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Product Description

The D-Link Xtreme N Dual Band Gigabit Router (DIR-825) is the addition to the award-winning Xtreme N product family. The dual band technology in the DIR-825 supports 2.4GHz and 5GHz wireless signals at the same time. This allows you to check e-mail and browse the Internet using the 2.4GHz band while simultaneously streaming High-Definition (HD) movies and other media on the 5GHz band. The DIR-825 is designed for users looking to get a true HD wireless connection that can handle multiple HD video streams throughout the house, while being backward compatible with existing 802.11g and 802.11a products.

Customer Reviews:

• Works with Vista 64 bit
  I do not know much about routers. I just want to say this router works great with my new HP vista 64 bit home premium computer. Prior I used an AT&T modem and router combo (provided by my AT&T, DSL provider) with my old windows XP computer. I connected my new Vista computer and it constantly threw me off the internet when I went wireless. I would have to reboot my new computer each time this happened. I spent hours on the phone with the AT&T support. I was told over and over that the old router is okay. Finally someone at HP computer support told me it is probably the router inside my modem. I guess the software in vista 64 bit is not compatible with some of the routers software out there. That is why I purchased the d-link, because it is Vista certified. Installation was easy. I did need to call customer support once with a question and got through immediately. I have this router two weeks and have not been thrown off the internet once. I have both my window XP and Vista laptops hooked up to it. I'm happy with this product so far.
  ...more info
• Quick and easy installation...
  I had a Linksys 2.4 GHZ router. I've never had any problems with it. However, I noticed that response times were getting slower as I added different wireless products. This router has allowed me to separate my products and I no longer have dropped connections.
  
  Installation was easy once I was able to switch all my products to the new router. There are a few more things I plan to hook up so I know this router will be able to handle the additional connections. I am very pleased. ...more info
• It works! (that's all I wanted)
  I threw away a brand new Link-sys product, just because the set-up was a disaster.
  
  This D-link was up and running in just a few minutes. In a couple of hours, I had three laptops, a networked printer and my TIVO all humming.
  
  I had previously installed Cisco's Network Magic program on my PC's and that may have helped a bit, too.
  
  As an obvious "non-techie" I highly recommend the product....more info
• Workin' Well
  The install went fine, be sure to read the manual and instructions first, before you try to set this up behind another router, as I did, including following the instructions from the manufacturer of your main router. You may need to re-boot it at least once.
  I really don't have much to add over what has already been presented by the prior reviewers. I have not had any wired or wireless security issues.
  This is the first D-Link router I have had, and it seems to be just as good as the Linksys and Netgear wireless routers I have had. I am pleased with the range and performance of this device so far. A feature I have yet to explore is the USB port device setup -- I plan to connect a laser printer at some point to be shared by the PCs on my home network....more info
• D-Link DIR-825 Xtreme
  Much faster than my older D-Link router. Dual band great for use with multiple computers when one is streaming video. Easy set-up....more info
• Has everything
  Dual band and gigabit all in one makes this an ideal router. Setup was easy, the wireless connection was good and the obnoxious lights are at a minimum. All of this comes at a premium but these features are important and the combination of gigabit and wireless-N is long overdue....more info
• USB
  Has anyone tried to connect a USB hub instead of a single device to the USB port that this router provides ?...more info
• DLink 825 Router
  This router works as advertised with the exception of extended range. N-draft seems to be the same as standard G routers.
  There is not enough information about the USB Share Port feature. I would like to know if the USB Share port will accept other devices or are printers and hard drives the only option. For example, I have a USB driven internet, large outside antenna, that I would like to plug into the router USB port to pickup up our park provided internet service....more info
• Solid Router but has its faults
  On my home network I keep copies of files on a network hard drive. My wife's laptop is wired into our network and I use my 10" Asus laptop in wireless mode. (We also have a desktop and a network printer) I changed the wireless card in my Asus to use 5ghz wireless draft N for quick file transfers. I purchased the 5ghz netgear wireless access point and it was terrible. I purchased the D-link 825 after reading the Amazon articles and I was pleased with the performance of file transfers, Here is the good and not so good: The good is that the router puts out 2.4ghz and 5ghz at the same time. You can name them separately to ID them or use the ID names that D-Link provides. I use the 5ghz for file transfers, very fast. I can send a 1 gig file to my network hard drive wirelessly in 5 minutes, (my Asus shows a 300mbps connection)To show you just how fast, when I do a speakeasy internet speedtest while on a ethernet connection I connect at 21kbps and exactly the same with the 5ghz wireless!! So with this router there is no difference in speed between a wired or wireless connection. (a G wireless won't do 10kbps on this connection). and I use the D-Link's 2.4 ghz wireless on my backyard deck (130mbps) Solid performance for both, very noticeably faster then G wireless. Now the not so good: The wireless range of the 5ghz is terrible, and the range of the 2.4ghz wireless is much better but not the best. Its a shame because the 5ghz is so fast, both in file transfer and internet. Thankfully I was able to position the router to be able to use the 5ghz in our den and the 2.4 on our deck, so I am please with my setup. With further testing, I found that the 2.4ghz wireless works best in N only mode. So I now have 5ghz and 2.4ghz and a old Linksys G wireless for guests. So because of the not so great range of the 5ghz, this router gets 4 stars. Haven't experimented with the gigaports on this unit yet,so basically, if you are looking for a fast connection with not so good distance, this is the router for you. If you are looking for a fast connection with very good wireless range, go elsewhere!
  
