Which Router: D-Link DGL-4100 or Linksys WRT54GL

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PC_User

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I am looking to purchase a router for myself and have narrowed it down to the D-Link DGL-4100 and the infamous Linksys WRT54GL. The D-Link is on sale for $74 after rebate and the Linksys can be had for $60.

- If I go with the Linksys, I'll most likely flash it to DD-WRT.
- I do not need wireless.
- I don't necessarily need the D-Link's Gigabit support, but I have read that it is a solid all-around router.

Which of these 2 routers would you recommend? Thanks.
 
The DGL-4100 is an outstanding router still to this day and is not crippled by bad firmware like it's older brothers the DGL-4500 and DIR-655. If I didn't need wireless and I had only those two to choose from, I'd pick the DGL-4100 in a heart beat.
 
I have a DGL-4300 which is the same but with wireless. I also have a newer DIR-825. I have to say the DGL-4300 has been the most stable router I've ever had. I've never had an issue with it losing its connection to the internet and requiring a restart. I had a WRT54G (v4 crippled with half the ram) which I had to restart every day after Bittorrenting would lock it up.

DD-WRT or Tomato is sweet, but if your not going to take advantage of the additional features it offers like wireless bridging, I'd stick with the DGL-4100.
 
I use a linksys wrt54gl at work for about a year (i built the network there) and at home for 3-4 years. Both run newest Tomato. Since installing tomato they have never needed a reboot or reset to speed things up or fix anything, basically perfect uptime.

IMO that router with tomato is the finest router available if you dont need gigabit and draft wireless N. Recently I made little home made aluminum foil parabolic antenna boosters and it doubled my wireless g throughput, 3mb/sec or better xfers from my main pc via ethernet to any g device in my house all the way to the opposite edge of the house where my asus 1000he usually lives. My room with the router is in one corner of the house, so with it aiming toward the center of my house I get incredible signal quality all the way through the house.
 
I'd definitely go with the newest most current generation of the bunch. The one with the most CPU, RAM, and ability to handle connections. Yeah the wrt45gl was good..back in it's day. So was the Celeron 300a on an Abit BH-6 motherboard. Back in its day. Current generation routers kick the crap out of the old ones performance wise.

Or go with a current generation router that supports DD-WRT if you're hellbent on running DD. I'm running my wireless on a Linksys N series with DD...the wrt150n.
 
Thanks for the advice guys. I'm going to go with the DGL-4100.
 
YeOldeStonecat said:
I'd definitely go with the newest most current generation of the bunch. The one with the most CPU, RAM, and ability to handle connections. Yeah the wrt45gl was good..back in it's day. So was the Celeron 300a on an Abit BH-6 motherboard. Back in its day. Current generation routers kick the crap out of the old ones performance wise.

Or go with a current generation router that supports DD-WRT if you're hellbent on running DD. I'm running my wireless on a Linksys N series with DD...the wrt150n.
Click to expand...

Would you rather have last year's model Athlon 64 X2 running a solid, modern version of Windows (pick whatever your favorite version is) or a brand new i7 system running Windows Me?

Especially if you're not concerned about the WiFi, getting slightly newer hardware in a router might not be worth forcing yourself to use the stock firmware. The WRT54G's default firmware was well-known for buckling under a lot of connections (i.e. BT), but simply switching to DD-WRT or Tomato fixes that, showing that the problem is the software rather than the hardware. Other than N support, the newer BCM4704 is 300Mhz and has a 16KB data cache compared to the BCM5352's 200MHz/8KB. Plus the Linksys routers seem to be underclocking the 4704 down to 264MHz, while DD-WRT reports that 250MHz is the average stable overclock for the WRT54GL, meaning there could be much less difference even.

All other things being equal, I'd obviously pick the 4704 over the 5352. However, I'd also pick the open firmware option over being stuck with the default firmware. Personally, I think the firmware option would be higher priority than the chipset option if I wasn't concerned about N, having seen how much is possible with the alternative firmware. My parents' gimped WRT54G v5 running DD-WRT Micro seemed to have fewer problems than what I read about from better routers running the default firmware even. I hate being stuck with software that has random problems, and where every fix seems to break something else. I'm willing to trade a small bit of hardware power for the ability to run alternate software.

