D-Link DGL-4500 Xtreme N Gaming Router

[Unregistered]

ROFL...no wonder it goes up.....when she gets on, you share the bandwith over your connection.......any router does that .....

:techgage::techgage: Merlin :techgage::techgage:

Oh and did you take a second to see what they advertise? --http://games.dlink.com/products/?pid=643


"GAMEFUEL PRIORITY
Nothing ruins a frag-fest faster than lag. GameFuel allows you to customize your network settings to prioritize game traffic so your roommate doesn't hog all the bandwidth while downloading tracks from his favorite 80's hair band."

 

[Merlin]

I know that, I have 8 megabit down (when surfing you use mostly down and a little up) and 512 up. Now the whole reason for this router existing is to prioritize and control the QOS (uopload) so you dont run out and get high pings. It doesnt appear to be doing this. It does worse than my Netgear $50 router and it cost me $180!

Looks like the server has a choke on you .....you know what a choke is?
Servers ping varies from location...I'm sure you already know that.
And also...have you upgraded the firmware?
Docsis 3.0 is coming out the end of this year

And also...I never game through a router, if I want the best connection

-=OTG=-Deckard rank 90 out of 122,494

:techgage::techgage: Merlin :techgage::techgage:

 

[Unregistered]

Looks like the server has a choke on you .....you know what a choke is?
Servers ping varies from location...I'm sure you already know that.
And also...have you upgraded the firmware?
Docsis 3.0 is coming out the end of this year

And also...I never game through a router, if I want the best connection

-=OTG=-Deckard rank 90 out of 122,494

:techgage::techgage: Merlin :techgage::techgage:

Happens on ANY server. So I am guessing that would eliminate server choke as you say.
Yes I know. Ping is 60 goes to 2-300 when wife browses internet.
What gives? I thought the whole reason for paying all this money for a "gaming" router was to help prevent these issues. If i didnt use a router that would be a pain. Most people use a router btw.

 

[Rob Williams]

Hmm, that's ridiculous, and I wish I could help. Next time I see Greg, I'll point him to this thread.

Is your wife using any application that could be hogging the upload speed?

 

[Kougar]

Don't you need to configure QoS manually? I do know that Gamefuel must be configured by the end user before it can work though... hence the "allows you" part of their quote

 

[Unregistered]

QOS is on. It is enabled on the router by default and I checked that it was. Cmon if it was that simple I wouldnt have posted. My wife is using Internet Explorer 7. Nothing else. Seems very simple but it just doesnt work as advertised.

 

[Unregistered]

From the MANUAL

Enable GameFuel: This option is disabled by default. Enable this option for better performance and experience with online games and other interactive applications, such as VoIP.

Automatic Classification: This option is enabled by default. This will allow your router to automatically determine the network priority of running programs.

 

[Unregistered]

hmm

Awfully quiet in here...

 

[Merlin]

Awfully quiet in here...

Shhhhhhhhhhhhh Nap Time

:techgage::techgage: Merlin :techgage::techgage:

 

[Unregistered]

coma

Wow you mean coma...

 

[Rob Williams]

No one here knows networking like Greg does, so I have no valuable input. I know less than you do, to be honest.

I have pinged Greg about this, but he has run into the worst kind of luck the past two weeks, which I won't talk about here in case he wants it kept private. He will be back later this week, however, and I'm hoping he will be able to help you.

Remember, we are not D-Link tech support.. and the problem very well might stump Greg also. He's a networking pro, though, so if anyone here knows a solution, he will.

 

[Unregistered]

Thanks. I contacted Dlink and they werent much help. I would rather speak with someone who knows networking rather than an Indian making 2$ an hour who only knows how to read a script...

Tell greg i hope everything works out...

 

[Unregistered]

Greg Help

Hey Greg you back yet? I hope you can help. This thing seems so weird. I just want decent performance. Seems no better than my $50 Netgear router...

 

[Rob Williams]

He doesn't seem to be back :-/ I believed he was supposed to be back Thurs, but other things could have come up. Next time I talk to him, I'll point him here.

 

[thehailo]

Update and Q

Sorry to revive the old thread, but I have a question regarding the DGL-4500 and figured it’d be worth updating everyone on its current status since it remains the flagship gaming router for D-Link.

