Review: DLink WBR-1310 Wireless Router

Between home and office I've owned literally dozens of routers over the
years and this is hands down the worst one ever, even by Dlink's low
standards. It's wasted alot of my time and I'm pretty pissed off.
Before I throw it out (literally) and never look back: For the record,
and future google group searches, here are some facts about my
experience with this model:

Lets call it "The top 10 reasons not to buy a Dlink" :

10) If you login to the router and go to the firmware section it says
"Currect Firmware Version: 4.0". Currect? Nice typo. Not a big deal,
but perhaps a good indication
of how much DLink was paying attention when they rushed this cheapo
model onto the market. It makes you wonder how many typos they left in
the actual firmware. It explains a lot about how this router behaves.

9) No documentation included. A little explaination about the router's
setup menus would be nice. Maybe an explaination about which lights are
which on the router. I feel badly for anyone whose first experience
dealing with a router is this piece of junk. Even with years of
experience this thing is not 'self explainatory' and its certainly not
'plug and play'. Its 'plug and pray' or maybe 'plug and PAIN'.

8) Only comes with a Setup Wizard CD. The wizard fails to setup on
THREE seperate computers. It is poorly written JUNK... Why a router
even needs a CD is beyond me, but once it fails your left wasting your
left scratching your head without documentation and wasting your time.

7) If you go to the Dlink site and look up firmware for this WBR-1310
router (as of today):

http://support.dlink.com/products/vi...tid=WBR%2D1310

It offers you to download firmware version 1.03. My WBR-1310 says it's
running Firmware Version 4.0. So.... Is DLink going back in time? If
you call up Tech support they say the most recent one is Firmware 4.0.
Gee, thanks for wasting some more of my time DLink.

6) A random example of how messed up this router is: I went to release
& renew my router's IP address, my external one. It is on DCHP from my
ISP. It returned with a WAN IP of 192.168.0.11... So now the router has
a LAN IP address of 192.168.0.1 and a WAN IP address of
192.168.0.11.... Wow that's just brilliant. My router is chasing its
own tail? So I try it again 30 seconds later, and it gets a proper
72.xx.xx.12 address. The point: It's completely inconsistant. This is
proof enough for me that this router is JUNK.

5) Lets say you hard reset the router, and start from scratch. You set
it for DHCP on the WAN. It will properly get an IP and DNS etc from
your ISP (usually). But in order to surf the web you have to log into
the router and go into the "Dynamic IP (DHCP) section" and hit "Clone
Mac Address" for it to properly work. The WBR-1310 doesnt believe in
plug in play.

4) If you actually get frustrated enough to look up DLink's tech
support and call them they will put you on hold for well over 35
minutes (I write this now as I'm on hold). If you actually get through
then you will speak with an overworked stressed out little person who
will put you on hold for another 10 minutes but eventually can't help
you at all. But they will agree that it is "not our greatest product"
and they get alot of calls about it. When asked why the unit says
Firmware 4.0 and the website says Firmware 1.03 they aren't sure, and
they dont really care. Thanks DLink!

3) CONSTANTLY LOSES INTERNET CONNECTIVETY WITH *WIRED* COMPUTERS,
NEVERMIND WIRELESS!!!

2) CONSTANTLY NEEDS TO BE RESET.

1) WORST ROUTER EVER.



.....And now, without further due, (and before it disconnects me again),
I now will DESTROY THIS ROUTER and reconnect my old reliable
Linksys....

Sell It on Ebay. :) Might find some fool to buy it.

