DIR-825 vs WRT610N

[santakrooz]

Hi, thanks for all the great info I've found on here so far. I'm trying to decide between the DIR-825and WRT610N and have a couple of questions that I'm having trouble getting thru the marketing info on the Dlink and Netgear sites.

Is my understanding correct that these two routers are comparable except that the

a) DIR-825 has automatic QOS and the WRT610N does not do any auto QOS?
b) DIR-825 shareport is file/printer LAN only ie no FTP or UPNP whereas the WRT610N is SMB, FTP, and UPNP but no printer sharing?

Can anyone confirm that my understand on these points is accurate? and if so is the DIR-825 a better router if I'm doing a lot of VOIP and Netflix HD streaming? Or am I over valueing the auto-QOS. It does look like the WRT610N filesharing is quite robust and the review looks good.

Any additional comments or things I should consider when comparing these two would be appreciated as well. ie any gotchas or performance considerations?

Thanks in advance!
Michael

 

[santakrooz]

any opinions on dir-825 vs wrt610n?

trying to decide between these two routers. thanks!

 

[somms]

http://www.dd-wrt.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=33836&postdays=0&postorder=desc&start=0

Now that the WRT610N is DD-WRT compatible, seems like a no-brainer to me!

 

[gyrfalcon]

Now that the WRT610N is DD-WRT compatible, seems like a no-brainer to me!

DD-WRT's GPL Violations piss me off... The DIR-825's GPL source code is available at: ftp://ftp.dlink.de/dir/dir-825/

The WRT610N has better wireless performance, but has less routing/switch throughput and features.

 

[pender]

The 610N is kinda supported by DD WRT through SVN Builds
http://www.dd-wrt.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=317437#317437

It still is not officially supported because it may randomly reboot and 5Ghz mode is not really working. That being said, it will probably be fixed very soon.

Remember, QoS only works for the upstream traffic, however, some firmwares like tomato, can apply an L7 filter on the traffic and throttle any downstream traffic as to not "choke" the downstream connection, which is really great on slower connections. As far as I am aware, the Ubicom Stream Engine in the 825 does not do this, but as long as your downlink is 5Mbps or greater, this generally is not a problem.

If you get the 610n, you can then use the DD WRT QoS script generator - switch language from polish to English.
http://www.icpnet.pl/~robsonn/generator.zip
It is not as granular as Tomato's QoS configurator, but it is much better than the built in QoS handling of DD WRT.

As for the 825's QoS engine, it does work up to a certain point, just like the HTB method in DD WRT and Tomato. If the upload bandwidth is too saturated, it does not seem to throttle it back enough not to prevent packet loss (i wish there was an option to force this); however, if you tune P2P uploads, the QoS performs well for all applications - as does the HTB in Tomato.

The automatic QoS is nice if you play a lot of Multiplayer PC games as you don't need to configure a port for each new game. If also handles SIP calls just fine. It is also very nice if you have multiple computers on your LAN (roommates or wild kin), and don't know which ports their P2P connections are using - though you can check the conn log.



File/Printer Sharing

The Shareport feature on the Dlink routers is interesting. All access to USB devices is handled by software on the client computers. For HDD, there is no SMB or FTP server running on the router and there is no print server running on the router should a printer be connected. Instead the client computer wishing to have access to the USB device must connect to the device (one user at a time) through the desktop software. The Device then appears as if it was physically connected to the computer - it can auto connect and disconnect for printing. This is really nice for All in One printers as you can use the Scanner/Fax and Photo printing features of the Printer. Also, if there are XP/Vista/OSX drivers for the printer, it will work. For other storage devices, it is not as nice as a file server.

The WRT610n USB port is more traditional. There are true network sharing daemons and printing is done through CUPS and Post Script.


I have a 655 and think it is well featured and good performing router, but if you are a hands on sorta guy who wants the most out of his router, you can not say no to the DD-WRT option of the 610n. Plus the 610n does have better 5Ghz performance.

If you get the 610n, don't flash it until it has been confirmed as working or until you feel comfortable with the working feature set.