D-Link DIR-825 Xtreme N Dual Band Gigabit Router: Second Time's the Charm?

[peste19]

my bad i saw 1.0 here in the graph so i thought you didn't use the updated firmware

 

[thiggins]

my bad i saw 1.0 here in the graph so i thought you didn't use the updated firmware

What graph?

 

[peste19]

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/content/view/30588/96/1/2/

Under routing performance

 

[thiggins]

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/content/view/30588/96/1/2/
Under routing performance

Sorry, my error. Fixed.

 

[Bob Cronin]

New rev of Dir-855?

Sorry, my error. Fixed.

The supposedly fixed (A2) version of the 855 is now becoming available from online merchants. Any chance you (Tim) might re-review it to see if the problems have been fixed? The 825 seems a bit underwhelming, leaving the revised 855 my only hope of a near term dual-band replacement for my 655.

 

[thiggins]

Any chance you (Tim) might re-review it to see if the problems have been fixed?

Not likely. The product is grossly overpriced.

 

[Unregistered - Ran]

Shareport - some issues

Thanks for the nice review it helped me deciding of buying this router - which was on sale at Best buy (129$).
I have been using this router for a couple of days and have 1 issue and couple of insights:
* the shareport function seem to work very nicely on 2 XP's that I have - intrestingly you can put a hub on the port and coneect as amny as you'd like devices, and use each one of these on a diffrent computer. Having a multifunction printer - this feature realy made the diffrerence for me. However, I have trouble using it from my 3rd Vista computer - the software seems not to recognise the devices on this port - I wonder if someone can enlighten me on that on? (yes I have upgraded the firmware to 1.01)...

*the range (as is detected by the wirless bars) is somewhat low - although performance is good even with 2 bars.

*It helped me recognize that my laptop has draft N 5G - I didn't know it had that and it was not in the specifications...

Bottom line - very nice device - but I wish I could solve the vista shareport issue.

 

[Unregistered -ran]

Shareport issue solved

Apperently it is related to some issues with "shareport" and Microsoft Onecare firewall.
A solution is sugested here:
http://forums.microsoft.com/WindowsOneCare/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=4045576&SiteID=2

and all you need is to enable usb protcol 6 and UDP port 6303 on the local network.

 

[Enki42]

The supposedly fixed (A2) version of the 855 is now becoming available from online merchants. Any chance you (Tim) might re-review it to see if the problems have been fixed? The 825 seems a bit underwhelming, leaving the revised 855 my only hope of a near term dual-band replacement for my 655.

The only differnce between the A2 version of the 855 and the 825 is the 855 has three antennas vs 2 so can correctly use 3x3 radio mode, right? So since the 825 has the plugs internal for the missing antenna you could plug one 5GHz antenna into one and a 2.4GHz antenna into the other and get the same results. (ok, it would break the warrenty)

 

[Jennie]

How does the D-link 655 compare to the D-link 825? I just ordered the 655 thinking it is better because of the three antennas but I'm having seconds thought

 

[Unregistered]

I'm trying to get to the bottom of this one small problem I have with my DIR-825, and am wondering if anyone has seen it? I have emailed D-Link Tech Support, gone to their forums, and have generally been ignored....

Anyway, I get great throughput across wireless to my Hauppauge MVP via a Linksys WPA300N running mvpcm (www.mvpmc.org). I use this as a frontend for my mythtv setup, and that all works fine. I get totally acceptable streaming media. I get better stability than the WRT610N I tried (It locked up a couple of times during testing, which is totally not cool). I also get much smoother audio/video streaming than using my existing DI-524 and a Trendnet TEW-627 N updater (Basically an N AP).

Here's the problem I run into. I can tune into a clear QAM channel on my mythtv box in the basement, stream it via Multicast RTSP using dvbstream. Then, on a winXP box upstairs, I can use tsreader and I can see that RTSP stream. tsreader allows me to see what the entire Transport stream contains, and allows me to see the individual PIDS within the TS.