Note that a little Googling didn't even turn up any decent specs for the DGL-4100, so I really have no idea how it compares to the hardware of the WRT54GL or WRT150N.
 
I saw that it was similar to the 4300 but didn't search on that. The IP3023 sounds like a very different animal compared to the Broadcom stuff, but a lot of that could just be marketing BS for all I know. The IP3023 is listed as 250MIPS, while the BCM4704 is listed as 400 DMIPS. *shrug*
 
InvisiBill said:
I saw that it was similar to the 4300 but didn't search on that. The IP3023 sounds like a very different animal compared to the Broadcom stuff, but a lot of that could just be marketing BS for all I know. The IP3023 is listed as 250MIPS, while the BCM4704 is listed as 400 DMIPS. *shrug*
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JohnleMVP said:
"The heart of the 4300 is a Ubicom IP3023 Wireless Network processor, which is an 8-way multi-threaded 32 bit processor clocked at 250MHz."

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wireless/wireless-reviews/24726-reviewdgl4300?start=2
Click to expand...

I would opt for the newer DGL-4500 but I narrowed it down to the DGL-4100 because I won't need wireless and the 4500 is twice as expensive. However, it does have the newer Ubicom 275MHz processor which is reportedly ~20% faster. Not sure how this translates into internet speed/torrenting capabilities.
 
InvisiBill said:
Would you rather have last year's model Athlon 64 X2 running a solid, modern version of Windows (pick whatever your favorite version is) or a brand new i7 system running Windows Me?

Especially if you're not concerned about the WiFi, getting slightly newer hardware in a router might not be worth forcing yourself to use the stock firmware. The WRT54G's default firmware was well-known for buckling under a lot of connections (i.e. BT), but simply switching to DD-WRT or Tomato fixes that, showing that the problem is the software rather than the hardware.
Click to expand...

Your analogy = FAIL

First off...I've been running various 3rd party firmwares pretty much since they've come out, back in the early DD days, and Hyper-WRT, as well as my favorite...Tomato.

I've been running them on various hardware since way back then also...such as well before the wrt54gl days, and including up until curren times..even today. Again...I'm running a relatively newer wrt150n with DD-WRT...so I'll take my Athlon 64...err...YUCK...no thanks, I'll take my Core 2 Duo, and put on what I want...not Windows ME.

When I first got my wrt150n, and I replaced my wrt54gl running DD with it, I ran the 150n with stock firmware for a while. It ran circles around the old 54gl. Much greater wireless distance and speeds, snappier internet (I even ran it as my router for a week or so), and stability was fine. Now it's running just as an AP, with DD.

But analogy also fails because 3rd party firmware is still dependent on whatever "horsepower" it runs on.
*Adds stability...yeah, a little bit. Depends on which version of stock firmware you're comparing it against...based on substantial experience, the old latest firmware isn't always the best approach. Sometimes a slightly older firmware proves to be the rock solid old standby.
*Adds features...yes, no question there. But honestly...>99% of end users just setup the DD box like any old router and leave it at that.
*Adds performance? Ehh..a "little bit"..sometimes. It's certainly never been a "night and day" difference...it doesn't turn a humble little wrt54gl into a hard core router that can run a 100x+ node network behind it on a 20 meg pipe.
Refer to these charts with proven reproducible numbers
http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/lanwan/lanwan-features/30437-can-dd-wrt-or-tomato-fix-bad-routing

3rd party firmware doesn't magically turn that measly 200MHz processor with 16 megs of RAM into a gigahertz box with 256 megs of RAM, routing tables are still routing tables working with the same resources.
 
I have been running the DGL-4300 for nearly 3 years now, and it has been rock solid. When I first installed it, I noticed my internet connection was more responsive than it ever was, and I've never had to reboot it as a result of a lockup. I've used a good number of the advanced features, and I'm overall very happy with it.

Wireless was not my focus when I bought it, but it cost about $75 - I was moreso aiming for the GBE ports on it.
 
YeOldeStonecat said:
Your analogy = FAIL

First off...I've been running various 3rd party firmwares pretty much since they've come out, back in the early DD days, and Hyper-WRT, as well as my favorite...Tomato.

I've been running them on various hardware since way back then also...such as well before the wrt54gl days, and including up until curren times..even today. Again...I'm running a relatively newer wrt150n with DD-WRT...so I'll take my Athlon 64...err...YUCK...no thanks, I'll take my Core 2 Duo, and put on what I want...not Windows ME.