dennispublic@hotmail.com wrote:
> Between home and office I've owned literally dozens of routers over the
> years and this is hands down the worst one ever, even by Dlink's low
> standards. It's wasted alot of my time and I'm pretty pissed off.
> Before I throw it out (literally) and never look back: For the record,
> and future google group searches, here are some facts about my
> experience with this model:
>
> Lets call it "The top 10 reasons not to buy a Dlink" :
>
> 10) If you login to the router and go to the firmware section it says
> "Currect Firmware Version: 4.0". Currect? Nice typo. Not a big deal,
> but perhaps a good indication
> of how much DLink was paying attention when they rushed this cheapo
> model onto the market. It makes you wonder how many typos they left in
> the actual firmware. It explains a lot about how this router behaves.
>
> 9) No documentation included. A little explaination about the router's
> setup menus would be nice. Maybe an explaination about which lights are
> which on the router. I feel badly for anyone whose first experience
> dealing with a router is this piece of junk. Even with years of
> experience this thing is not 'self explainatory' and its certainly not
> 'plug and play'. Its 'plug and pray' or maybe 'plug and PAIN'.
>
> 8) Only comes with a Setup Wizard CD. The wizard fails to setup on
> THREE seperate computers. It is poorly written JUNK... Why a router
> even needs a CD is beyond me, but once it fails your left wasting your
> left scratching your head without documentation and wasting your time.
>
> 7) If you go to the Dlink site and look up firmware for this WBR-1310
> router (as of today):
>
> http://support.dlink.com/products/vi...tid=WBR%2D1310
>
> It offers you to download firmware version 1.03. My WBR-1310 says it's
> running Firmware Version 4.0. So.... Is DLink going back in time? If
> you call up Tech support they say the most recent one is Firmware 4.0.
> Gee, thanks for wasting some more of my time DLink.
>
> 6) A random example of how messed up this router is: I went to release
> & renew my router's IP address, my external one. It is on DCHP from my
> ISP. It returned with a WAN IP of 192.168.0.11... So now the router has
> a LAN IP address of 192.168.0.1 and a WAN IP address of
> 192.168.0.11.... Wow that's just brilliant. My router is chasing its
> own tail? So I try it again 30 seconds later, and it gets a proper
> 72.xx.xx.12 address. The point: It's completely inconsistant. This is
> proof enough for me that this router is JUNK.
>
> 5) Lets say you hard reset the router, and start from scratch. You set
> it for DHCP on the WAN. It will properly get an IP and DNS etc from
> your ISP (usually). But in order to surf the web you have to log into
> the router and go into the "Dynamic IP (DHCP) section" and hit "Clone
> Mac Address" for it to properly work. The WBR-1310 doesnt believe in
> plug in play.
>
> 4) If you actually get frustrated enough to look up DLink's tech
> support and call them they will put you on hold for well over 35
> minutes (I write this now as I'm on hold). If you actually get through
> then you will speak with an overworked stressed out little person who
> will put you on hold for another 10 minutes but eventually can't help
> you at all. But they will agree that it is "not our greatest product"
> and they get alot of calls about it. When asked why the unit says
> Firmware 4.0 and the website says Firmware 1.03 they aren't sure, and
> they dont really care. Thanks DLink!
>
> 3) CONSTANTLY LOSES INTERNET CONNECTIVETY WITH *WIRED* COMPUTERS,
> NEVERMIND WIRELESS!!!
>
> 2) CONSTANTLY NEEDS TO BE RESET.
>
> 1) WORST ROUTER EVER.
>
>
>
> ....And now, without further due, (and before it disconnects me again),
> I now will DESTROY THIS ROUTER and reconnect my old reliable
> Linksys....
>

> 5) Lets say you hard reset the router, and start from scratch. You set
> it for DHCP on the WAN. It will properly get an IP and DNS etc from
> your ISP (usually). But in order to surf the web you have to log into
> the router and go into the "Dynamic IP (DHCP) section" and hit "Clone
> Mac Address" for it to properly work. The WBR-1310 doesnt believe in
> plug in play.

In fairness this might be an ISP issue, often times an ISP will fix on a
given MAC address before allowing traffic. This even after giving an DHCP
lease.

But otherwise, yeah, sounds like a real piece o'crap.

thanks for the info


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> 10) If you login to the router and go to the firmware section it says
> "Currect Firmware Version: 4.0". Currect?

Mine always identified the firmware as 1.01. I wonder if others who've
had problems with this router also had the firmware mis-identified.
Could explain a lot.

> 9) No documentation included.

Although it's inconvenient, it shouldn't take anyone any time at all to
find the manual in .pdf format on the cd. (There is a newer version
available on D-link's website.)

> 8) Only comes with a Setup Wizard CD. The wizard fails to setup on
> THREE seperate computers. It is poorly written JUNK...

I agree. The wizard failed for me also. Didn't need it anyway.

> 5) Lets say you hard reset the router, and start from scratch. You set
> it for DHCP on the WAN. It will properly get an IP and DNS etc from
> your ISP (usually). But in order to surf the web you have to log into
> the router and go into the "Dynamic IP (DHCP) section" and hit "Clone
> Mac Address" for it to properly work. The WBR-1310 doesnt believe in
> plug in play.

Why on earth would you clone your MAC address AFTER you successfully
got an IP address from your ISP? You only need to do this if you
didn't release the IP address from whatever computer was connected to
the internet previously, (you could wait for the DHCP lease to expire
in this case), or if your ISP insists on connecting to a particular
NIC. If you're already connected, it's unnecessary. Once your router
is connected to the Internet, releasing and renewing the IP on the
connected computers should get them connected, assuming the DHCP server
on the router is enabled.

I bought this router a few weeks ago, fully intending to return it if
it didn't meet my expectations. So far I'm happy with it. It plays
well with bittorrent. It has locked up only once, but that was the day
I discovered there was a firmware upgrade (1.03) that claims to fix a
lockup issue. Right now the only problem I have with it is it won't
let me log into it's configuration utility (the web page built into the
router) after it's been running for a couple days, but it is still
doing it's job just fine. Cycling the power fixes that problem.

It's not as configurable as the router I had been using, which was a
specialized version of linux called Freesco running on an old computer,
but it's adequate, and it only cost $40.

scotta316@gmail.com wrote:
> > 10) If you login to the router and go to the firmware section it says
> > "Currect Firmware Version: 4.0". Currect?

I was just on D-link's website, and they've updated the page for the
WBR-1310 in the past few days. Apparently firmware version 4.0 is what
shipped with hardware version D1 of this router. Before, H/W version
A1 was the only one listed on the site, and that's the one I bought.

Can a dlink WBF-1310 be setup as an ACCESS-POINT ?
y/n