Anyway, all that would work fine with my DI-524. When I plug in the DIR-825, all of a sudden this all breaks. Somehow the DIR-825 seems to be mucking with the UDP stream that is running around my wired gigabit network. If I unplug the DIR-825 from my main switch, everything starts working as expected. As soon as I plug the DIR-825 back in, the RTSP stream goes haywire, and tsreader shows loads of "continuity errors", which I guess means that the packets are coming in out of order, causing major problems there.

Has anyone else seen this, or have any suggestions. Since this is all internal, I wouldn't expect the router to have any impact, but somehow it does. I've played with several of the settings (QoS, Multimedia streams), but none of them seem to have any impact.

Any suggestions will be appreciated, and investigated....

Thanks.

 

[thiggins]

I'm trying to get to the bottom of this one small problem I have with my DIR-825, and am wondering if anyone has seen it? I have emailed D-Link Tech Support, gone to their forums, and have generally been ignored....

Sorry, lost track of what connects to what. And what is a WPA300N?

 

[mgpaulus]

Sorry, lost track of what connects to what. And what is a WPA300N?

Ack... That's what I get for typing without thinking, and doing it away from all the stuff.....

The first thing I should say, is I had an adequate network with a D-Link DI-524 working just fine. However, I wanted to bring a media extender into the bedroom so I can watch stuff from my mythtv system. However, wiring the bedroom isn't practical at this time, so I was looking for a wireless solution. This is leading me to N based stuff, so I can get the bandwidth/throughput I need. That said...

Ok, the WPA300N should rather be a Linksys WGA600N, N Wireless Gaming Adapter. I have 2 Linux box in my basement, called mythtv1/mythtv2. Upstairs, I have a windows box. (Actually I have a whole cr#pload more stuff scattered throughout the house, but that's all beside the point). The WGA600N connects to the Hauppauge MVP media extender running mvpmc.

I have 3 wireless routers/AP I can use, a DIR-825 (a/b/g/n), a Trendnet TEW-637AP, and a DI-524. I figure I can use either the DIR-825 or (the TEW-627 and DI-524).

I have 2 scenarios I'm interested in that I'm having problems with.
1: I want to stream normal recorded video from my mythtv1 box to my media extender via wireless/WGA600N.
2: I want to stream full clearQAM Transport Stream (TS) from my mythtv2 box to my windows box via multicast RTSP over hardwired gigabit ethernet.

So, here's how it plays:
When I connect up the TEW-637/DI-524, I can do the multicast stuff just fine, however, the video over wireless becomes kind of blocky, and the audio becomes choppy.

When I connect the DIR-825, the video/audio over wireless works great, but the multicast starts breaking down with many continuity errors.

I know this is complicated and a lot of information, but for the most part it all works fine.... Just these couple of oddball cases that have to do with my desire to get a better wireless PVR/DVR setup working like I want

 

[thiggins]

The DIR-825 is the only gigabit device of the ones you mention. Perhaps your problem is related to it.

Do you have another gigabit switch that you can try?

 

[mgpaulus]

The DIR-825 is the only gigabit device of the ones you mention. Perhaps your problem is related to it.

Do you have another gigabit switch that you can try?

In the basement I have all my boxes connected to a USR 997933 8 port Gigabit switch, which is also hardwired to another USR 997933 8 port Gigabit switch upstairs in the office. The connection between the switches shows a blue light (gigabit connection). All the upstairs computers are connected to the USR switch, and one connection goes from the switch to the DIR-825....

What's puzzling to me is that if I disconnect the DIR-825 from the USR switch, or during the short window of a reboot of the DIR-825, when it's not actually doing anything, then my multicast stuff works. As soon as I connect the DIR-825 to the USR Switch, multicast goes kaput. So, somehow the DIR-825 is messing with the UDP multicast going on in my network......