When I first got my wrt150n, and I replaced my wrt54gl running DD with it, I ran the 150n with stock firmware for a while. It ran circles around the old 54gl. Much greater wireless distance and speeds, snappier internet (I even ran it as my router for a week or so), and stability was fine. Now it's running just as an AP, with DD.

But analogy also fails because 3rd party firmware is still dependent on whatever "horsepower" it runs on.
*Adds stability...yeah, a little bit. Depends on which version of stock firmware you're comparing it against...based on substantial experience, the old latest firmware isn't always the best approach. Sometimes a slightly older firmware proves to be the rock solid old standby.
*Adds features...yes, no question there. But honestly...>99% of end users just setup the DD box like any old router and leave it at that.
*Adds performance? Ehh..a "little bit"..sometimes. It's certainly never been a "night and day" difference...it doesn't turn a humble little wrt54gl into a hard core router that can run a 100x+ node network behind it on a 20 meg pipe.
Refer to these charts with proven reproducible numbers
http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/lanwan/lanwan-features/30437-can-dd-wrt-or-tomato-fix-bad-routing

3rd party firmware doesn't magically turn that measly 200MHz processor with 16 megs of RAM into a gigahertz box with 256 megs of RAM, routing tables are still routing tables working with the same resources.
Click to expand...

I agree with pretty much everything you said, and I don't think any of it really disproves my analogy. My analogy was aimed at the D-Link that doesn't support the other firmwares. It sounds like your WRT150N is a C2D (or better) that came with XP - it may not have all the bells and whistles of DD-WRT, but it's still stable and works for most stuff you'd want to do. And you have the choice to use something else like DD-WRT if you want.

However, some of the latest and greatest routers have crappy firmware that cannot be replaced. The hardware may be the equivalent of an i7, but the software may be the equivalent of WinMe. Just as DD-WRT is still limited by the hardware it's running on, even the best hardware will be limited if it's running crappy software. The WRT54G is an example of this - the stock firmware was known for locking up under lots of connections, but DD-WRT on the same hardware was fine. On the other end of that, a Fonera 2100 running DD-WRT still makes a pretty crappy router because of the hardware it's on.

With my DD-WRT WRT54G-TM and 6Mb DSL, I can type "www.newegg.com" into the address bar in Firefox, and the whole page (uncached) is loaded within 1 second of pressing Enter. This is repeatable for just about any website that isn't loaded with tons of embedded objects and ads. No, it's not instant like a screen change in a locally installed app, but I find it hard to believe any current router could improve on that enough for me to consider it "running circles around it". Especially if we're not considering WiFi, I doubt that upgrading from a 200MHz BCM5352 to a 264MHz BCM4704 is going to be like going from an Atom to an i7.
 
InvisiBill said:
However, some of the latest and greatest routers have crappy firmware that cannot be replaced. The hardware may be the equivalent of an i7, but the software may be the equivalent of WinMe.
Click to expand...

Is the D-Link DGL-4100 one of those routers?
 
PC_User said:
Is the D-Link DGL-4100 one of those routers?
Click to expand...

I don't know, as I have no personal experience with it. Try searching for "DGL-4100 problems" and see if you find lots of reports of common issues. Since it's the wired version of the DGL-4300, you may want to try "DGL-4300 problems" too. Obviously wireless-related issues wouldn't affect the 4100, but since WiFi is more popular, it might lead you to other known issues for that chipset which would affect the 4100.

It might be the greatest thing ever, and the only firmware update they've ever needed to release was to fix a typo in the Esperanto version of the UI. The factory firmware might be a steaming pile that dies every two hours, despite a hundred firmware updates that were supposed to fix the issue. They could have several revisions of the product with very different results - they might have changed something in newer versions to cut costs (like the WRT54G v5) or there might have been a bug in earlier versions that got fixed in the newer ones.

My generic advice is simply to research any product as much as possible, until you've convinced yourself that any known issues with it aren't dealbreakers for you.
 
i have a 4300 and i have a friend that has a 4100. the best router ive ever owned.
 
The DGL-4100 and 4300 do not have the firmware bugs that have been ruining the DGL-4500 and DIR-655. I still have one that I've now given to a friend from when they first came out - still working beautifully. It's probably the best consumer router I've ever owned.
 
