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Router Built for Gamers
VL writes "Ping times suck? Too much lag? If your loved ones are hogging all your bandwidth with P2P and torrents, you'll want to check out the D-Link DGL-4300 Wireless 108G Gaming Router. This is a router designed for gamers that also happens to be a great router for regular folks."
had a review of the D-Link a while ago
This one has what appears to be pre-programmed and user-definable QoS to make sure your games get priority use of available bandwidth.
8dimensional.com posted about this almost two weeks ago.
Not to be flip, but if one of the reasons you come to Slashdot is to hear about neat hardware and read the articles, go to 8dimensional.com first. If the follow-up discussions matter, then ok, yeah, keep coming here. But what the heck is going to be said here that couldn't be predicted anyway?
A router with QoS already defined for well know games and a easy setup to add new games.
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This one has what appears to be pre-programmed and user-definable QoS to make sure your games get priority use of available bandwidth.
You can get a Linksys.. buy the Sveasoft linux fireware.. and QoS too!
For a lot less!
Online backup with Mozy, sounds like Ozzie, but more!
yep, but this time, the QoS software is already configured for popular games and has a easy setup to add new games.
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What makes this router so special
Maybe if you'd RTFA, you'd have noticed that it provides both automatic and configurable packet prioritization, meaning you ping to the server remains pretty much constant whether or not others on your WAN are uploading, downloading, or both.
That is what makes is so special.
Seeing as how TFA is /.-ed
Here is a review of the D-Link DGL-4300 Gaming router. They even test the unit with PCs running Fedora Core 3.
Reviews
http://gamesfirst.com/v4/index.php?m=l&i=372
http://www.gamingillustrated.com/dgl4300.php
http://firingsquad.com/hardware/d-link_dgl-4300/
Competition
http://www.dlink.com/giveaway/monthlyGiveaway.asp
According to the ExtremeTech review, the ping times are around 300-400ms when the connection is being heavily utilised. Well, that's useless for the target market. Alex Clouter's QoS scripts did a lot better 2 years ago:
http://www.digriz.org.uk/jdg-qos-script/
I'll never buy another linksys again. After getting 2 BEFW11S4 Wireless routers+switches that had bad switches (connections randomly die, the router needs to be reooted) and then not being able to get any support from the Indian Tech Support because I run linux (despite the fact that the damn router management is accessed via HTT-Fricki-P!), I've decided that I've wasted more than too much money on them.
This is certainly overrated - at least it's slashdotted for sure :-)
The key to good ping times is to have 2 things:
1) A stable, low-latency connection to your ISP
2) Short TX queues.
In essence, 1) is recursively defined by having 2) at your ISP, but ISPs aren't too keen on having minimal TX queues, because that will limit the throughput slightly. Since people behave ridiculous if they get 53 KB/s instead of 55 KB/s, it's a hard compromise between latency and throughput.
Since there is nothing you can do if your ISP isn't up to snuff, I don't see how this router can anything important. If you ping 200, how can that be fixed by carving off something like 10ms?
(yes, I did read as much as possible of the article, which was only page 1 I'm afraid..)
With great numbers come great responsibility!
I spent a long time trying to get a sister product, the DI-624, to work.
First of all, I never tried their MIMO gear, but the range and power on all the previous XG gear I tried was shockingly less than I expected. You felt lucky to penetrate two walls, or go 30 feet. Yes, of course, this is all construction materials and background noise and so forth. But in general the way these devices are marketed you do not realize how unlikely you are to see the performance numbers they claim, or potentially even use the device in a meaningful way at all.
For the first YEAR I owned this product, the firmware was unusuable! The device would work, sure, but gradually you would see latencies and packet loss creep up over a 24-48 hour period until the network was unusable. Some kind of resource leaking... And then you would also see occasional random lockups. Only power cycling the router would help.
Can you picture a cron job that wget's the router reboot URL? Now you are getting the picture. And I know from the forums that earlier DLink adopters had it worse, in many cases much worse. DLink, of course, was just in no hurry at all to fix the problem. AN ENTIRE YEAR. Imagine my amazement when they finally fixed it at all.
I actually tried a competing Linksys product. It was worse, both in terms of analog performance, and also that it would lose 40% of its speed with WPA encryption enabled. Pathetic. The biggest draw there is a GPL firmware you can fix yourself. But don't get me started on the whole Sveasoft evilness. But in general GPL firmware is the way to go, and it's what we need to encourage. It just kills me the Linksys hardware is under-powered.
