D-Link AirPlus Xtreme G DI-624 Review

[dang]

Checkout our latest review of the D-Link AirPlus Xtreme G DI-624

D-Link's DI-624 router features hardware improvements that allow it to run at up to 108Mbps - twice as fast as other 802.11g products. But does it really work? Read on to find out.

[jfila]

This review was a tough one for me and I don't feel I need to "justify" our score with any other information. However, in light of the fact that other sites think this product is the greatest thing since sliced bread I'm going to explain my methodology and how I came to this conclusion.

I received the DI-624 several months ago and installed it right away. It worked perfectly out of the box. It had some great features and worked great with my laptop. It connected at 108Mbps but I knew without testing yet that it certainly wasn't transferring at 108Mbps. I brought it over to my sister's house for testing, knowing that there were no wireless networks close
by to interfere. Right away I encountered problems. I installed the PCI XtremeG adapter in a Biostar small form factor computer with a VIA chipset and Athlon XP 2500+. I then started to experience the issues I noted with MOH Spearhead locking up and other applications causing the computer to freeze. Once

I turned off the wireless card, the problems disappeared. So I brought the setup back home and tried again. I installed the PCI card in an Abit AT7-Max2 motherboard and experienced the same problems. Spearhead locked up and even something as simple as running a timer program and a large file transfer caused the system to lock up. So I tried the card in three other computers - a Chaintech nForce2 Athlon XP 2800+, an ECS K7S5A Pro Athlon XP 1900+ and a Sony Vaio Pentium III 700. None of these computers experienced the problems so I chalked it up to being a compatibility problem with the VIA chipset. I emailed my contact at D-Link and called D-Link support and they tried to recreate the problem - but could not. However, they didn't use a VIA chipset motherboard.

After a few discussions back and forth they basically dropped the issue, saying that they couldn't recreate it. I continuted my testing with the ECS K7S5A and the PCI card worked flawlessly.

All along I had been testing using my Compaq Presario R3060 laptop, a Pentium 4M 2.4GHz model. When I started testing, my thoughts were confirmed that even though it said it was connected at 108Mbps, it was performing similarly to any other 54Mbps 802.11g setup. I compared with the Compex 802.11g setup and the Dell Truemobile 2300 setup. I tested file transfers of the Far Cry demo (500+ MB) and the Windows XP
Service Pack 1 (130+MB). I tested each router/card combination at least 10 times. I timed each transfer and used AnalogX NetStat to get a max throughput rating. If there were unusually low scores, I threw them out, as with wireless performance any number of factors could cause interference. I turned off all of my 2.4GHz phones and any other product that I thought might interfere. I tested at 3 different locations - one in my office about 10 feet from the router, one directly below the router on the first
floor and one on the first floor and about 20 feet farther away. I tested each location with each setup and found the results to be very close. There was certainly no performance boost in 108Mbps mode, however. I also tested the PCI card in my office, about 10 feet away from the router. While performance
was again acceptable, it too was no better than any other 802.11g solution.

With those results coming in (mind you it takes several days to test the transfer 500MB or 130MB files over and over again) I tried a few changes. I uninstalled and re-installed the hardware and the drivers exactly as D-Link describes multiple times. I also spent some time reading the forum posts at Broadband Reports and the buyer reviews at Amazon. It was quickly becoming clear that D-Link had some customer support issues as well as hardware issues concering the XtremeG lineup. I also found a great Website here that shows some testing of the XtremeG products and some excellent graphs.

Then I upgraded to firmware version 2.36. I was then able to get a faster connection and was seeing wireless transfer speeds up to about 46Mbps. Much lower than the 108Mbps advertised, but also quite a bit faster than regular 802.11g will do. A subsequent update to version 2.41 and 2.42 also brought those faster speeds to the PCI card adapter, but it eventually rendered the laptop useless.

