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D-Link Wireless N Router and Adapters
Router Setup
The D-Link DIR-635 Router is like many others I have tested. Setup is pretty straight forward and follows the standard steps. I had no problem getting the router to recognize my Internet connection. Like most wireless routers, you will find options for the DHCP server, LAN setup, and Internet setup. This is all basic stuff. The only issue which did surface when I was testing this router was its incompatibility with Jumbo Frames. Jumbo frames are frames which are larger than the standard 1514 bytes in length. If you do not have a gigabit Ethernet adapter and supporting network switch, you need not worry about this problem. Since many of my systems are running gigabit Ethernet utilizing a frame size of 9000, these machines were unable to connect to the administrator interface. Resetting the frame size back to 1514 restored the interface connection. Some trial and error also found that a frame size of 4000 was acceptable to the device. Although I doubt this really is an issue with very many people, either way, for administering the device, I found it annoying The jumbo frame issue not withstanding, I would have still liked to see gigabit Ethernet ports on the router instead of the standard 10/100 Mbit. Many newer systems are coming with gigabit network interfaces already, as wireless speeds increase, I see no reason why we should bottleneck the built in switch. Notable features Since I have gone over gateway routers before (Belkin, ActionTec, D-Link), I will only give an overview of some of the features which I was impressed by from this one. If you want to go through the router with a finer tooth comb, D-Link has an emulator set up which essentially allows you to work through all of the menu systems and see just what is inside this thing. The one for this particular model can be found here. The firmware version the emulator is using is 1.07 while my router was flashed with1.09. The menu system is the same, the newer firmware just fixed some internal issues, so the emulator should give you a very good understanding of what this particular model has to offer. Opening Holes For most people, router setup consists of plugging in and turning the unit on. Many never even get into the finer points of the router. For those that do, such items as virtual servers and port forwarding can be a necessity. Port forwarding or application forwarding are commonly used for internal FTP servers, game servers or remote applications. Interestingly, most of the stuff which is actually a violation of standard ISP service agreements. For the DIR-635, these settings can be found in the Advanced tab. Along with the usual settings for the Virtual Server, Port Forwarding, and Application Rules, one will find settings involving network filters, access control, website filters, inbound filters, firewall settings and the advanced settings for both the wired and wireless networks. I found that the setup of rules for the port forwarding was extremely easy to do and was well laid out. This is a feature that most routers have, but some fail to implement in an easy to use fashion. I think D-Link did an excellent job with these. For all three, the schedule option links to the built in schedules or any custom schedules you may have made in the Tools->Schedules section of the router. The Inbound Filter option works the same way. Any inbound filters you create will be enabled as a drop down menu. All in all, an excellent user interface. Tools This router, besides having good port forwarding and application forwarding abilities, also has a nice set of tools to work with. One in particular that I am fond of is the Dynamic DNS functionality. Again, this is a feature which many people ignore, unless you actually want to use it. I find it helpful to allow me to gain access to my home machine when I am not at home and really can't remember what my IP address was. I would consider this feature a must have for my personal purposes. The other two features which I find nice to see are the Syslog feature and the email feature. The email feature was one I enabled right away, only to be deluged by full log files every couple of hours. This is one which you definitely must tweak to your settings. Sometimes, too much information is just as bad as too little. Either way, I am glad to have that ability. The final feature I would like to go over is the Syslog feature. There are not a lot of options on this page, just an enable button and an IP address location. If you have a syslog server running, you can get information you might not normally see which could make troubleshooting much easier. Again, this is a feature that the average person may not need, but it shows that D-Link is committed to building full featured products.
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