Earlier this month I described my disappointment with Linksys's RT042 router. It was just the latest in a long string of disappointments with routers. The first router I tried was a Buffalo WYR-G54. Unfortunately, it had problems with the Mac version of AOL; without tweaking the AOL configuration, you couldn't connect at all, and if you tweaked the AOL config, every TCP/IP connection on your machine would go down whenever you logged on or off of AOL. Clearly unacceptable. You could make a case that an old hand like myself shouldn't have an AOL account anyway, but, well, nuts to you! Also, AOL Radio is pretty cool.

The second was a Netgear WGR614. I'd used Netgear's venerable FR314 firewall router before, and it was utterly bulletproof until it blew a capacitor after a couple years and I had to retire it (I suspect a power surge -- I had bought it used for about $40 off eBay, so I got my money's worth) and I assumed the newer product was even better. Wrong! Some of the Amazon reviews are pretty brutal. It was none too fast to begin with, and after launching Azureus it became essentially catatonic, rejecting connections left and right and requiring a restart before you could even surf the Web. Oh, and my Roku Soundbridge couldn't pick up an IP off its DHCP server, forcing me to look up how to configure the Roku with a static IP (hint: it requires telnet).

Then came the beautiful but beastly Linksys RT042. For those who missed my earlier rant, allow me to summarize: I was quite incensed by its suckitude. 'Nuff said about that.

The latest router to grace my home network is a D-Link DGL-4300 GamerLounge, and it's a keeper. The UI looks quite slick, with Flash-based animation for the main menu -- what with that and the blue LEDs and the tiny wall wart that doesn't eat space on a power strip, it made quite a good first impression. It does want to be rebooted for nearly every freaking change in configuration (although you can defer this if you are making a bunch of changes, and just reboot once) and it has a few quirks which I haven't quite wrapped my brain around, such as the admin pages not working right with Safari or OmniWeb (Firefox works fine), but I did finally get it doing what I want. It's quite speedy, noticeably faster than the Netgear, and it even comes with a gigabit Ethernet switch instead of the 10/100 Ether that most similar products have. Not that I have much use for the gig-E given that the router's in the other room from the computers at the end of a 50-foot Cat5 cable, but it's a nice gesture. It has quality-of-service features somewhat similar to those claimed by the Linksys, albeit just for outbound connections (no problem, that's enough for my needs) and the $30 rebate that's on now means that you basically get the wireless features for free. On the wireless side, it includes WPA as well as WEP, and has D-Link's proprietary dual-channel 802.11g that can deliver up to 108Mbps if you use their wireless NICs.

The last time I tried a D-Link product, an early cable/DSL router they came out with in 1999 or so, I found it to be feature-poor (no DMZ or port forwarding) and not very well designed. Today their products are better than Netgear's or Linksys's, or at least this one is. If the DGL-4300 starts smoking or something my opinion will change -- though I seriously doubt anything like that would happen because it barely gets warm, especially compared to the Netgear. The Netgear was so hot it attracted my cat to lie on it.

In short, the D-Link DGL-4300 is a product I can recommend for nerds with sophisticated home networks. Despite its name, it's not just for gamers.

Re: the router king

There are 22 messages in this thread, displayed in the order they were posted.

Keith 6/24/2005 11:58:16 AM Pacific

Damn you. Now I've got to investigate getting one to replace my rather twitchy Actiontec.

Jerry Kindall

6/24/2005 12:28:52 PM Pacific

Looks like the rebate's over, unfortunately.

