To cut a long story short, I’ve sent the D-Link 655 that I got just over a week ago back to the retailer which, coincidentally, cost me £13.85 because I had to send it back to bloody France! Nope, I seriously won’t be buying from PIXmania again.

The reason for sending the unit back is simple; though actually diagnosing the problem was far from it. Having hooked the D-Link up to my Netgear DGN2000 which was now running in modem-only mode, my internet download speed dropped from 20mbit to 10mbit. Because it wasn’t actually the D-Link that was dialling up, this unit wouldn’t give me any connection details other than “connected” (which was far from helpful) so I had to disconnect that and connect to the Netgear directly in order to access its webmin and check the details on there. The Netgear reported a 20mbit connection, and yet whenever I downloaded anything on any of the computers, I was getting 250kb/sec max.

It turns out that the D-Link was establishing a mere 10mbit connection to the Netgear (the D-Link being a gigabit unit and the Netgear being a 100mbit unit), so no matter how fast my internet connection was I was only ever going to get 10mbit from it. I set the D-Link to force a 100mb connection and when that didn’t work I tried the gigabit option, which also didn’t do anything. Hardly performance that you’d call “Xtreme”, is it, D-Link? There was no such option on the Netgear. I disabled QoS, packet shaping, UPnP and everything else that was there to be disabled but no, nothing made any difference so I logged into PIXmania, found my order and requested an RMA number. I wrapped the D-Link back up in its French SKU box and prepared it for posting. I then did what I now wish I had done at the beginning and ordered a gigabit switch, which I’d use to connect everything to the router and get the best of both worlds – a gigabit internal network and a 20mbit internet connection.

I connected everything back up to the Netgear for now and put that back in modem/router mode, only to find that this was now playing up and refusing to issue a DHCP IP address to one of my computers. Also, one of its ports refused to work with any device. I’d had another Netgear router do this to me 18 months ago – the DG834G – which was what I’d replaced with the DGN2000. Really angry at this point, I binned the Netgear, vowed never to buy any of their crap again and hooked up the old Thompson router that we got from O2 a year ago. Everything connected to that without any problems.

The gigabit switch arrived a few days ago and so far everything with the internal network is fine, though there is an issue with O2′s router which I’m hoping a replacement router from O2 will fix, but I’ll write about this separately as it appears that a number of others are experiencing the same thing.

Hassle, hassle and yet more hassle!

Well, the D-Link 655 router that I ordered a few days ago arrived from PIXmania. First off, the router is a French SKU. The manual, the software CD and the guarantee are all French. The alarm bells rang when I first opened the box and found a UK mains adaptor converter, though my first instinct had been that PIXmania had shipped me an American SKU which was how they make their profit margin. But no, it was French. I don’t think I’ll buy from PIXmania again.

Thankfully the router’s webmin was in English so I wasted no time in setting everything up. Or at least, to a point because I quickly discovered that there was no in-built modem and I’d have to use an external modem to connect to my ISP. That’s not really a problem because the Netgear DGN2000 that I’ve used for two years has been great in every way apart from it only being a 10/100mbit unit which is too slow for the Thecus – but obviously fast enough for internet access. I thought I’d set up the network with the D-Link and then connect that to the Netgear for internet access – should be easy enough, right?

Without an appropriate manual, I was left to Google to troubleshoot when my initial attempt failed. The D-Link seemed to connect to the internet as it was successfully checking for the latest firmware, but nothing that was connected to the D-Link could get out.

Over an hour was spent reading various forums, reviews and articles to try and get the information I required, when I then concluded that the internet is FULL of people who have NO IDEA what they’re talking about. One person would claim that the way forward was to disable DHCP on the D-Link; another to disable it on the Netgear. One person would claim that you put the ISP settings into the D-Link and use the Netgear as a pass-through; the other that you put the settings into the Netgear and let the D-Link piggy-back on it. In short, no-one had a bloody clue.

While searching for answers I also found this thread on the D-Link support forums where someone else was experiencing problems with the 655. I was distinctly unimpressed to see such a haughty attitude on Lycan, the “Technical Engineer Global Moderator” of the forum, as he proved particularly unhelpful to anyone who asked any valid questions about the unit. Idiot.

In the end I stumbled across a short discussion about Netgear. Some guy was looking for a way to set his router as a modem but couldn’t find the necessary option, and someone posted a link with a “try this” suggestion. The link was http://192.168.0.1/setup.cgi?next_file=mode.htm, and opening this link myself brought me to a minimalist page with nothing other than router mode: modem/router or modem only. I selected modem only and immediately the machines connected to the D-Link had internet access. For some really stupid reason, this page is only available to you on the navigation pane once you’ve already set the router to modem-only – when in router/modem mode, you’ve got to type in the address which means you need to already know it’s there. Who’s the Einstein that came up with that idea?

As for the other settings that I’m using, the Netgear has a LAN IP address of 192.168.0.1, DHCP and wireless are both disabled and the ISP details are specified. The D-Link has an IP of 192.168.0.10, DHCP is enabled with a range of 192.168.0.50 – 192.168.0.254, the wireless is enabled and the ISP details are also specified (manually). The internet port is connected to one of the Netgear’s LAN ports.

Hopefully this post will prove useful to others who find themselves with zero documentation and an internet-full of useless guesses!

Not happy with the transfer rates I get with my Thecus N4100Pro, I decided to look into what could possibly be the problem. It turns out that with overheads, the maximum transfer rate I’ll get from it is around 8-10mb/sec – if I’m lucky. Since I deal with large files on a regular basis, this has already gotten to the point where it’s beyond doing my head in, so I decided to upgrade my router (which doubles as a switch for 3 devices) to a gigabit model. That way I could expect transfer rates more along the lines of 70mb/sec, apparently*.

* I say apparently because while the maths behind that increase ratio does make sense, the maths also predicts transfer rates of more like 12.5mb/sec on a 100mbit line – so to be getting 8-10mb must mean there’s quite an overhead involved…

Anyway, after looking around I settled on a D-Link Xtreme N Gigabit DIR-655 and promptly searched for some prices on Google Products.

PIXmania was the first name that I’d heard of before (and bought from previously), so although they weren’t quite the cheapest I decided to go with them – the power of brand recognition working a treat. PIXmania had it for £79.90 including VAT, so I went to the site, added it to my basket and went to checkout. Just then Firefox crashed, so when it loaded back up I manually navigated to PIXmania’s site and searched for the router. To my amazement the router was now £96.98 including VAT! That’s a 21% increase in price, with the only difference being that on the first occasion I was referred from Google Products and on the second there was no referral.

I went back to Google Products and did the search again from there. Sure enough, the router came up again for £79.90, so this time I went in and bought the router from there. I checked out, paid via PayPal and now have an email receipt for £79.90.

It would seem that PIXmania is slashing prices on price comparison websites to make themselves more competitive, yet hiking them up again to non-referrals who are unlikely to have compared their prices before making a purchase. The moral of the story here is to always use price comparison websites whenever you’re making a purchase online!