  June 2009 update:
  After multiple tests using my refurbished Linksys wrt-160n router against the dual band D-Link 825, I must tell you the D-Link is going to Ebay. Here is why. With a close to router test, although the 5ghz performs well the throughput is only a slightly better than the Linksys, on the 2.4 Ghz band the Linksys blows away the D-Link. Now for the distance test: At approx 40 feet away on the other side of my house, the 5ghz D-Link band is non existent! The wireless router can not reach my laptop! On the 2.4ghz band the DLink does reach my laptop with a good signal at 130mbps, but the Linksys throughput is twice that of the Dlink. I did these tests multiple times. I do want to point out that both routers were set as wireless access points when these tests were performed. The wired ports were not tested. In conclusion, Amazon should allow a person to change their original star rating. I would change the D-Link to 2 stars....more info
• Firmware Not Ready for Prime-Time
  Let me start off by saying that I replaced my D-Link DIR-655 router with this DIR-825 (firmware 1.01) and combined it with a D-Link DWA-160 USB Adapter (software 2.2). I really wanted to like this router combo, but there are too many issues with the 5GHZ portion to recommend this as of now. The signal strength on the 5GHZ portion is only about 1/2 that of the 2.4. At about 10 feet, I could copy a media file at about 14 Mps on 5GHZ. At about 40 feet with a story in-between, it then drops to about 5Mps. At 80 feet and 2 stories, the 5GHZ signal is no more. You must use the D-Link software to use the 5GHZ channel (which is fine unless you swap to the 2.4GHZ due to range). Then it requires a system re-boot to get back the superfast speed on 5GHZ. Without a reboot, the router performs just like it was at 2.4. Also, I saw no tangible, measurable difference in speed on 2.4GHZ band when using the N DWA-160 than when using the G internal card in my laptop. Wish I had better news to report.
  I expect that the software and firmware for these two items will improve with time, but at this point I cannot say that it is stable enough to justify the premium price for dual band technology. ...more info
• D-Link HAS to be paying people for these positive reviews
  A couple of months ago I purchased the DIR-825 because on average it received better buyer reviews than the competing dual-band N-compatible routers. At this point, I'm really struggling to understand how this is possible, because the DIR-825 fails in so many areas. I've designed wireless home networking products for almost the past 10 years, and while I'd hope that my experience and familiarity with top brands should equip me to make good purchasing decisions, in my confidence I apparently overlooked some fundamental requirements. In the DIR-825 I got a router that had what I was looking for (configurable QoS, dual-band 802.11n support), but also had a lot of other "features:"
  