With the laptop adapter, there are two ways of setting up the wireless software. One is to allow Windows XP to manage the connections, and the other is to use the D-Link software. I tried both ways and still go the same problem: After the 2.42 firmware update, my laptop connected to the D-Link network a very low percentage of the time when using the D-Link PC card adapter. When using the internal 802.11g Broadcom adapter, it worked fine. People in the Broadband Reports forums were reporting the same thing and a D-Link rep replied to a list of problems - both agreeing that there were problems and insinuating that a lot of it was setup or user-related.

Anyway, it was rare after that upgrade for me to be able to access the D-Link network with the Compaq laptop. I had almost zero connection issues before, but now could not connect at all.

It got to the point that months after receiving the products, I - and the rest of the Designtechnica editorial staff - had enough of this product and it was time to move on. I spent countless hours testing this product suite over several months. I installed and re-installed drivers, hardware and firmware countless times - both with D-Link's instructions and with some unique instructions posted in the Broadband Reports forums. I tested in controlled environments - including a small office and two residentail neighborhoods. I even brought the entire setup into my basement in the hopes it would completely be away from any interference.

In the end, it comes down to the XtremeG products just not being stable, especially with the latest firmware, and D-Link not offering many solutions or fixes. It certainly seeems to be the luck of the draw - as many people report great results with the setup - albeit with older firmware revisions or driver workarounds.

The Broadband Reports forums are also full of people reporting problems with the Netgear lineup of Extreme-G products, which are also based on the Atheros Extreme-G chipset. So this issue seems to be partly D-Link's problem and partly Atheros' problem. Unfortunately, its the consumer that pays, because this product is so heavily marketed and reduced in price all over the Web and in retail stores that a lot of people are buying it.

This is not the last you'll hear of this issue. We have some more networking products coming in for review and I'll revisit this issue with downgraded firmware revisions to see if that makes a difference. But we had to post the review and we had to move on.

The bottom line is that I reported our findings based on extensive real-world testing. Hopefully D-Link will read this review and the Broadband Reports forum posts and decide to do something about this issue. And hopefully consumers will read the review and realize that the numbers on the box are an absolute best-case scenario, which very few, if any, people have been able to establish.

[llbbl]

jfila, I applaud you for being honest. Its better to be accurate in reporting and truthful in your factual statements rather than inaccurate and untruthful.

[ECA]

See DT does check things OUT VERY well..

Can I ask 1 more test....how about Linux, to Linux and Linux to XP...

[dang]

Great review Jeff. Very thorough.

[jfila]

Yeah good point ECA - I would have loved to test with Linux. I have a Linux file server that I transferred files to and from for this review - but not a workstation.

[Ioman]

I am getting the distinct impression that the other review sites really are not taking the time to test these routers. If people are reporting issues all over the net, then something has to be wrong.

[a0153153]

I bought the wireless router DI-624 and the PCMCIA card DWG-650 together. I based it on believing this was the best performance for the price ... after reading several websites. Too bad I didn't see this review.

My experience started when I decided to get a large drive for the PC upstairs to carry mpg, avi, mp3, and jpg, all my disk consuming stuff. I thought I would just mount the drive from my laptop. This worked well just looking at my camera jpg's and my music files. However I started noticing 10 - 20 second halts about 2 minutes into the mpg's and avi's. The only way I have been able to get it minimized is by setting the MTU on my laptop's wireless connection to 576 (very low setting). I might could go higher but this is a normal standard setting from Cisco's VPN "set MTU" tool.

I do have the reboots but rarely. I have had no problems with the wired side. I bought it with the 2.42? firmware.

Hope this helps someone,
John

[a0153153]

Jeff,
Wired LAN today is 100 MB/s ... you almost never find 10 MB/s any more. Thus Wired LAN is 8 times faster than the "claimed" 108 megabits per second (Mbps). If fact, 100 MB/s is almost twice as fast as USB 2.0 480 Mbps. So wired LAN is still king and will probably always be.

John