New wireless router

[D. Hugh Redelmeier]

Lennart likes his wireless router.  Here's his first message about it to 
the list.

I'm mentioning this because it is on sale at $100, for today, at Infonec.
That seems to be a good price -- $20ish less than other places.
<http://www.shopbot.ca/pp-d-link-dir-825-d-link-price-141873.html>
<http://www.pricebat.ca/dir-825-d-link-xtreme-n-dual-band-gigabit-router-802-11g-b/>

(I recently bought a refurbished Netgear WNDR3700 with similar specs:
<http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=7089722&CatId=2668>
Note: there are two versions and they have slightly tradeoffs.
Its successor, the WNDR4000 is starting to be available.  But it is 
Broadcom-based :-( )


| From: Lennart Sorensen <lsorense-1wCw9BSqJbv44Nm34jS7GywD8/FfD2ys at public.gmane.org>
| To: tlug-lxSQFCZeNF4 at public.gmane.org
| Date: Wed, 28 Oct 2009 13:54:03 -0400
| Subject: [TLUG]: New wireless router
| Reply-To: tlug-lxSQFCZeNF4 at public.gmane.org
| 
| So two days ago, my WL-500gP suddenly decided to stop doing its job,
| and after pwoer cycling it it no longer booted.
| 
| Reflashing it seemed to get it booting again, but not for long, and I
| then discovered the WAN port had turned into a LAN port on the switch,
| which meant the switch chip was no longer being configuring correctly.
| 
| So time for a new router.  After looking what was available at local
| stores and researching them, I found out simultanious dual band routers
| with 802.11n are actually getting affordable now, and some of them are
| being worked on and will probably be supported by openwrt and the like
| pretty soon.
| 
| So I bought a D-Link DIR-825 rev B1 with 2.02NA firmware (all nicely
| labeled on the outside of the box.  Linksys could learn something here).
| Very specificly NOT a rev A1 (which is apparently a piece of junk, with
| totally different hardware and software inside).  The rev A uses an ubicom
| CPU (300MHz proprietary RISC chip), while the rev B uses a 680MHz atheros
| 7161 MIPS 24k CPU.  The rev B runs linux (the A does not apparently).
| So with a 680MHz CPU and 64MB ram it is quite decent performance.
| So far I am impressed.  The signal strength for the various wifi enabled
| machines in the house is much improved over the old router too.
| 
| I really like the guest wifi feature.  I now have it running as:
| 
| wifi5 - WPA2/AES 5GHz 802.11 a/n
| 
| wifi24 - WPA2/AES 2.4GHz 802.11 b/g/n
| 
| wifi24ds - WEP 128bit 2.4GHz 802.11 b/g guest (firewalled from the
| other wifi and hence internet only access).  I run my Nintendo DS lite
| on this now.  I never had it able to connect to the internet before
| because it doesn't do WPA.
| 
| The only issues with the default settings are a couple of misfeatures.
| The QoS support by default tries to measure the upstream bandwidth to
| decide how to configure the QoS support.  This takes a while, isn't that
| accurate and slows down boot time by a noticeable amount.  I turned
| that off and set my 1Mbit upstream speed manually.  Boot time is now
| much better and nicer.  The second misfeature, is a capcha at the login
| screen in addition to the password.  That is totally stupid, not even
| a well done capcha, and I turned that off too.  Everything else is great.
| Well the blue LEDs for the ports and power and such are awfully bright.
| I made mine face the wall for now. Apparently blue means working and
| amber means not yet working on this thing rather than red/green.
| 
| So I would certainly recommend the DIR0825 rev B for anyone that wants
| the everything in one and at the same time wifi router.  Once openwrt
| and such hopefully one day runs on it, it will just get better.
| 
| I also like the fact that the first thing you see when you open up the
| box, is a printed copy of the GPL along with an offer of getting a disc
| with the GPL parts of the code by writing them or sending an email.
| You can also download it from the website ofcourse.  The CD with the
| windows software also has a note on the back for Mac and Linux (both
| listed explicitly) users telling them where on the CD to find the
| documentation files.
| 
| -- 
| Len Sorensen
| --
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