D-Link → Re: NEW Dlink 624 2.52 B39 !!

sounds good, so this version keep your previous settings or do you have to re-enter them?

it keeps all the previous settings... very easy upgrade

@effortless:

Perhaps, since you have a friend inside DLink, you could help us find out about a nagging issue that has frustrated a number of us, and finally caused me -- a former die-hard DLink customer -- to give up on my DI-624 and switch brands.

My setup, with a dwl-g650, a dwl-g520 and 3 wired pc's, all hooked into DI-624 rev C2, started out a tiny bit flakey (with ver 2.28 fw in the router), but improved as I moved up to more recent firmware. Additionally, the network overall improved as I moved the adapters to Atheros 3.3.0.150 drivers.

But then, a few weeks ago, when the equipment was about 10 months old, it started to fail. Coincidentally, this was the same time that I had installed SP2 on all 5 Windows XP machines on the WLAN.

Network browsing between wired and wireless machines became dismal, although, for some reason, the wireless machine still seemed to have a decent Internet connection (at 3 mbps, it was still a lot slower than the LAN speed I guess, so the problems didn't show here).

We, as a group here, all learned about and explored the value of doing a "crash recovery" (as per the DLink FAQ) and reloading, or loading new, firmware. That actually seemed to help for a while. Also - even though a simple reboot of the router didn't improve throughput, for some reason, when switching Preamble from Short to Long --- OR Vice Versa (which also caused rebooting) actually DID improve the throughput problem -- for a while.

The situation seemed to deteriorate until it got to the point where, despite the tricks I could do to get decent performance, it was always back to sluggish performance by the next morning. Shortly after that, I found that I could not get it to perform well at all. Despite the Atheros Client Utility (ACU - analogous to the DLink client utility) reporting an "excellent signal" (and Win XP agreeing), the wireless client had become virtually useless by now. Browsing the Internet from the wireless client, I could only obtain about a 300kbps download speed at best (as measured by the speed test on this site), whereas, before the problems began, I could easily get 3 mbps down. The wired pc's on the WLAN still got 3 mbps when the wireless was sluggish.

I finally gave up and purchased a Belkin pre-N router (and adapters as well). While leaving the Dlink dwl-g650 and dwl-g520 in the pc's, I replaced my DI-624 with the Belkin F5D8230-4 router, and set the encryption options to my old settings. I INSTANTLY had a good "normal G" connection between the new router and the DLink cards. (I've since put in Belkin pre-n cards in my pc's).

So it was apparent that the DI-624 had gradually self-destructed. What was strange was that, in all the various firmware flashes, crash recoveries, and system resets, it gradually became apparent it was often IMPOSSIBLE to truly reset the DI-624 back to its original state. SOMETHING in the router apparently remained somewhere in it's memory, and it seems that this gradually became worse and worse. Either that -- or something in the hardware deteriorated gradually over the last few months, which I find harder to believe.

I'm one of many who have suffered with this. PLEASE pass this on to your friend and see if we can get an answer. DLink has not officially acknowledged the problem. If the unit is still under warranty, they simply suggest that you RMA the unit. If it's NOT under warranty any longer, you're simply out of luck.

Any light your friend can share on this would make a lot of people very happy.

Thanks in advance...

Well I did the upgrade but it did not keep any of my previous settings from 2.50, so I replaced them all, about 30 minutes worth for all my user settings.

So far nothing gained nothing lost, but I can also confirm no CTS mode = "none" anymore, only Auto or Always available.

Will post more if anything is different

Same "problem" here as with SoCal99, I lost all my settings when I upgraded. No big problem to deal with. It appears they have finally got the time settings fixed, it is now correctly set for my time zone. I'll report back with any other issues. Thanks again.