| | |  | Office Products | Home » » D-Link DIR-825 Extreme-N Dual-Band Gigabit Router | | | | | | | Description: | | D-LINK SYSTEMS D-LINK XTREME N DUAL BAND GIGABIT ROUTER DIR-825 - WIRELESS ROUTER + 4-PORT SWIT Manufacturer : D-LINK SYSTEMS UPC : 790069318122 | | | Features: | |
• Intelligent QoS technology prioritizes Internet traffic as well as wired and wireless network traffic
• Xtreme N technology allows for farther home coverage
• Secure your wireless network using advanced WPA or WPA2 encryption
• Supports Good Neighbor Policy--will not interfere with other wireless networks
• Backward compatible with 802.11g and 802.11a devices including game consoles and digital media players
| | | Product Details: | | | Product Length:
| 7.6 inches | | Product Width:
| 4.6 inches | | Product Height:
| 1.2 inches | | Product Weight:
| 1.85 pounds | | Package Length:
| 10.8 inches | | Package Width:
| 8.4 inches | | Package Height:
| 2.8 inches | | Package Weight:
| 1.85 pounds | | Average Customer Rating:
|  based on 322 reviews |
| | | | Customer Reviews: | |
Average Customer Review:
 ( 322 customer reviews )
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
297 of 312 found the following review helpful:
 Linksys Has Some Competition! (See updates at the bottom)Nov 10, 2008
By Jerry Palmerino Jr
I am a Linksys person and I teach a Wireless course using Linksys products. I have been using Linksys products since their 802.11b wired routers first became available. I recently purchased the WRT610N and after trying this D-Link, I am sorry I chose the Linksys WRT610N.
As my first D-link product, I failed to realize D-link uses a 192.168.0.1 network address for its router. I am used to 192.168.1.1 on Linksys products.
PROs:
It is a Dual-Band wireless router, just like the WRT610N. It allows you to schedule wireless access. It has a great manual, which even tells you how to hook up one router to another for extending coverage. I was surprised to see this. I like being able to adjust power output of wireless radios. I love the idea of Guest wireless internet zones. It allows guests, such as friends, to get on your network without having access to local resources or giving out your normal SSID/Password.
It clearly has more options than the Linksys WRT610N, which can be seemingly less user freindly and requires more knowledge of networking. The web configuration screens are similar to Linksys screens though. Anyone familiar with Linksys can find their way around. I did not try the setup CD. Instead I manually configured it using the web interface.
I did not experience any of the instability issues I had with WRT610N. With a Lenovo T61, Apple TV, iPhone, two Macs, a PS3, and a PC connected to a Buffalo LinkStation Gaming Adapter, I needed to find the least common denominator wireless settings in order for all of these devices to connect and stay connected successfully. There were just too many disconnects, which necessitated the least common denominator approach. This approach meant I had to choose "Mixed BG" instead of "mixed (which includes n), had to set channel width to 20, and had to use Tkip WPA only. The D-link allowed me to use all three speed grades (B, G, and N) with WPA or WPA2 (becuase it autodetects the best encryption method available with client devices). I was also able to set the Channel Width to auto (40 or 20 depending on the clients).
CONs:
It only allows up to 63 alpha characters for the wireless passphrase/password. I prefer 64 hex character passwords.
The menus are a bit more complex, which could be an issue for some.
Only one person at a time can access a USB hard drive attached to the D-Link wireless router. Many can access the USB hard drive hanging off of the Linksys WRT610N.
OVERALL:
This is a great wireless router. I tested it as a drop-in replacement for my Linksys WRT610N (after changing the subnet to 192.168.1.x) and it performed admirably. If you are looking, I would consider this strongly before purchasing any other brand.
DECEMBER 2009 UPDATE: When my company moved to a webpage-based VPN solution (we have to access a webpage and login which then opens up the tunnels), I discovered that the firmware version (1.01) I had caused issues. I upgraded to version 1.12NA and now I am experiencing daily wireless connectivity dropouts on the 2.4 ghz band. The only solution thus far is to restart the router. This new development has been detailed across the web. I am going to try some of the suggestions, such as any one or a combination of...disabling DNS Relay, disabling IPV6 on client computers, downgrading to 1.11.
SECOND DECEMBER UPDATE: After disabling the DNS Relay, I have been running for over a week with no issues.