Hmmm... I wonder if it's reflecting packets, or resending them back onto the network, causing continuity errors because the 2nd instance of an old packet is coming in after a 1st instance of a new packet:

mythtv2: sends packet #1
windows: sees packet #1
DIR-825: sees packet #1
mythtv2: sends packet #2
DIR-825: reflects packet #1
windows: sees packet #2
windows: sees packet #1 (continuity error)
DIR-825: sees packet #2
mythtv2: sends packet #3
DIR-825: reflects packet #2
windows: sees packet #3
windows: sees packet #2 (continuity error)
.
.
.


And, possibly in some instances the windows sees the DIR-825 reflected packet before the new mythtv2 packet, so in that case, it would be a duplicated packet, and probably quietly dropped....

But that doesn't explain the other issue I saw.....
I did some testing with network probe 2.7 by ObjectPlanet. The consumer version will only let you see the machine it's on running on, which is ok.

Here's what I did: started up network probe on the windows box, unplugged the DIR-825, and started multicast streaming on mythtv2. started up the receiving application on windows. Network probe showed 40+ MBits/second being received.

Then I reconnected the DIR-825, and the multicast throughput to the windows box dropped down to around 8 MBits/second. Unplug the DIR-825, and watch the throughput go back to 40+ MBits/second. Unplug the DIR-825 and watch it drop. The only thing I did was disconnect/reconnect the network cable from the LAN port of the DIR-825. So, somehow the DIR-825 is messing with internal UDP traffic......

 

[thiggins]

I would grab a copy of WireShark and run a trace plugged into an 825 port.

Also thought of two other possibilities: make sure the DHCP server is off and also shut off UPnP and WISH.

 

[mgpaulus]

I would grab a copy of WireShark and run a trace plugged into an 825 port.

Also thought of two other possibilities: make sure the DHCP server is off and also shut off UPnP and WISH.

Ran Wireshark, and it didn't show any unusual packet sequencing like I was speculating. DHCP is off because I need my mythtv box to do DHCP and tftp for the media extender. I also verified that WISH was disabled, and uPnP.

However, just on a whim, I went under advanced --> Advanced Network, and changed the WAN Port Speed from Auto 10/100/1000Mbps to 1000Mbps. The UDP/Multicast problem is now cleared up. Just to verify, I reset the WAN Port Speed back to Auto 10/100/1000Mbps, and the problem came back. Set it to 1000Mbps, and problem went away.

Thanks for your help and your patience...

 

[thiggins]

Glad you got it sorted out. Thanks for reporting back.

 

[Britgeezer]

I read the article on the DIR -825 and purchased one to replace multi Linksys WRT310's that would just lock up on me taking down the wired LAN as well. Until then I was a convinced L customer.

So far the 825 is both faster on my Gigabit wired network and on wireless. Signal on 5 GHz is 25% reduced vs 2.4GHz in only one small area. I mix PC and MAC products via wireless although my system is mostly wired, so I'm quite happy.

I just have to play a little more with my wireless printer - haven't got that up yet .. so it has a temp long LAN cable ..

D-Link speak is a little different than Linksys speak - but these forums are a help.

 

[ttran55]

disappointed with the Dir-825

Hello,
I got a new Dir-825 (revA) and the just found out that my old Rangemax MIMO 824 gives better wireless G range than the my new Dir-825 even I turned off everything except the g only. My old router gives me 54mbs vs 18mbs. I don't know if the two numbers are deceiving when using the windows connect status. The reason I got the Dir-825 because I want to pair with the Netgear WNHDE111 5Ghz for media streaming and Gb switch for my NAS4300.
I will get a wireless n adapter to see how much improvement over the g.
I have read the article about saving the old router so I disabled the DHCP of the Rangemax and use it as my g only access point and the Dir-825 for n only.
I don't know if I want to return the router. Any advice ? any tip to improve the Dir-285 range?
Regards,
Ttran.