D-Link Wireless AC Smartbeam 1750 Mbps Router DIR-868L

Buen producto, recomendable para usuarios exigentes, cumple lo descrito en la hoja informativa y sin duda alguna quedaras satisfecho totalmente

Range not that great. Otherwise it’s a good Router but not worth the price.

At this time, this Router appears to be the worst possible choice – period.

Example 1: The MAC filtering is not right. It filters all the *wired* devices, along with the wireless ones. Why would anyone go through the effort of wiring up a device to this Router’s built-in 4-port switch, and then not allow it to communicate on that network? Typically, MAC Filtering applies only to *wireless* devices, or as a way to prevent a device from accessing certain services. I’ve never seen it block a wired device from communicating with all other wired devices on the LAN (as well as the Internet) – probably because such a feature would be totally pointless.

Since a lot of us use MAC filtering as part of our wireless security, I decided to give in to the ridiculousness and started entering all the MAC ID’s I would allow on my network – wired and wireless, alike. After taking the time to enter 22 addresses, the Router informs me that I’ve reached its limit. Are you kidding? D-Link’s Level-3 Support Tech agreed that the way they handle their MAC Filtering may be “odd” when compared to others, but he also said that 22 entries is more than adequate for a SOHO Router. I couldn’t disagree more. Forget about Small Office / Home Office. These days, regular homes with stay-at-home moms and a couple of kids will have desktop PC’s, laptops, networked printers, and maybe even an IP camera or two. Plus, doesn’t just about everyone in the house over the age of 5 have a cell phone and/or tablet that needs WiFi access? And what about IP-TV’s, an IP thermostat, some IP light switches, an IP-enabled garage door, or maybe a WiFi-enabled alarm system?

Doesn’t D-Link realize that this is 2014, and just how quickly one can eat up 22 MAC ID’s? Keep in mind that a laptop actually has two MAC ID’s – one for its wireless adapter and one for the wired ethernet port. So, let’s see now… 4 laptops, 2 desktops, 2 IP televisions, 2 cameras, 4 cell phones, 3 tablets, 1 game console, 1 printer – whoops! Too many! I guess you gotta get a different Router, or lose one of those cell phones.

Example 2: This Router can’t perform a Static Route. It has a Tabbed Page in the Setup Menu for this feature, and says it can handle 32 Static Routes (10 more entries than the number of MAC ID’s – go figure!), but after messing it with it for several hours, I found that this Router simply won’t let you to configure a Route, because it won’t let you to enter the correct WAN/LAN interface. FYI – Static Routes are great when you want to let people on your network access things like printers, cameras, and internet gaming, but you don’t want them to be able to access your laptop, storage, or maybe that desktop computer that has all your bank records. With Static Routing, you can share what you want, and things you want to protect aren’t even visible on the network. In other words, someone can’t even begin to hack a password to a computer that he can’t see. And all this beautiful, virtually impenetrable security is found in even the cheesiest of NetGear, D-Link, and TrendNet routers, starting at just $28.

I waited 2 days for a return call from D-Link’s Level 3 Tech Support – and you’d better be by the phone when D-Link calls, because they don’t leave a call-back number or an extension, which means you’ll have to go through the front door and the 30-minute queue, in order to call back. I started by telling the Level-3 guy the data I tried entering to create one single Static Route, and how the Router replied with an error message that didn’t make sense. This Level-3 guy spent the next 3 hours giving me every different IP-address combination you can imagine, most of which shouldn’t work, by ethernet standards, When all combinations failed, he told me to wire the network differently, which made no sense either. In fact, none of his instructions would make any sense to anyone with even average networking knowledge, yet this was D-Link’s *Level 3* guy.

He put me hold several times to confer with his “network engineers”, and at the end, he went full-circle by telling me to enter the *exact same data* I had given to him at the very beginning of our conversation – the data I already told him caused the Router to spit out an error message. Granted, the Tech’s instructions now made sense, according to ethernet protocol, but they didn’t work with their Router any better now, than when I had entered this data into it 2 days earlier.

After all this, the Level-3 tech admitted that my findings were correct, as the 868L Router they were using was generating the same error message as mine. I’m now told to wait until Saturday (today is Tuesday) for another call back.

The math seems simple. If you want a dual-band wireless Router, they cost between $45 and $100. This D-Link Router costs almost twice that of many others, and, in addition to the issues that others have already mentioned in their reviews, this Router doesn’t perform certain basic functions, or perform as advertised, or allow the configurations that Menu says it should. Worse, D-Link’s Tech Support spends hours denying the obvious, until finally being forced to admit that the hardware and firmware have design flaws.

If you need a Router now, I would have to recommend passing on this one at this time, especially since it costs more than many of its competitors. I also gave the D-Link reps way more Technical Support than they’ve given to me, and it really bugs me when I have to educate people that are supposed to know more than me, but who get paid one way or the other.

If D-Link calls me back this Saturday with a solution, as they promised, I’ll let everyone know. Until then, I suggest buying something else.

UPDATE – I never got the call back. I’ve also noticed that this router does not maintain its throughput, even on its wired ports. It slows down, stutters, stalls, and simply doesn’t keep up with cable modem speeds. My $40 Netgear WRG624 with 100Mb ports actually maintains better throughput than this junk. It’s going back.

Configuración compleja para alguien que no sepa de informatica, anular la wifi del router de movistar y poner este ha sido mision imposible para mi.
He quedado muy decepcionado.