305 of 355 found the following review helpful:
 D-Link HAS to be paying people for these positive reviewsMay 31, 2009
By Joshua Mayfield
"Josh Mayfield"
A couple of months ago I purchased the DIR-825 because on average it received better buyer reviews than the competing dual-band N-compatible routers. At this point, I'm really struggling to understand how this is possible, because the DIR-825 fails in so many areas. I've designed wireless home networking products for almost the past 10 years, and while I'd hope that my experience and familiarity with top brands should equip me to make good purchasing decisions, in my confidence I apparently overlooked some fundamental requirements. In the DIR-825 I got a router that had what I was looking for (configurable QoS, dual-band 802.11n support), but also had a lot of other "features:"
- Randomly disconnects clients every hour or so. This happened more in 5GHz than 2.4GHz, but it definitely happened in both spectrums, and did so often. The router's logs did not indicate any reasons for clients being removed. My theory is that there were frequent signal strength hiccups that caused clients to think the router had vanished. They always reconnected about 10 seconds later, but that's long enough to disconnect you from most online games.
- Renders Vonage VOIP calls completely inaudible, even when the wireless network is quiet. The Vonage router is the only wired networking device in our house. We had it plugged into the DIR-825 so we could take advantage of the router's advanced QoS capabilities, but it was an absolute nightmare. We never got VOIP to work right so long as it was 'behind' the DIR-825, regardless of QoS settings and various other tweaks mentioned in the D-Link knowledge base and forums. We ended up having to put the Vonage device in front of the router (which fixed Vonage but had side effects on the rest of the network).
- Auto-channel Select Feature DOES NOT WORK. The auto-channel select feature, which is enabled by default, is supposed to automatically choose the least congested WiFi channel in your band. I have access to some very expensive sniffing and spectrum analysis systems that tell me that the absolute best 2.4GHz channel in my house is number 4, and the absolute worst is number 1, which literally has 10 different SSIDs beaconing on it as I write this. The DIR-825 ALWAYS selected channel 1 (and it wasn't just a matter of what it reported in the admin UI; sniffers reported it in Channel 1.) Not only does this feature appear to do the opposite of what it advertises, it's also known for randomly disconnecting clients. Unfortunately, disabling it did not fix our problem with that.
- Doesn't work with BitTorrent. I know all about port forwarding, TCP, UDP, UPnP, I followed forums, FAQs, and step-by-steps, but I never got BitTorrent to accept incoming connections properly. (And note that I hardly ever have BT running, anyway; it has nothing to do with the other issues noted here).
- Crummy wireless range in both bands. First off, a little bit of info about the 5GHz band: 5GHz is never going to have the same range as the 2.4GHz range at the same transmit power; this is a matter of physics- higher frequencies = shorter wavelength = shorter distances/more susceptible to walls. There's another problem though- at least in the USA, you are only allowed to transmit on 5GHz at a fraction of the maximum power allowed on 2.4GHz, so really 5GHz is hit with kind of a double-whammy of suck. Note that there are a few 5GHz channels that are allowed to be transmitted at a higher power than the rest, but that doesn't mean that 5GHz device manufacturers actually do that- it only means they can. With that in mind, I can say that the DIR-825 has worse range in not only 5GHz but 2.4GHz as well than the dual-band Linksys WRT610 (which surprises me because of the Linksys's funky design), and also worse than any of the 2.4GHz-only routers we had before that.
- Is on its way to losing WiFi Alliance compliance. There's a WFA-certified logo on the box of the DIR-825, but if you've been following wireless forums you will learn that D-Link has been experimenting with removing 802.11b support from their routers, including the DIR-825, in their downloadable firmware updates. Now, I personally stopped using 11.b years ago, and you can get better 2.4GHz performance by going G-only, but WFA logo compliance REQUIRES that you support 802.11b. D-Link has not explained why they're trying to do this, but I suspect that their hardware has either become overloaded or their code so messy that they can't adequately support new requirements without dropping 802.11b support- and that should scare you.
After a full MONTH of trying to get the DIR-825 to work properly, I realized it wasn't me, and it wasn't my setup- it was just that this router sucks worse than any other router I've ever used. I promise you there's not a single setting I didn't investigate or tinker with in my quest to get reliable WiFi, but honestly, even if there were some magic combination of router settings that would make things work, the thing should have been configured to work properly out of the box. I don't have any crazy setup, just a bunch of computers, and a few game consoles and TiVos that are normally quiet.
I purchased the Linksys WRT610N Simultaneous Dual-N Band Wireless Router and am MUCH happier now. I don't believe I had to configure any special settings except for the port-forwarding stuff for BitTorrent. I have Vonage connected behind the router again, and VOIP works perfectly. Our connection strength is better on all computers in the home than with the DIR-825, and the only random disconnects we get are on 5GHZ, though they are much more infrequent than with the DIR-825. Save yourself a month of headaches and get something, anything, other than the DIR-825.