  - Randomly disconnects clients every hour or so. This happened more in 5GHz than 2.4GHz, but it definitely happened in both spectrums, and did so often. The router's logs did not indicate any reasons for clients being removed. My theory is that there were frequent signal strength hiccups that caused clients to think the router had vanished. They always reconnected about 10 seconds later, but that's long enough to disconnect you from most online games.
  - Renders Vonage VOIP calls completely inaudible, even when the wireless network is quiet. The Vonage router is the only wired networking device in our house. We had it plugged into the DIR-825 so we could take advantage of the router's advanced QoS capabilities, but it was an absolute nightmare. We never got VOIP to work right so long as it was 'behind' the DIR-825, regardless of QoS settings and various other tweaks mentioned in the D-Link knowledge base and forums. We ended up having to put the Vonage device in front of the router (which fixed Vonage but had side effects on the rest of the network).
  - Auto-channel Select Feature DOES NOT WORK. The auto-channel select feature, which is enabled by default, is supposed to automatically choose the least congested WiFi channel in your band. I have access to some very expensive sniffing and spectrum analysis systems that tell me that the absolute best 2.4GHz channel in my house is number 4, and the absolute worst is number 1, which literally has 10 different SSIDs beaconing on it as I write this. The DIR-825 ALWAYS selected channel 1 (and it wasn't just a matter of what it reported in the admin UI; sniffers reported it in Channel 1.) Not only does this feature appear to do the opposite of what it advertises, it's also known for randomly disconnecting clients. Unfortunately, disabling it did not fix our problem with that.
  - Doesn't work with BitTorrent. I know all about port forwarding, TCP, UDP, UPnP, I followed forums, FAQs, and step-by-steps, but I never got BitTorrent to accept incoming connections properly. (And note that I hardly ever have BT running, anyway; it has nothing to do with the other issues noted here).
  - Crummy wireless range in both bands. First off, a little bit of info about the 5GHz band: 5GHz is never going to have the same range as the 2.4GHz range at the same transmit power; this is a matter of physics- higher frequencies = shorter wavelength = shorter distances/more susceptible to walls. There's another problem though- at least in the USA, you are only allowed to transmit on 5GHz at a fraction of the maximum power allowed on 2.4GHz, so really 5GHz is hit with kind of a double-whammy of suck. Note that there are a few 5GHz channels that are allowed to be transmitted at a higher power than the rest, but that doesn't mean that 5GHz device manufacturers actually do that- it only means they can. With that in mind, I can say that the DIR-825 has worse range in not only 5GHz but 2.4GHz as well than the dual-band Linksys WRT610 (which surprises me because of the Linksys's funky design), and also worse than any of the 2.4GHz-only routers we had before that.
  - Is on its way to losing WiFi Alliance compliance. There's a WFA-certified logo on the box of the DIR-825, but if you've been following wireless forums you will learn that D-Link has been experimenting with removing 802.11b support from their routers, including the DIR-825, in their downloadable firmware updates. Now, I personally stopped using 11.b years ago, and you can get better 2.4GHz performance by going G-only, but WFA logo compliance REQUIRES that you support 802.11b. D-Link has not explained why they're trying to do this, but I suspect that their hardware has either become overloaded or their code so messy that they can't adequately support new requirements without dropping 802.11b support- and that should scare you.
  
  After a full MONTH of trying to get the DIR-825 to work properly, I realized it wasn't me, and it wasn't my setup- it was just that this router sucks worse than any other router I've ever used. I promise you there's not a single setting I didn't investigate or tinker with in my quest to get reliable WiFi, but honestly, even if there were some magic combination of router settings that would make things work, the thing should have been configured to work properly out of the box. I don't have any crazy setup, just a bunch of computers, and a few game consoles and TiVos that are normally quiet.
  