Of course, none of these chipset manufacturers can be bothered to cooperate on a high speed standard, so you are throwing in your lot with either Atheros or Broadcomm. The DLink XTreme G's are Atheros. So, if you bought in, you didn't just get the router, you got a bunch of cards, too, and you are locked in if you want to realize their high-speed modes.
And don't get me started on the Linux support. There is no GPL driver for these products. None. You can use MadWifi, which is a GPL wrapper around a binary, closed-source "HAL." This disables all the "Xtreme-ness" of the network, and MadWifi, according to their faq, is in no hurry at all to fix that. However, this is the ONLY stable linux driver solution I have found for the newer Atheros chips. You can use NDISWrapper or DriverLoader, however, neither is stable.
Overall 802.11g and derivatives are an ugly, ill-supported, overpromised nightmare, and in hindsight I would never have gotten within 100 yards of one. My advice, stay away unless you have no other choice, and just absolutely love troubleshooting.
Tired of Political Trolls? Opt Out!
I'm very interested in this router and may purchase it (or the nicer 4600) in the near future. I don't play online games but I'm interested in VoIP, P2P, and Shoutcast hosting. Any combination of these things was impossible in the past but this router sounds like the answer. It got a great review in Computer Power User (CPU) magazine which I believe to be a very reputable source.
I'm a little wary of the claim of better ping times though. This may be a statement concerning QoS packet scheduling because I've heard from a few sources (including Jonathan "Fatal1ty" Wendel) that 1000baseT has higher latency than 10/100. However, D-Link boasts that the router's onboard processor is much faster than most, allowing many more simultaneous connections, so perhaps it can direct packets more quickly than comparable products.
I should mention here that Linksys has absolutely abhorrent customer support and that I highly recommend supporting the competitive companies. I'm on my 2nd (non-consecutive) Linksys router and it's been very unreliable from the get go. Their tech support advised me to wait a while before calling back, and when I did they told me my 1 month replacement window had expired. 8 days ago after MUCH frustration with 3 techs and a manager they finally agreed to send me a replacement (shipped at my expense) in 3 working days and I've recieved no such thing.
Linksys is riding on its laurels. Hopefully they'll get the message when people start buying imaginative new products from competitors.
I need you to back up that violence claim. The people at Sveasoft seem to be pretty nice, and this is the first time I've heard of anyone say this. The only thing that happens is that they cancel your support if they find you redistributing the package. That's hardly violence.
Supposedly RMS himself has said that the Sveasoft terms comply with the terms of GPL.
So far, every D-link router product I have had has suffered from 'resetting' under heavy load. D-link's tech support was dismal and their end suggestion was to reduce the speed of the ports to 10mb, and reduce the broadband side to 2mb.. and 'don't put it under such a heavy load'.. What sort of garbage suggestion is that? They expect me to just surf web pages and not get any work done? No thanks.
Needless to say ay I no longer buy ANY D-link product and avidly recommend against them.
Will this new device suffer from the same defects, regardless of their promotion of 'features' ? Or have they finally got a clue and want to produce a useable product?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
You're completely missing the point. Everything the router probably does is schedule outbound packets belonging to locally prioritized traffic before other traffic like outbound filesharing. In most cases, this is quite enough to produce a perceptible speedup, although large downloads will still clog up your line. So what you have with this product is a consumer-grade traffic shaper, that may give you some advantages without doing anything to disrupt global internet traffic.
The same thing is possible with some tc and iptables rules.
Fight hunger. Filet a politician and send him to a 3rd world country of your choice.
it's a D-Link, it'll SAY it has all sorts of useful and great features on the box, but when you plug it in and go to configure it you'll find out those features don't actually WORK, like D-Link's PPTP Client feature of some of their routers, it WILL connect to a PPTP server, but it's only a client for the router itself, not anyone behind the router, so it's not really all that bloody useful as a PPTP client now is it? I HATE D-Link, had 3 products from them, 1 had a meltdown turning a 10/100 switch into a 1Kb switch, 1 print server that fried after a year causing endless line feeds, and a VPN router that couldn't ACTUALLY be used for either end of a VPN connection. 3 strikes, they're out, screw D-Link!