P.S. About 802.11n - Note that 5GHz support is an optional feature of 802.11n at this time, so when looking for APs or network cards, understand that not all of them support 5GHz (in fact, most don't). Allways look for "dual-band" or "5GHz" when shopping for 802.11n stuff so you have the most flexibility in your home setup.
48 of 57 found the following review helpful:
More like 4.5 stars, nice router some trouble with 5 Ghz bandNov 03, 2008
By Karissa Eckert
"Devourer of all books fantasy"
PROS:
Easy setup that is somewhat secure
Signal strength seemed better
N was faster
CONS:
Would have like a more comprehensive setup by default
Computer had problems reconnecting after a reboot of the router (probably a Windows problem).
Couldn't figure out the 5Ghz band not getting good signal strength.
First off I am by no means a networking expert. I have a small network at home that includes 3 PCs/Laptops, a Wii, PS3, NAS, Printer, and DishNetwork DVR box. So in all 8 devices that connect on a regular basis. Since the DVR box is downstairs and I don't have it connected via cable, I bought a repeater that hooks up to the network wirelessly, and then shares that connection over a wire to the DVR. Ok now that you see the extent of my network, here is what I thought of the D-Link DIR825.
The Setup was pretty fast and simple. I plugged in the wire that was provided to the router from there to my computer, and plugged in the cable modem. I then used the disk that was provided to run through the initial setup of the router. It went pretty quickly, though there were a few oddities. First off the disk didn't start up right away like it should have. I am not sure if I can attribute that to Windows Vista or what. But opening the disk and running the setup manually was easy anyway. I then ran through the install, which asked for a password for the router, which I was happy about, and by default it enabled WPA2, so you have to enter the passphrase for that. When the process was at the end, the second odd thing happened. The end of the install program asks to write a file to the desktop with the configuration for the router. I found this odd because it has your router password in plain text, and it put your WPA2 key phrase in plain text. I didn't really like this because of course it isn't very secure. It is however on your desktop, so if the computer is password protected, I guess you have some security. I deleted it almost immediately, since I don't want sensitive information sitting around on my machines if I can help it.
By default the only security enabled is the WPA2. The SSID is not hidden, and there is no mac address filter. On my old router I had set it up with these two security measures because they are fairly simple to do, and they make it a lot more difficult for someone to get on to a network with this setup. Now my old router didn't set these up by default either, so it wasn't a big deal. So I poked around in the configuration screens and changed some things that I think are important. I was impressed by how many options you have on this router. It seemed much more robust than my old router, which was a 802.11g router, and is probably 3-4 years old now. I did run into a problem with connecting back to the router after a reboot because I changed some options. I had to reboot to get my computer to reconnect. This didn't bother me all that much, but it was kind of irritating.
Next I went about changing all of my computers over to the new router. This process is fairly painless when it comes to the computers (1 dual boot Windows/Linux which both attached just fine). I basically just had to add a new connection for the new router which is by default on the 192.168.0.x address segment. The Printer and NAS are set up with fixed IP addresses configured on their own boxes, and they are both hardwired to the router, so they were really easy. After that comes the odds and ends. Overall I had this router in within an hour with the configuration that I wanted.
I then moved around the house a little to see what kind of strength I got. Since most of my nics are 802.11g, I first tried that. It seemed about the same to me, though I really wasn't expecting much difference, since there should have been no increase in speed. I did notice that it seemed like I got a little bit better signal strength from further away, even on the older nics. The Wireless N also worked very well. I tried connecting up with a wireless USB NIC and that went pretty well too. I didn't get a chance to check to see if the speed was better by numbers, but eyeballing a couple of downloads from my NAS seemed quite a bit quicker. So overall, the DIR825 seems like a pretty good router to me, way better than my old router which will now be retired.....
The other interesting thing about this router is that it has two bands, it can use 2.5Ghz or 5.0Ghz. Both are given their own SSID, and are basically separate networks. The box says that the 5.0Ghz is meant for streaming HD content, while the 2.5Ghz is meant for the normal junk (e-mail, web-browsing, etc). I was having a problem with the 5Ghz ban not having that good of signal strength. Even when sitting near the router, the NIC that I was using was only getting 23% signal strength, but the 2.5Ghz band was getting 99% signal strength. I looked into it a little, but wasn't able to figure it out. So I ran the test I wanted to run anyway. I connected up with two different computers, one on each band, and tried to take up as much bandwidth as I could. I could tell that it was faster because both of the computers were able to transfer files quicker with each being on their own band, but the 5Ghz band took longer for the same size of files, than the 2.5 Ghz band. I have a feeling that there is just something I was missing, but not sure what it was. Either way, it was nice to have two bands, and it will work out well in my house since a couple of the devices are really close to the router, so they can stay on the lower strength band, and the others can be on the 2.5Ghz band and still get good speed and strength. Since the traffic for each is independent, it works out really nice!