  I purchased the Linksys WRT610N Simultaneous Dual-N Band Wireless Router and am MUCH happier now. I don't believe I had to configure any special settings except for the port-forwarding stuff for BitTorrent. I have Vonage connected behind the router again, and VOIP works perfectly. Our connection strength is better on all computers in the home than with the DIR-825, and the only random disconnects we get are on 5GHZ, though they are much more infrequent than with the DIR-825. Save yourself a month of headaches and get something, anything, other than the DIR-825.
  
  P.S. About 802.11n - Note that 5GHz support is an optional feature of 802.11n at this time, so when looking for APs or network cards, understand that not all of them support 5GHz (in fact, most don't). Allways look for "dual-band" or "5GHz" when shopping for 802.11n stuff so you have the most flexibility in your home setup....more info
• D-Link DIR-825 Xtreme NQos
  I'm very satisfied. I've used the router for a month with no problem. My kids and wife are happy because they no longer have to endure unexpected pauses in the middle of streaming video from Netflix! This router solved that problem!...more info
• Brief Overview of D-Link DIR-825
  Watch Video Here: http://www.amazon.com/review/R3IVLMU6G5XP6E This is just a brief overview of the D-Link DIR-825. It arrived about 48 hrs ago. I had no setup problems what so ever using the setup CD. QoS system works great and greatly improved my Netflix experience on my Xbox 360.I will repost again in a month or so to update....more info
• Linksys Has Some Competition!
  I am a Linksys person and I teach a Wireless course using Linksys products. I have been using Linksys products since their 802.11b wired routers first became available. I recently purchased the WRT610N and after trying this D-Link, I am sorry I chose the Linksys WRT610N.
  
  As my first D-link product, I failed to realize D-link uses a 192.168.0.1 network address for its router. I am used to 192.168.1.1 on Linksys products.
  
  PROs:
  It is a Dual-Band wireless router, just like the WRT610N. It allows you to schedule wireless access. It has a great manual, which even tells you how to hook up one router to another for extending coverage. I was surprised to see this. I like being able to adjust power output of wireless radios. I love the idea of Guest wireless internet zones. It allows guests, such as friends, to get on your network without having access to local resources or giving out your normal SSID/Password.
  
  It clearly has more options than the Linksys WRT610N, which can be seemingly less user freindly and requires more knowledge of networking. The web configuration screens are similar to Linksys screens though. Anyone familiar with Linksys can find their way around. I did not try the setup CD. Instead I manually configured it using the web interface.
  
  I did not experience any of the instability issues I had with WRT610N. With a Lenovo T61, Apple TV, iPhone, two Macs, a PS3, and a PC connected to a Buffalo LinkStation Gaming Adapter, I needed to find the least common denominator wireless settings in order for all of these devices to connect and stay connected successfully. There were just too many disconnects, which necessitated the least common denominator approach. This approach meant I had to choose "Mixed BG" instead of "mixed (which includes n), had to set channel width to 20, and had to use Tkip WPA only. The D-link allowed me to use all three speed grades (B, G, and N) with WPA or WPA2 (becuase it autodetects the best encryption method available with client devices). I was also able to set the Channel Width to auto (40 or 20 depending on the clients).
  
  CONs:
  It only allows up to 63 alpha characters for the wireless passphrase/password. I prefer 64 hex character passwords.
  
  The menus are a bit more complex, which could be an issue for some.
  
  Only one person at a time can access a USB hard drive attached to the D-Link wireless router. Many can access the USB hard drive hanging off of the Linksys WRT610N.
  
