Need some guidance with wireless router

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  • gsmittle
    Veteran Member
    • Aug 2004
    • 2784
    • St. Louis, MO, USA.
    • BT 3100

    #16
    Originally posted by twistsol
    I have an Airport extreme router and it works exceptionally well. The range however isn't that great and I haven't found a spot in the house where I can get coverage everywhere. This hasn't been a problem with any of the other routers I've had, but they all seemed to die and/or lock up frequently.
    Interesting. My house is by no means huge, but I don't have any coverage issues. My Time Capsule (essentially an AirPort with an internal hard drive) is in the center of my basement. You know what they say about location…

    Scott, I'm curious to know what additional equipment you'd need. Here's a link to the Windows version of the AirPort Utility: http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1547. I've no idea if this is the current version or not. My house doesn't do Windows.

    g.
    Smit

    "Be excellent to each other."
    Bill & Ted

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    • Knottscott
      Veteran Member
      • Dec 2004
      • 3815
      • Rochester, NY.
      • 2008 Shop Fox W1677

      #17
      Originally posted by gsmittle
      ....Scott, I'm curious to know what additional equipment you'd need. ....
      A firmware upgrade would have been free, and allowed me to keep my current D-Link router. The Airport system will require a new device. If I end up buying new hardware, then it's certainly a consideration....just trying to avoid it if possible, but it seems as though free is out anyway.
      Happiness is sort of like wetting your pants....everyone can see it, but only you can feel the warmth.

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      • gsmittle
        Veteran Member
        • Aug 2004
        • 2784
        • St. Louis, MO, USA.
        • BT 3100

        #18
        Originally posted by Knottscott
        A firmware upgrade would have been free, and allowed me to keep my current D-Link router. The Airport system will require a new device. If I end up buying new hardware, then it's certainly a consideration....just trying to avoid it if possible, but it seems as though free is out anyway.
        OK, that makes sense. Somewhere in this whole discussion I lost that you were going for free if at all possible.

        g.
        Smit

        "Be excellent to each other."
        Bill & Ted

        Comment

        • Knottscott
          Veteran Member
          • Dec 2004
          • 3815
          • Rochester, NY.
          • 2008 Shop Fox W1677

          #19
          All this brings on another question. How much better performance should I expect with something like the Buffalo Airstation Nfiniti G450H vs G300H vs an N600....price difference is $20-$25. We use Time Warner regular Road Runner "high speed" broadband internet service. IIRC, we generally see in the 12-13 MBPS download speeds from them. Two of the PC's are pretty fast.
          Last edited by Knottscott; 07-23-2013, 07:38 PM.
          Happiness is sort of like wetting your pants....everyone can see it, but only you can feel the warmth.

          Comment

          • wbsettle
            Forum Newbie
            • Mar 2006
            • 92
            • Wilmington, NC
            • BT3100

            #20
            Originally posted by Knottscott
            {snip}We replaced it with a D-Link DIR-628 Wireless 802.11n/a/b/g dual band 300mbps router that was much less expensive. It works, but it drops connection frequently, and just doesn't seem to keep up with the mobile devices very well. {snip}
            I recently picked up a DIR-632 (NIB for $25) that suffers some of the same critiques in online reviews. Off and on some of the non-N devices in the house would have trouble reconnecting. After some tweaking of some less obvious settings, I can't remember the last time someone or device complained about not being able to connect. In no particular order, these are the settings I've changed from default...don't know if they're in your D-Link's setup, but probably so.

            0) Check D-Link for firmware update. Even though the most recent f/w update for the 632 was more than a year ago, my 632 arrived with an older f/w installed.
            1) DHCP Lease Time...increase to maximum allowed, mine's currently 10080 minutes
            2) DHCP Always Broadcast...defaults to off, but Microsoft in particular and possibly other vendors of network stacks, have flip-flopped how they handle the Broadcast flag in different versions of their OS. My Vista machines seem much happier with Always Broadcast on. Google found some specific articles discussing the changes from XP to Vista...not sure if Win7 went back to the XP method or not.
            3) Turn off all logging. In the beginning, I was getting connection complaints every 2-3 days...thought great, the negative reviews were right. However, just disabling the default logging seemed to improve my time between complaints.
            4) The biggest improvement seemed to come from disabling "Enable DNS Relay". Another setting that's on by default, IIRC. With the setting off, clients go directly to your ISP's DNS servers as opposed to asking the D-Link which just turns around and asks the ISP's DNS servers.
            5) Adjusted the 802.11 mode, channel, and channel width settings. In my case, I only have G and N clients and I set the bandwidth to "auto 20/40" instead of locking it to 20.

            HTH! YMMV, etc. :-)

            -Brent

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            • Knottscott
              Veteran Member
              • Dec 2004
              • 3815
              • Rochester, NY.
              • 2008 Shop Fox W1677

              #21
              Thanks Brent - Now for the "dumb" question.....where can I find the setup for the D-Link router?
              Happiness is sort of like wetting your pants....everyone can see it, but only you can feel the warmth.

              Comment

              • Cochese
                Veteran Member
                • Jun 2010
                • 1988

                #22
                Originally posted by Knottscott
                Thanks Brent - Now for the "dumb" question.....where can I find the setup for the D-Link router?
                If you mean the router setup page, it's 192.168.0.1 in your browser of choice.
                I have a little blog about my shop

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                • Knottscott
                  Veteran Member
                  • Dec 2004
                  • 3815
                  • Rochester, NY.
                  • 2008 Shop Fox W1677

                  #23
                  Thanks everyone.

                  With that router IP address, I was able to disable the "Enable DNS Relay" and increase the DHCP Lease Time. We'll see what those changes get us!
                  Happiness is sort of like wetting your pants....everyone can see it, but only you can feel the warmth.

                  Comment

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