13 of 13 found the following review helpful:
 Feature packed, great performance, but auto-negotiation problemsDec 07, 2008
By S. Lionel
Several months ago, I had bought the D-Link DIR-655, a lower model that did not do 5GHz. It would not get a DHCP address from my ISP and I eventually returned it.
I decided to try again, this time with the DIR-825. Same problem - no DHCP. This time, D-Link support was more helpful and guided me to the actual problem, which was that the router failed to "auto-negotiate" the Ethernet link speed from my FiOS optical network block. No other router or PC I had tried had such a problem. The second-level support rep had me change the speed to 10Mbps (instead of the default 10/100/1000 auto) and it worked.
Well, sort of. What's the point of a 15Mbps service with a 10Mbps Ethernet link? Could I set it to 100Mbps? Yes. Did it work? No. But I then had a think. I grabbed an Ethernet switch I had elsewhere in the house and put that between the FiOS connection and the router. Success! The switch negotiated the speed just fine and presented the router with a GigE link. So off to local store I go and I find the same model Netgear GigE switch on sale for $30. Install that and I'm in business.
Now that it works, I'm very happy with the features and performance of the DIR-825. One can adjust the properties of the 2.4 and 5GHz radios separately, and it has a "Guest Zone" feature which might come in handy some day. I get a strong signal throughout the house and it can be configured in detailed ways or just left alone.
I used manual configuration so can't comment on D-Link's CD-based setup. I have used the WiFi Protected Setup feature, where you just enter a passcode (printed on the bottom of the router or you can generate a new one in the admin panel) and it retrieves the key automatically. Very neat.
If the DIR-825 does the auto-negotiation for you properly, then that's great. If not, you can install a switch (more power and higher price) or look for another brand. I conclude that the Ethernet transceiver D-Link uses is not as good as that of other brands.
16 of 17 found the following review helpful:
Great Router! All the bells and whistles.May 13, 2009
By John Edward
"Computer Guy"
Step 1 - Open the box.
Step 2 - Go to the Dlink website and download and update to the latest version of the firmware for the router.
This router is a great value for the price. It has all the current bells and whistles. 2.4 and 5.0 Mhz, simultaneous dual band, gigabyte ethernet ports, USB port to plug in any USB device to share. The user interface is really nice and has a lot of features to set your router up any way you want. This router has all the features of the more expensive "gaming routers". I'm using this router for everything; web surfing, gaming, voip phone, video streaming, media server with PS3, and file and print sharing. This router doesn't miss a beat. I have experienced no shuttering or slowdowns. Video streaming is smooth and steady, and voip calls are as clear as a landline.
If you buy this router, download the latest firmware for the router on the dlink website. I struggled for two days trying to get the shared printer to work. But once I downloaded the latest firmware it worked immediately. There is a little button in the user interface that says "check for latest firmware version" or something like that. When you click it, it says you already have the latest version. That was the first thing I checked when I had problems with the printer. Two days of struggle later, I went to the dlink website and saw there was a much newer version of the firmware. So, don't believe the little status button in the user interface, go to the dlink website and look for yourself, download and update to the latest firmware.
Most of the problems people reported in earlier reviews have been corrected with the latest version of the firmware. So save yourself a lot of time and hassle and update to the latest version. Even if you just opened a brand new package, it probably still has an old version of the firmware installed. So, go and update the firmware first thing. I think the orignial problems dlink had in late 2008-early 2009 was that they released this router before the firmware was ready for prime-time. Now the problems appear to be fixed in the newest version of the firmware.
I love this router! So many features! A big upgrade from my three year old wireless G router.
The only real negative I read on reviews from other websites concerning this router was the signal range. I live in a two story concrete house. The router is in the second floor in the far front of the house. I can go outside all the way to the back of my back yard and still get "excellent" signal with all bars showing. That's got to be a total distance of 200 feet through about four drywall walls and an exterior concrete wall. So the latest firmware might have solved that issue that was reported with the first versions that came out in late 2008.
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