  OVERALL:
  This is a great wireless router. I tested it as a drop-in replacement for my Linksys WRT610N (after changing the subnet to 192.168.1.x) and it performed admirably. If you are looking, I would consider this strongly before purchasing any other brand....more info
• dir-825 experience
  Bought this to replace my limited range and throughput Linksys WRT4GS wireles-G and matching laptop pcmcia card setup. Must say, WOW, throughput speed and range is greatly improved. Was getting only 11-54mbps and very weak signal strength. Now getting 216-243mbps and good to great signal strength. Signal has to get through 4-walls including a kitchen, and a hallway. Downloads are just about as fast as most peoples LAN/hard wired connection speeds. My video quality is also greatly improved, ie: no more super long waits for the video to load, whether its streaming or in wma or mpeg, etc., and no more pausing briefly during the video play. Web pages load very quickly also. The web-based router management system is full of customizing and security control options, although someone who is not well versed in wireless routers or security may find it all a little intimidating (find someone who is knowledgable and you trust to help you set things up). Another plus is the included free (trial though - darn it)Network Magic software which will practically set up the network for you.
  Oh yeah, also have Wii, PS3 networked in also and online speeds for networked play is awesome, no lags.
  
  A couple not so whoopi things though, when you set up your network, you must choose to use the 2.4 Ghz or the 5.0 Ghz mode (or at least I havent found a way to make my network be on both at the same time, or at least auto select best of the two on the fly - not geeky enough I guess). Currently I am on the 2.4 Ghz due to for some reason the signal strength is slightly better.
  Also the whole having to manually change ip address to get router and the DWA-160 usb stick to play nice together was a pain.
  
  ALL in all though, this router/usb setup spanks the skivies off any other router/usb/wi-fi card setup I've ever used or any of my other techno-geeky friends are running. They all say they're jealous.
  
  If you're stuck on wireless G - your missing alot. Buy it, Love it!
  I'd give it a 4.8 but the rating scale doesnt allow for this.
  ...more info
• Works OK
  The specification looks great but in reality, the 5GHz range has really bad range in my home so I got little to no signal in the bedroom (2nd floor, ~30 feet from the router located in a room on the 1st floor)...more info
• More like 4.5 stars, nice router some trouble with 5 Ghz band
  PROS:
  Easy setup that is somewhat secure
  Signal strength seemed better
  N was faster
  
  CONS:
  Would have like a more comprehensive setup by default
  Computer had problems reconnecting after a reboot of the router (probably a Windows problem).
  Couldn't figure out the 5Ghz band not getting good signal strength.
  
  
  First off I am by no means a networking expert. I have a small network at home that includes 3 PCs/Laptops, a Wii, PS3, NAS, Printer, and DishNetwork DVR box. So in all 8 devices that connect on a regular basis. Since the DVR box is downstairs and I don't have it connected via cable, I bought a repeater that hooks up to the network wirelessly, and then shares that connection over a wire to the DVR. Ok now that you see the extent of my network, here is what I thought of the D-Link DIR825.
  
  The Setup was pretty fast and simple. I plugged in the wire that was provided to the router from there to my computer, and plugged in the cable modem. I then used the disk that was provided to run through the initial setup of the router. It went pretty quickly, though there were a few oddities. First off the disk didn't start up right away like it should have. I am not sure if I can attribute that to Windows Vista or what. But opening the disk and running the setup manually was easy anyway. I then ran through the install, which asked for a password for the router, which I was happy about, and by default it enabled WPA2, so you have to enter the passphrase for that. When the process was at the end, the second odd thing happened. The end of the install program asks to write a file to the desktop with the configuration for the router. I found this odd because it has your router password in plain text, and it put your WPA2 key phrase in plain text. I didn't really like this because of course it isn't very secure. It is however on your desktop, so if the computer is password protected, I guess you have some security. I deleted it almost immediately, since I don't want sensitive information sitting around on my machines if I can help it.
  
  By default the only security enabled is the WPA2. The SSID is not hidden, and there is no mac address filter. On my old router I had set it up with these two security measures because they are fairly simple to do, and they make it a lot more difficult for someone to get on to a network with this setup. Now my old router didn't set these up by default either, so it wasn't a big deal. So I poked around in the configuration screens and changed some things that I think are important. I was impressed by how many options you have on this router. It seemed much more robust than my old router, which was a 802.11g router, and is probably 3-4 years old now. I did run into a problem with connecting back to the router after a reboot because I changed some options. I had to reboot to get my computer to reconnect. This didn't bother me all that much, but it was kind of irritating.
  
