Below, you will find a support dialog (if you can call it that) I have had with D-Link's EMEA mail support following my purchase of a D-Link wireless repeater.
This post is not particularly interesting in and of itself, but I felt compelled to let the world know that D-Link's e-mail support seems to be provided by a set of goldfish with Downs' syndrome. I have no words for the utter stupidity of the answers I have received from these people.
To cut a long story short: D-Link's DI-524 is a fairly decent product. Their DWL-G710 "range extender" is unreliable. It works half the time. Kinda-sorta. But these are not reasons for not buying D-Link. The numb-nutty support effort is. Don't buy D-Link. They employ complete idiots.
Read on at your own risk:
Dear Customer,
Your Request:
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12/26/2007 06:38:38 PM
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RE: D-Link Support request (1254854)
Hi all,
You wrote:
> Please upgrade the US firmware 2.02 only if you have bought the product from US.
Funnily enough I also called D-Link in Israel and got recommended to upgrade to the "US-only" firmware 2.02, which I did after getting a written statement this would *not* void the warranty.
You also wrote:
> 2) The repeater will not support the WPA/PSK with the router. It can support WEP mode.
The GUI of the repeater has WPA-PSK as an option, and the product manual talks about this tab. If WPA-PSK is not supported, I don't think you should have it in the GUI and product documentation. Lastly, the DLINK WEBSITE (http://www.dlink.com/products/?sec=0&pid=357) EXPLICITLY STATES, and I quote: "Supports WPA-PSK and WPA2-PSK for Ehanced Wireless Security". Which means that either *all* of your product documentation and firmware is a load of crock or your statement is a load of crock. You pick, I already have my opinions.
Lastly, you wrote:
> 3) The WLAN signal has no influence or no relation with the default Gateway settings on the Ethernet port.
The only reason I ever took that step is because *you yourselves* asked me to perfom it. So in one mail you ask me to set the default Gateway in response to a query about Wireless repeating, yet in the next mail you tell me my opinion that this is pointless is 100% correct. The way I see it, if these statements came from two support technicians in your organizations, one of them should be reprimanded, re-trained or potentially fired for their gross incompetence.
At this stage it is needless to say I'm beginning to think that the e-mail support you're offering is complete rubbish. As a support technician of 12 years myself, I am abhorred with the lack of quality and consistency of your answers. I know Home WiFi is not exactly a mission critical affair, but if I gave answers like this to customers I would be fired in the blink of an eye.
For your information, the 2.02 firmware still didn't make WPA-PSK work. The implementation is haphazardly and very badly done. On the WEP front, I now get authorized on the Wireless LAN and get great signal quality, but every 5th website I open from my browser renders a message "The server is taking too long to respond" and I need to hit the refresh button two or three times to render it. This does not happen if I disconnect the repeater and go sit next to the original router instead. Therefore the repeater is semi-functional (Inferior WEP, instabilities) and only limping along.
To cut a long story short, unless you pull yourselves together and start giving me answers that are not complete poppycock, I shall try to advertise my dissatisfaction with your support organization and the overall quality of the product itself on some wireless forums so I can prevent other customers from falling into the trap of buying this product. I am not the only one who has this opinion, because after digging around a bit I have seen the DWL-G710 get a lot of flack from other people.
Furthermore this shall be the last D-Link product I have ever bought in this lifetime, because this experience has made me lose all faith in the truthfulness of your own Web-site, your documentation, your support and therefore the products themselves. "Works with Virtually All 802.11g Wireless Devices"? Bah! Humbug!
Cheers,
Chris Winter
PS The views and opinions in this e-mail are purely personal and do not in any way, shape or form reflect the opinions, policies or practices of my employer. This message is strictly personal in nature.
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12/22/2007 05:37:57 PM
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D-Link Support request (1254854)
Hi all,
Thank you for your reply. You recommended the following action:
> Select Network and give the default gateway as 192.168.0.1
I performed that action. Although I do question the validity of it. The 192.168.0.30 interface is the LAN/Cabled interface to the DWL-G710, and I'm not using that connection at all apart from when I make configuration changes to the device. Isn't it true that the WLAN signal is not influenced by the default GateWay settings on the Ethernet port?
Anyway, having set that particular GW address, the problem remains the same. The reason I believe the Ethernet port is irrelevant, but correct me if I'm wrong, is that I can *only* access 192.168.0.30 if it's connected by LAN cable to my laptop or to a Switch-port on the DI-524. If the repeater is in the living room (only pwr attached), the connection can't be made.
You also wrote:
> Also keep the channel of the router and the range extender as 1,6, or
> 11 as they are non overlapping channels.
The channel is 6 on both devices at present, which falls within the spec of your request.
I have two more questions that are not directly related to the issue at hand, though:
1) Can you tell me why I can't upgrade to the US firmware 2.02?
2) Lastly, I activated WPA-PSK security over AES again. The D-Link DI-524 router offers me different incarnations of WPA-PSK:
WPA-PSK over TKIP
WPA-PSK over AES (which I am using)
WPA-PSK/WPA-PSK2 (without further mention of encryption method)
Funnily enough the DWL-G710 only mentions WPA-PSK, but you can't specify wether it's TKIP or AES encryption. How does that work? Does ik automagically "know" which is used? Does it do both at the same time?
Cheers,
Chris Winter
I have the above mentioned device with FirmWare version 2.00, the only one supported in EMEA. I also have a DLINK DI-524, HW revision B2, Firmware Rev 2.06.
The trouble is that when I connect both devices and configure the same SSID and Channel, the 710 finds the SSID of my 524, and will correctly configure to repeat it, but when I try to connect to the network, windows will tell me there's limited or no connectivity. I never get authenticated or an IP.
I've tried this on two HP NC 6000 laptops with XP SP1 on them and with one HP 6910 Laptop with XP Pro SP2 on it. It doesn't make a difference. When I disconnect the 710 I can connect to the original router 524 without problems from all three laptops.
To rule out problems with the encryption/security I tried the following settings, configured identically on both devices:
- WEP 64-bit with ASCII key
- WPA-PSK over AES with an ASCII passphrase
- None.
Furthermore I tried channels 5, 6 and 7 on both devices. I've also (in spite of the fact that the 710 appeared to pick up the network without problems when doing a site survey) moved the 710 closer to the source router.
Lastly I had a look at firmware updates. I see that the only certified FW for the 524 is 2.02 and that the 2.02 firmware in the US is not at all supported for the 710. So in order to test the firmware, I took another router I have, a Siemens SL2-141 all in one access point adsl modem router switch, and replaced the 524 with it.
Then I configured repeaters in the Siemens admin page (this is needed) and the 710 and Siemens router found each other mutually. However, this did not alleviate the problem, the symptom does not change a bit with that set-up.
has been answered as follows:
Dear Chris,
You have to contact you local D-Link support for any querries.
Regards
We hope that this answers your question and that your request is now resolved.
This information is also available through our Support Portal at http://service.dlink.biz
Regards - your D-Link Support Team