Jerry Kindall

6/24/2005 1:39:39 PM Pacific

Here's a slightly edited version of a review I posted at Buy.com (where I bought my DGL-4300):
With routers coming down in price (some models are under $15 with rebate), manufacturers are scrambling to come up with new features worth paying extra for. Linksys and D-Link are the first to offer "quality of service" (QoS) features on home routers. Linksys's RT042, which I tried first, is fairly awful. I could write paragraphs on how bad a product it is, but this isn't a review of the RT042 but of the D-Link Wireless Gaming Router DGL-4300 "GamerLounge." And the DGL-4300 is a terrific product. Don't let the name fool you; this router isn't just for gamers! Anyone who wants to prioritize the outbound traffic over their broadband connection to make the most of the relatively meager outbound speed offered by most DSL or cable ISPs will want one of these.
It has a built-in gigabit Ethernet switch, compared to the 10/100 that is standard in other home network routers. It has a "wall wart" that's so small it only takes up one space on a power strip. It's got blue LEDs rather than the boring green, yellow, and red LEDs featured by its competitors. And it has a snazzy-looking Flash-based administration UI. In other words, it makes an excellent first impression. The case is not quite as sleek-looking as Linksys's new rounded products, but you won't be feeling the urge to hide it under a desk either.
And unlike the Linksys RT042, it actually works right. The administration Web pages are a little odd at first (some settings look like they've been saved but really aren't until you click a Save button at the top of the page) and they don't work right in OmniWeb (Firefox works okay), but once you get them figured out, it's fairly easy to set things up. The UI is well-organized. For port-forwarding, for example, it separates forwarding of incoming ports into three separate categories: virtual servers (single ports, such as HTTP, that always get forwarded to a particular machine), special applications (ports that get forwarded to any machine after that machine triggers them using an outbound connection on a particular port -- only one machine on a network can use such an application at a time), and games (ranges of ports that get forwarded to particular mahcines). The router has presets for popular types of servers, games, and applications to make all this easy to set up, or you can also set up forwarding manually. The built-in DHCP server lets you reserve LAN addresses for particular devices (based on MAC address) so you can give them fixed addresses without having to configure each machine manually, making network management simpler. There's a firewall with SPI and a DMZ. You can review the firewall log through the Web UI or have it mailed to you periodically.
The QoS features, which D-Link refers to as GameFuel, allow you to prioritize certain source or destination ports, source or destination IP addresses, and/or network protocols (TCP, UDP, or ICMP) on the outbound WAN connection. By doing this sensibly, you can maintain the responsiveness of online games (or other applications) even while surfing the Web or transferring large files. One non-game use for this is to maintain the responsiveness of Web surfing, e-mail, newsreading, and other highly asymmetrical transactions (i.e. relatively small amounts of outbound traffic by comparison to the inbound responses they generate) while transferring large files out of your network or while using certain peer-to-peer file sharing applications. Normally, if your outbound pipe is filled, your downloads slow down too, because the ACKs required for the download connection can't get out in a timely fashion. By prioritizing outbound TCP traffic on port 80, you can make sure those ACKs go out quickly for Web downloads, and by prioritizing UDP on port 53 you can make sure DNS queries get out when they need to. These communications are small enough that they won't noticeably impact the speed of your upload, but they'll make the download much more responsive. You can use the automatic GameFuel setting (which has preset priorities for a number of applications) or manually set up prioritization rules. The DGL-4300 can even break up a large low-priority packet if it's holding up a higher-priority packet. Very slick.
Another nice feature -- the router itself will check for firmware updates periodically and e-mail you to let you know when one becomes available. (It won't download them and install them for you, though. You have to download the firmware to your computer and then upload it to the router. It'd be nice to see a one-click "upgrade me" feature like my Roku SoundBridge has.)
I don't really need the wireless functionality as my network is entirely wired. (I got the wireless version because with the rebate, it was cheaper than the wired-only DGL-4100, and hey, you never know about the future.) The D-Link doesn't have MIMO or pre-N, but it does have D-Link's proprietary 108Mbps variant of 802.11g, which bonds two 54Mbps channels when used with D-Link's wireless NICs. It also has WPA in addition to WEP, MAC filtering, and other basic wireless functions. There's only one antenna but it's a little bigger than the antennas on other routers I've seen, which I'd assume means slightly better coverage. The reviews I've read seem to indicate that it works okay.
The only real downside I've found to this router is that it wants to be rebooted before virtually any change will take effect. You can defer the reboot if you are making several changes, but you will still need to reboot at some point. This gets kind of annoying when you're playing with setting up the QoS or DHCP server. Speaking of the DHCP server, an oddity is that it apparently takes up a separate IP address (.2 rather than the router's .1), which explains why I was having trouble getting it to assign .2 to one of my machines. After rebooting, the router's functionality seems to come up in stages; as a consequence, users outside your LAN may actually see the router's admin login page on port 80 for a short period of time after rebooting, even if you've set up port forwarding or a DMZ to make port 80 go to a machine on your LAN. So give your DGL-4300 a good password! Oh, and the built-in help is kinda lame; it doesn't take you to the help for the page you're on, but rather forces you to find that yourself. More context-sensitivity would be nice.
These minor quirks are quite livable and some of them will probably be addressed in future firmware upgrades. I've tried four routers in the past month from Buffalo, Netgear, Linksys, and now D-Link and all but this one have had not just quirks but serious design flaws that made them unsuitable for my needs. The DGL-4300 is a keeper. The company has gone from being an also-ran in home networking to one of the best. I'm very impressed.