  Next I went about changing all of my computers over to the new router. This process is fairly painless when it comes to the computers (1 dual boot Windows/Linux which both attached just fine). I basically just had to add a new connection for the new router which is by default on the 192.168.0.x address segment. The Printer and NAS are set up with fixed IP addresses configured on their own boxes, and they are both hardwired to the router, so they were really easy. After that comes the odds and ends. Overall I had this router in within an hour with the configuration that I wanted.
  
  I then moved around the house a little to see what kind of strength I got. Since most of my nics are 802.11g, I first tried that. It seemed about the same to me, though I really wasn't expecting much difference, since there should have been no increase in speed. I did notice that it seemed like I got a little bit better signal strength from further away, even on the older nics. The Wireless N also worked very well. I tried connecting up with a wireless USB NIC and that went pretty well too. I didn't get a chance to check to see if the speed was better by numbers, but eyeballing a couple of downloads from my NAS seemed quite a bit quicker. So overall, the DIR825 seems like a pretty good router to me, way better than my old router which will now be retired.....
  
  The other interesting thing about this router is that it has two bands, it can use 2.5Ghz or 5.0Ghz. Both are given their own SSID, and are basically separate networks. The box says that the 5.0Ghz is meant for streaming HD content, while the 2.5Ghz is meant for the normal junk (e-mail, web-browsing, etc). I was having a problem with the 5Ghz ban not having that good of signal strength. Even when sitting near the router, the NIC that I was using was only getting 23% signal strength, but the 2.5Ghz band was getting 99% signal strength. I looked into it a little, but wasn't able to figure it out. So I ran the test I wanted to run anyway. I connected up with two different computers, one on each band, and tried to take up as much bandwidth as I could. I could tell that it was faster because both of the computers were able to transfer files quicker with each being on their own band, but the 5Ghz band took longer for the same size of files, than the 2.5 Ghz band. I have a feeling that there is just something I was missing, but not sure what it was. Either way, it was nice to have two bands, and it will work out well in my house since a couple of the devices are really close to the router, so they can stay on the lower strength band, and the others can be on the 2.5Ghz band and still get good speed and strength. Since the traffic for each is independent, it works out really nice!...more info
• Impressive!
  Well, I should congratulate D-Link. It seems they have a group of talented people who have brainstormed to get list of router features user may want.
  
  *Installation*
  Of course, as many products in this area this one is not totally "plug'n'play", though D-Link has demonstrated great progress toward this direction.
  Just for review I stopped being geeky and decided to follow supplied D-link wizard to replace my old Linksys router. To my amazement it worked.
  Well, the wizard refused to start on multihome system (that is when you have many network cards or virtual machine adapter or... hopefully this is not your situation) and then it hang trying to detect newly plugged router, but after reboot it managed to pickup installation process and in the end I got router in working condition along with WiFi network security properly set. All members of the gang of my WiFi devices - T-mobile cell phone (802.11b), Wii (802.11g), two laptops (802.11a,n,g) and IPod connected successfully on their preferred networks... Wire connection for desktop and NAS storage drive was never a problem too.
  It also was fast finding my ISP. Not bad at all!
  