No one needs gigabit ports for gaming over DSL/Cable
But any LAN can benefit from gigabit... especially ones where people are downloading large files from the Internet. Chances are they may want to move them between computers.
packet prioritization can be done in software
Not that I've had any experience with this, but where does this software go? Seems like this might increase latency. And besides, if it takes more than 2 hours to set up then I haven't saved any money.
$120 is not an unreasonable amount to pay for this router... if hacking on your network is your idea of a good time then more power to you, but if you want the most efficient solution then take a look at your hourly wage and make the hard decision.
Most consumer grade routers have either zero QoS or QoS so bad it doesn't make a noticable difference.
Personally, I have such bad experience with hardware routers that I'm no longer going to bother with them . The extra flexibility a cheap Linux box gives is worth it.
I didn't see anyone mention this, but a BIG difference is gigabit enabled on the LAN ports. So not only do they have QoS preset for gaming, but you have the benefits of faster transfer speeds within the network while getting to keep the router and wireless together. You guys price a gigabit switch and a g-router then see how ridiculous this is (or is not).
"Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb."
When I got DSL from Verizon, one of the filters was DOA. I called Tech Support and told them that I had a dead DSL filter from the DSL package that I just ordered. I explained that I that I tested it against another filter, phone, and jack. Then the tech support told me: "It sounds like your filter might not work." I wanted to do like that one Snickers commercial where they guy flies across country to destroy the telemarketer'c computer with a bat. He then told me he was going to transfer me to Customer Service so they could send me a new filter. (It was the wall-mount filter, and the wall mount phone is the only corded-phone in my house, so it's a priority to have plugged in) However, he didn't send me to Customer Service. He sent me to Tech Support for the other half of the country. I had to argue with that tech for 30 minutes to convince her I needed to talk to Customer Service, not East Coast Tech Support.
Free MacMini
Why do I need a password on the 192.168.1.1 configuration account? It can't be accessed from the WAN side... ... can it? (nervously checks his Netgear)
Even if the administration is disabled on the WAN interface, means you can't lock the access within within the LAN. Hopefully you can trust you friends and family, but you better hope you wireless is secure also.
Possible problems might include DNS hijacking, where the router is pointed to a DNS server controlled by someone else. This is effectively a logging tool for everything you do on the web, which means they find out which banks/store you use and redirect your accesses to their proxying façade to get your passwords and credit cards.
Anm
I work in tech support. Let me add/correct the parent poster.
1) Yes, but make sure that you are FAMILIAR with the layout and intricacies of winXP, they may try to trip you up and make you sound like you don't have winXP. Know the version number of winXP
2) Some places do not support networks, they will tell you it is unsupported. This depends highly on where you are calling. I suppose for the purpose of this article, we are talking about a router, so they will support it. Keep in mind that in general, wherever you call will only focus on what they offer, they have to stay inside their scope of support, or else they have an easy way to get you off the phone.
3) WRONG! This will make them get you connected once and send you away! They will say they fixed it, with no regard to wether it is an ongoing, intermittent problem. If they try to tell you to just reset it all the time, tell them that is unacceptable, speak to a manager if you have to.
Basically
A) yes
B) No, be realistic or you are just going to make things harder on you and the person you speak to.
-- Having a Creationist Museum is like having an Atheist place of worship
Your upload is the usual problem. It has less bandwidth and worse, there's an outbound buffer you have to work through. This buffer (often in modem hardware) is horrible (2+ sec), and the only solution short of queue jumping is to keep it drained by throttling the sources.
I recommend checking out "tcng" for this. Pretty easy to use (compared to "tc"!).
I think what might make it special (and worth $120 perhaps) is the 4 Ports of GigEthernet, WPA Personal/WPA Enterprise, SPI firewall, QoS with apps predefined. It's a lot out of the box, and probably worth it to a lot of people. I am guessing that you won't find comparable features (hardware especially) in anything under $100.
....... as needed. It's probably not for the home user though.
