 20seconds to download, that’s fast!

I clocked it at downloading 7.17MB/sec. So basically if Virgin offered a 70Mbps internet service, this router can take it. Maybe it could go even faster, but I don’t have enough Gig Ethernet cards to test it any further. Anyway its fast….

QoS Testing

Please Note: The DIR-655 firmware and QoS menu has changed since this review, if you would like to know how to configure QoS for your Xbox for this router please look here

So this Quality of Service, Streamengine stuff, sounds amazing, but does it actually work in practice and is it hard to setup? Yes it does work and it’s not hard to setup

Here’s how I tested it. Whilst using the Dlink with the QoS engine turned on I hosted a game on CoD3 and about 8 or so people joined. Everything was running fine, then I set off a huge download to max out my download bandwidth and an equally huge upload. You’ll have to take it from me that the PC was gobbling up as much bandwidth both ways as it could.

Nothing changed on CoD3, no visible lag, no-one disconnected, we just carried on playing for an hour or so as if nothing had ever happened, and my downloads and uploads just ticked away.

I then tried the same test on my regular router that has no QoS (BT HomeHub), as soon as I started the huge upload, it booted everyone out of the game. And if I looked for games to join none would show up at all unless I stopped the upload.

So it works at treat! And I didn’t have to configure anything just tick the QoS engine box. And I could see in the status logs that it was marking Xbox live traffic as a higher priority than my other traffic. I really like it…

NAT

As we know a good NAT status of Open is all important for Xbox live. I'm glad to say its Open out the box, so there's no issues there. This router will also support two or more Xboxes with a NAT of Open, no config changes needed.

Summary

A superb router and a worthy buy for anyone. It’s a router for:-

The Power User – Who like to play and tinker and do things their own way and have lots of features

The Average User – Who just want to play and get setup with the minimum of fuss, you want to plug it in and it works and don’t have to configure anything, or if you do, you want a wizard to take care of the technical details.

What I’m getting at, it’s a router for all, they’ve managed to combine a whole host of features and tweakability into the router without alienating the more average user, as there's some great wizards that help you setup wireless security and take the pain out of it all.

The main problem I had with this router was the fact that I had to send it back!

The Unofficial Guide To Live Rating

9/10

2011 Update

Unfortunately it seems there are some compatibility issues with this router and the Official Wireless N Adapter (External) in that it cannot connect in N mode, only G, please see this article for more information.