  *Features*
  This is where this router shines:
  - two separate WiFi networks: 2.4 GHz 802.11 b-g-n and 5GHz 802.11 a-n
  - WiFi guest network support (so your friend with laptop cannot see your locally shared My Pictures folder when connecting to your home WiFi)
  - excellent web interface: clean, powerful and fast; wizards for easy setup of ISP, wired and wireless networks; lot of "manual controls"
  - ability to (almost) share USB device (including hard drive) between network computers
  - dynamic IP providers support (like DynDNS)
  - secure connection (one, I would guess - and it works)
  - quotes and schedules (so you kid machine goes off internet at 9pm)
  and many other standard features, like firewall and Upnp, port forwarding, DMZ, etc
  
  *Problems and drawbacks*
  - N-network is disappointment, I can always get strong 54Mbit/s for G, but N signal is weak and I always get mediocre 24-36 Mbit/s; may be this is just interference with my 5GHz phone?
  - I had dropped connections problems with my old Dell D620 laptop; driver upgrade helped, but not 100%; it looks like when router sees b,n,a and g devices all together some bug manifests itself and WiFi signal may physically disappear from air for several seconds...
  - Only one network computer can control shared USB device at a time, special utility must be installed for that and this utility UI is not beauty context winner
  
  *Conclusion*
  Way to go D-Link!
  Yes, new product, some bugs and quirks are inevitable (and I still want, my 150 MBit/s per stream for 802.11n) but general impression is very positive.
  I hope after another firmware upgrade I can firmly put the fifth star to the product rating....more info
• Dlink Dir 825
  The product was easy to set up and use. I was hoping for a little better range....more info
• Quite good. SharePort has some issues.
  The DIR-825 is a good router. I bought it mainly because of the N-type wireless standard and the SharePort functionality.
  I haven't tested N-band wireless, but I have some comments regarding the USB SharePort.
  The USB SharePort of the DIR-825 is a USB 2.0 type, but has not enough power to drive to an external HD (actually a Western Digital My Passport 320 Gb). Probably, the external HD must be supplied by an external power source (AC adapter). The USB SharePort worked very well with my Kingston Pen Drive, so I think there must be some issue related to the energy delivered by the USB port to the attached device.
  I am now buying a new solution for external HD and I hope to have good news soon.
  
  --- UPDATE 04/01/2009 ---
  I have just received my ANTEC MX-100 and a Western Digital Hard Drive
  (WD3200KSRTL Caviar 320 GB SATA) as a new solution for external storage
  and this is working with the DLink DIR-825.
  The whole problem here seems to be that there is not enough power to be supplied by the USB router port in order to feed some types of external storage devices.
  The ANTEC+SATA HD solution has its own power supply, so DLink USB port doesn't need to drive power to energize them.
  So, depending on your external storage solution, you may not be able to use it with DLink USB SharePort.
  
  ...more info
• Good but pretend it doesn't have a USB port.
  One of the selling points for me on this device was the shareport which promised to allow the router's USB port to be accessible by the computers on the network. Which it does. I can connect a USB drive to the device and the computer, eventually, sees it as if it were physically plugged in. The problem is that it's basically useless unless you use it for printing. It's way too slow to be used as a file server. I was getting transfer speeds between 500 kbps and 1 mbps which is just a little over a medium speed broadband connection. When I moved the drive to a physically network attached computer I transferred the same file at 7 Megabytes per second. The old linksys wrt350n would share files at 2 Megabytes per second. So if you're going to attach storage to this router you'll have to spend extra to get a network attached drive, don't even think about using the USB port.
  
  That said, the USB port is cool if you have a usb modem with your cell phone provider, you can plug it in and share your wireless 3g/evdo. And it's nice, if clunky, to share a printer (but next time splurge and get a wifi printer, they're cheap enough these days).
  
  USB aside I'm very pleased with the networking capabilities. No dropped connection on long file transfers or backups. My wireless N computers talk on the 5g band and leave the 2g band for the wireless Gs so I'm getting solid 300mbps ratings on my N connections. I was even able to set up a guest internet access for friends without granting them full access to my entire home network.
  
  It's a good buy, but don't buy it if you're really serious about wanting to hook up a usb drive and share files off it. Unless you have a seriously slow internet connection you'd be better off using the cloud storage solutions as they're free and (unfortunately) nearly as fast. I can't say for certain but everything about this port screams USB 1.0....more info
• D-link DIR-825
  Great product, very configurable. So far no problems at all versus my older Netgear router that was hanging sometimes few times a day....more info