Keith

6/29/2005 12:38:52 PM Pacific

I ended up ordering it from NewEgg, grand total of $139 including shipping. I'm due to receive it tomorrow. Seems like a pretty good deal, especially compared to the full list on the D-Link site.

Jerry Kindall

8/21/2005 2:54:18 PM Pacific

D-Link just released version 1.4 firmware for this device and it has improved several of the things that bugged me about it. For one thing, updating the GameFuel (QoS) rules no longer requires a restart. Also, if you manually specify your outbound bandwidth, the router no longer goes through its procedure to automatically determine your outbound bandwidth and as a result comes up much faster. It also handles things much better when the power goes out and the router comes back up before the modem does. The router even e-mailed me to notify me of the firmware upgrade -- how nice!
You will lose all your settings, so save your settings before installing the update.

Jerry Kindall

4/12/2006 9:32:06 PM Pacific

This device is up to 1.6 now. Round about v1.5 they started scrutinizing your custom GameFuel rules to make sure they don't conflict. So, make sure your rules are the way you want them before you upgrade, or just keep a copy of 1.4 around.

Xil

7/26/2006 10:44:19 AM Pacific

How QoS feature of DGL-4300 router is different from other routers with QoS (read: cheaper routers)?
Has somebody on net made a comparison?
It seems from http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/d-link_dgl-4300/page5.asp
that it is able to throttling incoming trafic too.

Andy

8/3/2006 8:20:50 PM Pacific

Well you anticipated the AOL comment so kudos to you for knowing it ...

Thomas Kasmir

9/30/2006 11:13:31 AM Pacific

Are there features on any SOHO router for selectively throttling down ports? My son might be downloading for 48 straight hours on a weekend and I don't begrudge him that activity. But if I need an hour myself online I'd like to be able to interface with the router and prioritize my port.

Jerry Kindall

9/30/2006 11:20:16 AM Pacific

The DD-WRT firmware (which works on various routers) has a throttling feature, I believe.

stavrosthewonderchicken

3/15/2007 8:50:11 PM Pacific

Hey Jerry -- followed a link from your post on the Ars Technica forums, 'cause I'm thinking of getting a DGL4300. Small world, eh?

Jerry Kindall

3/15/2007 9:01:30 PM Pacific

Indeed. I'm all over!

Frederick J. Postadan

3/22/2007 6:39:52 PM Pacific

Hello Sir,
I am in a dilemma. I read about your Manual Game Fuel Rule Setup for the DGL-4300. I have had D Link DGL - 4300 for about a year. A couple of days ago I just acquired a Vonage cordless phone system that connects to the the DGL -4300 router. Now everytime I game on Xbox 360 I keep disconnecting from the middle of a game where I have neve disconnected before. I have Comcast and my upload speed is 768k.
Now is the only time I am really looking into prioritizing through the router's capabilities. i really think this Vonage is eating up so much bandwith that when I game while Vonage is connected I disconnect in the game. Is there a way I can solve this to where I will not disconnect.
So far I have followed somewhat your set up except I put the Xbox 360 as high priority (50) and the Vonage least priority (255). But I left both protocol/ports at "any". After I did this I noticed a change in "measured uplink speed" now at 770 kbps. Before though the speed was measured at 202 uplink.
Wit that being said I am still disconnecting. What am I doing wrong. Please help.
Sincerely,
Frederick J. Postadan

Jerry Kindall

3/22/2007 6:48:04 PM Pacific

Possibly the Vonage box and XBox are trying to get the router to port-forward incoming connections using Universal Plug & Play (UPnP). Try turning that off. (Advanced > Advanced Network > UPnP.) Vonage doesn't really use that much bandwidth, like 60-90K if I remember correctly.

