Friday, August 21, 2009

D-Link DIR-655 “N” Wireless Router

I got this router from Amazon a few weeks ago. It is a vast improvement over the old one in terms of manageability and reliability. Setting it up and replacing the old with this one was a breeze.

I most appreciate its improved reliability. For some reason the old one would choke and I would have to go down to the garage once, twice, and sometimes half a dozen times a day to perform a cold reset (i.e., unplug from wall, wait a few seconds, plug it back in). With this new one, whenever something results in network connectivity loss it appears to automatically reset. I have not had to go down to the garage to do a reset with this new router.

The second thing I appreciate is the better logs that it provides. It rates network events as Informational, Warning, or Critical. It logs more types of events than the old one did.

The third thing is the integration with SecureSpot 2.0 (fee applies). SecureSpot provides additional single-point network management for devices that connect through the router. It provides website URL filtering and network device control that all devices go through. Additionally there is client-based malware and intrusion protection that can be installed on up to three clients (extra fee for additional clients). I was having problems running Microsoft’s Windows Live Family Safety on some of the PCs in our household, so a non-client method of filtering sites is quite welcome.

The final feature I find useful is the ability to enable a Guest Zone. What this does is it enables a second SSID for guests to connect to the Internet without having visibility into the rest of your personal network (though the option is available to route network traffic between the two zones). What this means is that I can enable an unprotected wireless connection during the times we have guests over (SecureSpot and router logs still identify connections from new devices) without having to compromise the rest of the network or having to setup the connection for each guest.

My conclusion: This router exceeded my expectations. Your mileage may vary. At $94.95 (currently at Amazon) it was a worthwhile upgrade.

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