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D-Link 4-Port GamerLounge Broadband Gigabit Gaming Router
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boyband in
Broadband on
Dec 4th, 2009 |
5 responses
- Optimized Gaming Experience with GameFuel Technology
Product Description
Push the limits of basic networking technology and experience the evolution in networking. Share broadband Internet, boost network performance, stay competitive in your online games with D-Link’s new cutting-edge GamerLounge Broadband Gigabit Gaming Router, powered by GameFuel Priority Technology…. More >>
D-Link 4-Port GamerLounge Broadband Gigabit Gaming Router
Ever wonder how many Amazon product reviews are submitted by corporate shills? In the case of the DGL-4100, I’m ready to guess it’s about 85%.
Okay, I’m not totally serious serious in that estimate. I’m just disappointed in the product.
I’m not a gamer, and perhaps that’s why the DGL-4100 didn’t work for me. I like to download tv programs via BitTorrent. I download whole seasons at a time, which runs into the multiple Gigabytes. As you other BitTorrent enthusiasts may know, the average home network router has a tendency to freeze when BT pulls too many connections through it. I find it very depressing to get up in the morning (or come home from work) and find that my downloads stopped short many hours ago.
For some months now I’ve been in search of an affordable router to avoid this problem. Considering what I’ve spent so far, perhaps I would’ve been better off to buy something expensive and capacious from the start.
In any case, it’s difficult to derive any sort of consensus about router efficacy from the Web. There probably are more than a few lying corporate shills floating around cyberspace, but mostly there are well-meaning people who report good or bad results without taking into account operating system, exact router model, broadband type, BitTorrent client, or the size of the torrents they download.
I was mildly excited to find so many positive Amazon reviews for the DGL-4100. Perhaps, I thought, a router built for high-performance gaming would account for connection issues similar to BitTorrent’s. Right about now, the cognescenti reading this little tale of woe are probably laughing their butts off.
Let me cut to the chase here. After I hooked up the DGL-4100 and started two BT downloads (one a mere 1.5 G, the other 22 G), everything looked fine… for about three hours. Then the silly thing froze on me, as happened with the Linksys and Netgear routers (wired and wireless) I’ve tried. I obtained the latest firmware for it (January 11, 2006), installed this, and tried again. The results were similar, except that now I noticed the router freezing on me even during BT-free Web-surfing. Regardless of my BitTorrent client (Azureus, uTorrent, BitComet)or its settings, the results didn’t improve.
If you’re a gamer, maybe you’ll roll the dice on the DGL-4100. If you’re a BitTorrent enthusiastic such as myself, you should probably keep looking.
Rating: 1 / 5
This is a very nice product. It does everything that it promises and it is very stable and does not need to be reset. the led’s are just plain to bright. there is no reason for them to be this bright. this thing doubles as a night light in my office.
Rating: 5 / 5
Sharing an DSL-line between several machines, and the “gamefuel” technology makes gaming smooth even when heavy ftp downloads are done on other machines. Easy setup: configured the lan and wan interfaces in 10 minutes.
Rating: 5 / 5
On 07-04-2008 I purchased the D-Link DGL-4100 GamerLounge Gigabit Router in order to upgrade our SOHO network to Gigabit speed and because we don’t need wireless capability. From reading other reviews I had hoped this was a good choice. No such luck. But you get what you pay for – in this case it wasn’t much.
Essentially Dead On Arrival, or more accurately non-functional it would constantly reboot itself (as some others have experienced.) I was never even able to get past logging in or attempt to update its firmware before it would reset – lots of blue light blinking. D-Link customer support had me spend 20+ minutes powering down, resetting, rinse, repeat, and then finally said “its defective, send back.” So I did. I will not consider buying any D-Link products in the future. I would have rated it 0 stars if it was possible.
Amazon was great as far as making the return painless and at no cost me.
I ended up buying a commercial grade NETGEAR FVS336G ProSafe 4 Port Gigabit Firewall Router for about 3x the cost and have been reasonably happy with it. Netgear FVS336G ProSafe Dual WAN GigaBit SSL VPN Firewall
It does not have as many available keyword blocking entries as I would like, only 32, and its logging it a bit limited, but otherwise it works perfectly and has a metal case with a built-in power supply – one less wallwart – and a Lifetime Warranty.
If you’re willing to risk wasting a couple of hours only to find you have to send it back, then get the D-Link DGL-4100. Otherwise you might want to look for a commercial grade product instead of a consumer based one.
Rating: 1 / 5
Easy to install, & maintain. However I do not like the strong blue lights on the front of the panel
Rating: 4 / 5