Todd McDermid

6/13/2007 1:23:29 PM Pacific

Hi Jerry,
I bought the DGL-4300 a while ago - but have only recently gotten around to trying to manually tweak the GameFuel rules. The current firmware version (1.8) seems to be standing in my way - I can "add" all the rules I want, but when I hit the "save settings" button, I get a "name can not be blank" message, and nothing is saved.
If I revert to 1.7 and set a rule, the 1.8 upgrade wipes it out. Have you had this issue?

Jerry Kindall

6/13/2007 8:43:42 PM Pacific

My GameFuel page may have some help. There's a JavaScript bookmarklet you can add to prevent the router from validating the rules you put in. Round about 1.5 they stopped allowing rules that should be perfectly reasonable, so I figured out this hack. My GameFuel page has several rules in it that the validation script doesn't like.

Todd McDermid

6/14/2007 11:31:22 AM Pacific

Thanks, Jerry - I happened to try that just before I got your email. Another problem though...
I've set up some rules, and they all work - everything except that I can't seem to "downgrade" TCP port 80 connections, no matter what I try.
I've started with no rules at all, and tried just about everything from wide open IPs and ports on the source and dest, to single-site, single-port specifications. Every TCP connection it makes is priority 1 (and they're all outbound). As an example, my current and only rule is to set TCP traffic to "200" priority, for all source IPs and ports, to any destination IP, port 80.
Any ideas?

Max

8/6/2007 11:37:30 PM Pacific

Hi all,
I came accross this page after looking for some reviews on the Linksys gear... Before that i stumbled accross the Dlink router, but didn't pay attention to it "dat is something for gamerz, i'm no gamer at all i just need QoS".... Your articles just aroused my curiosity about the Dlink routers, so i went on and read more reviews and finally bought the DGL4100. I run a separate WLAN acces point, because i plan to upgrade to 802.11n asap....
Now my VoIP calls are crystal clear, even when someone is bombing a huge file out of my FTP server !
Notes to the gamers : It seems like that XBox compatibility is only achieved with the latest version of the firmware....

Steven Horton

9/12/2007 9:24:36 PM Pacific

Hi Todd,
I just updated to the 1.8, now on the Admin page I cannot update the password! It won't let me save anything I type in. I tried doing the Gamefuel thing, but I haven't had any success. Any other ideas? Thanks!
Steve

Thaine

9/30/2007 8:22:12 PM Pacific

I have a Netgear WGT624 V3 that will not allow me to forward port 53 to more than one internal IP Address. Therefore I cannot use the Vonage and Sprint Airave VoIP devices simultaneously. Will the DGL 4300 allow port forwarding to multiple internal IP addressses?

Jerry Kindall

9/30/2007 10:11:14 PM Pacific

To do what you want, Thaine, you'd need a router that could port-forward to various devices based on where the traffic's coming from, so you can send your Sprint traffic to the Sprint device and the Vonage traffic to the Vonage device. I'm not aware of any consumer-grade router that can do that. You might look into the DD-WRT third-party firmware that can run on a variety of routers. If it doesn't have such a feature, it could probably be added.
That said, I know the Vonage ATA will work from behind a NAT router, so you might be able to just run it that way. 53 is the port used for DNS anyway, I can't imagine your VOIP service needs to contact you on that port.

Jim

10/16/2007 8:30:56 AM Pacific

Hello,
I just purchased a DGL-4300 router and the DGL-3420 108AG gaming adapter for my XBOX 360. Could anyone help me configure this router to get MAXimum speed with a "little" bit of security?
I'd also like to get my NAT OPEN if possible. Any help? Thanks!

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Re: the router king