First off, around the v1.02 or so firmware D-Link did manage to break things, terribly. Luckily everything has been fixed and the current firmware is rock solid, however the router earned itself a poor reputation for a while. Additionally, the USB port functionality has been expanded to support USB drives and printers, to an extent, utilizing a software client on each machine connecting through the router. I haven’t used this personally so I can’t comment past that. I know it suffers from the limit of only letting one computer at a time use the attached device, so don't count on it for NAS.

Unfortunately, the firmware updates have NOT addressed the horribly outdated list of games built into the router. If you want to open a port for a game made in about the past four years, you’re doing it by hand. This isn’t looking like it’ll ever be solved either. D-Link has taken their gaming page down, posted a survey asking what gamers want in their next generation gaming router, and retired the two lower-end gaming routers. The 4500 isn’t quite EOL yet, but it certainly looks to be on its way out.

Now, something not addressed in the review, but I’m curious to get feedback from anyone who’s had a 4500 running for a while; have you noticed the GameFuel tech helping at all? I have it setup, and like the Killer NIC I tested recently, I honestly can’t spot a difference. Neither seems to do a great job at moving my gaming traffic along over even basic things like HTTP downloads or BitTorrent. I still have to setup QoS and open ports by hand, which defeats the entire purpose of why I bought this router. In short, I wanted something that “just worked” so I didn’t have to remember to close uTorrent, or wait until a file download finished to enjoy a game.

Now, on to my main question. The place I just moved into has me stretching the wireless coverage. I also have a SonicWALL TZ190W running at the same time. The SNWL is on Channel 1 with the 4500 on Auto (typically 6/11). I can’t take the SonicWALL out of the picture for another couple months, so whatever interference it's causing I can’t address yet. So, I’m looking to replace the stock antennas of the 4500 with something beefier. I can get some nice 9dBi antennas for $18.99 each, meaning after shipping and tax I’m dropping almost $70, which I figure is pretty close to the cost of a new router. Has anyone upgraded their stock antennas, and if so what is your feedback? Would I be well served boosting the signal or should I just get another router? Is there really a good "gaming" router out there? Other than UPnP I can't seem to find any routers that really work without a lot of tweaking.

 

[Kougar]

Just to clarify, are you looking to increase the range or increase two-way communication with the router? I can't speak for others, but my personal results with upgrading to high-gain +7dBi antennas was that it helped my Linksys broadcast, but it didn't help the devices trying to send data back to it. For the best results you'd also have to upgrade the antennae on any devices having trouble or outside its range before you can get a stable two-way connection. And if you are thinking of the antenna upgrade to solve possible interference problems, it won't help with that.

It depends on what devices you have connected via wifi, but one thing to at least look at would be getting a wireless N router. Wireless G usually sticks to the 2.4Ghz band, but most wireless N routers can also use the 5GHz band. Not great for range, but it would get off the same frequency band. Operating wireless G and wireless N at the same time is a gamble, some routers will actually interfere with each other so there is no guarantee here. You'd need to do some careful research first.

Another option, is that $70 would buy you a powerline ethernet setup. These things are great for reaching deadzones. Not sure if they would meet your needs though....I can attest though, the PLK300 kit Merlin got works really well.

It really depends what you need your setup to do. My own results with a high-gain antenna upgrade were disappointing though, so give it some research before ya decide on it.

I use the DIR-655, but DLink hasn't updated the firmware in over a year now so the (already limited) game profiles are old. I think Linksys has a better firmware update policy, but really all the routers I've used required some configuration for QoS. For the most part I don't need to configure ports with the DIR-655 as UPnP seems to do its job, but its not perfect. And I really don't like rebooting the router just to make minor changes... Linksys doesn't have this issue.

 

[Rob Williams]

I'm not sure what I could recommend for the ports and gaming, but I do know that routers seem to have gotten a bit better over time, if the ASUS RT-N16 I recently got is anything to go by. On my older router, which was also an ASUS (~3 years old), I had trouble with my favorite MMO, and even Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. For the latter, I just couldn't allow others to connect to me no matter what I tried.

With this new router, my MMO connects just fine, without configuration, and Modern Warfare 2 works right out of the box as well. I know this doesn't help you, but hopefully the next router you buy will save you this kind of mind-numbing hassle.