Me personally, I am happier with a $70 Linksys WRT54GS running OpenWRT http://www.openwrt.org/ I can load QoS, VPN, different firewall options, VoIP,
You should rethink your anti-Linksys strategy. I know the routers you speak of. I had a BEFSR11 router and it sucked. Had to be rebooted every few days just to stay stable. But I'm here to tell you that Linksys has changed... drastically. Since they were acquired by Cisco they've actually started putting out products that don't suck. When the WRT54G was released, running all Linux as it's OS, it opened up the hardware to a whole bunch of hackers that are modifying it. The Sveasoft firmware on a Linksys WRT54G has more functionality than almost any other router out there. You can do things like:
Increase the power output by 900%
Setup QoS, even using layer 7 packet inspection to determine QoS priority.
Run an Asterisk PBX on your router.
Setup a wireless hotspot (which stores billing data in a back-end SQL database).
Setup a wireless mesh network.
This is just a few. I firmly believe that the merger with Cisco brought the high-end technology down to the mass-market. Take a look at their SRW2016 switch... 16 gigabit copper ports, plus two Gigabit fibre ports, with QoS support, for less than $400. That is enterprise level hardware at consumer level prices.
I'll agree with you that Linksys hardware used to suck in the past, but you should try them again now. They've improved quite a bit.
"When the president does it, that means it's not illegal." - Richard M. Nixon
Better yet, install openbsd and use PF and ALTQ ...
Not to disagree with your overall point, but VOIP isn't all that latency sensitive. The speed of sound in air alone means you get 6 milliseconds of round-trip latency per meter seperating people talking.
Games can be very latency sensitive, the difference between two people shooting first can be a few milliseconds, though given monitor refresh rates anything under 15ms is a lottery... so if you did magically control your ISPs routers you wouldn't be unjustified in giving your games the same or higher QoS priority than VOIP
Slashdot - Mutual Assured Discussion
You and the agent both know that the solution won't fix the problem. They are hoping its enough of a hassle that you won't call back.
Veritas comes to mind here. Even though our tape library had been running fine for months, the software started to misreport the tape serial numbers were inserted, they suggested a firmware upgrade from HP to the device because they noticed we had an older version. While still on the phone with Veritas, I read the change log of the new firmware from the HP site. It was nothing but a change to the front panel disply to show HP instead of Compaq and a small modification to the front door opening procedure (not the drive door, the front door of the library). They refused to continue until it was updated. 24 hours later I recieved a message from Veritas on my voicemail stating the tech was going to close the call because they have not heard back from me, call back if the problem continues and reference the old case number if the problem was related.
It's awful. Latencies average around 30ms, with spikes to 120ms. Before we installed the Sveasoft crap, we could drive our robot vehicle remotely, using an older Linksys 802.11b unit with stock Linksys firmware. Now, the latency is so bad we can't. Fortunately, we usually drive it autonomously, and E-stop is on a completely separate radio link.
Worse, the Sveasoft software garbles TCP packets. If you have several TCP packets in flight, the later ones tend to get garbled. We've put packet sniffers on both sides of the link, and we can see the TCP packets getting trashed. It looks like the packet queueing is badly broken. Worse, they don't get trashed randomly. The trashing is repeatable and the TCP connection never recovers. It looks like some kind of stateful TCP firewall has gone horribly wrong. We have the Sveasoft firewall turned off, or at least as "off" as is offered by its options.
Non-TCP packets don't seem to get trashed in this way. So remote file access (NFS, QNX native networking) still works. And HTTP out to the Internet works. But local high-traffic TCP connections fail.
Most users probably don't see these problems because they're using these units to connect to the Internet through a slow uplink. So they never have a bottleneck across the WiFi link and don't get a packet backlog in the Sveasoft software. But try to talk to a local server using TCP. A CVS checkout from our local server over a pair of Linksys routers using the latest, licensed, paid-for Sveasoft software hangs. Every time, within ten seconds. (Works fine with a wired Ethernet connection.)
Attempts to get this fixed have dragged on for months. It's been reported to Sveasoft, of course.
So we definitely recommend against buying Sveasoft firmwere.
John Nagle
Linux on an old (FREE! =) computer that I got from a friend running iptables and tc (Traffic control) is the best combo of stability, manageability, and QOS I've ever seen in a home router. It runs @ 266 MHZ w/ a Pentium 2 on it and 128M of ram. It was the biggest POS I could find and I still think its overkill.
md5sum
d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
I've used various D-link and Linksys routers to work with VPN and has failed miserably. However, Netgear was solid and worked great even with heavy load. Strongly recommend Netgear for any low-end routers.
http://www.up0.com/
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