Orinthical said:
The DGL-4100 and 4300 do not have the firmware bugs that have been ruining the DGL-4500 and DIR-655. I still have one that I've now given to a friend from when they first came out - still working beautifully. It's probably the best consumer router I've ever owned.
Click to expand...

I also have a DIR-655 for my wireless connection and it has been running strong since the day I plugged it in. Firmware Version: 1.11 & Hardware Version A3. Not sure which "bugs" you are referring to, but I have not encountered any problems. Maybe I should keep this newer (and faster) router for my main PC and get something less expensive to replace it?
 
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PC_User said:
I also have a DIR-655 for my wireless connection and it has been running strong since the day I plugged it in. Firmware Version: 1.11 & Hardware Version A3. Not sure which "bugs" you are referring to, but I have not encountered any problems. Maybe I should keep this newer (and faster) router for my main PC and get something less expensive to replace it?
Click to expand...
The DIR-655 and DGL-4500 were and can be outstanding routers but at the moment (and for the last YEAR) have been crippled by bad firmware that causes random drop-outs of wireless, locks-ups, slow-downs and other issues which go away as soon as you power-cycle them. The issue was identified as having to do with the way the 1.2+ firmware (in the case of the DIR-655) uses DNS relay/forwarding; either a corrupt package or other issue causes a memory leak which eventually cripples the system. In either case, simply disabling it does nothing. It's been a known issue with D-Link for over a year now and while they have BETA firmware that supposedly fixes it for most cases now, they have yet to release something for consumers en mass. So the important thing to take away here is DO NOT update your firmware if you're sitting at pre-1.2. Enjoy your sweet router. :)
 
Orinthical said:
The DIR-655 and DGL-4500 were and can be outstanding routers but at the moment (and for the last YEAR) have been crippled by bad firmware that causes random drop-outs of wireless, locks-ups, slow-downs and other issues which go away as soon as you power-cycle them. The issue was identified as having to do with the way the 1.2+ firmware (in the case of the DIR-655) uses DNS relay/forwarding; either a corrupt package or other issue causes a memory leak which eventually cripples the system. In either case, simply disabling it does nothing. It's been a known issue with D-Link for over a year now and while they have BETA firmware that supposedly fixes it for most cases now, they have yet to release something for consumers en mass. So the important thing to take away here is DO NOT update your firmware if you're sitting at pre-1.2. Enjoy your sweet router. :)
Click to expand...

Oh, the irony. I just updated yesterday from 1.11 to 1.32NA.
 
Orinthical said:
The DIR-655 and DGL-4500 were and can be outstanding routers but at the moment (and for the last YEAR) have been crippled by bad firmware that causes random drop-outs of wireless, locks-ups, slow-downs and other issues which go away as soon as you power-cycle them. The issue was identified as having to do with the way the 1.2+ firmware (in the case of the DIR-655) uses DNS relay/forwarding; either a corrupt package or other issue causes a memory leak which eventually cripples the system. In either case, simply disabling it does nothing. It's been a known issue with D-Link for over a year now and while they have BETA firmware that supposedly fixes it for most cases now, they have yet to release something for consumers en mass. So the important thing to take away here is DO NOT update your firmware if you're sitting at pre-1.2. Enjoy your sweet router. :)
Click to expand...

This is a great example of my i7/WinMe analogy. If the manufacturer is your only option for firmware, you're at their mercy if there's a problem with it. With a WRT54GL, I can simply switch from the Linksys firmware to DD-WRT. If there's some issue going unfixed in DD-WRT, I can switch to Tomato. It may not be perfect, but it does provide one more option in case of problems.

Orinthical, I think I've read about this particular issue. And once you upgrade to the newer firmware, there's no way to revert back to the older one, correct?
 
InvisiBill said:
Orinthical, I think I've read about this particular issue. And once you upgrade to the newer firmware, there's no way to revert back to the older one, correct?
Click to expand...

Yes. For that particular router, when you upgrade to a 1.3X firmware, you cannot revert back to any firmware older than 1.3X.
 
YeOldeStonecat said:
I'd definitely go with the newest most current generation of the bunch. The one with the most CPU, RAM, and ability to handle connections. Yeah the wrt45gl was good..back in it's day. So was the Celeron 300a on an Abit BH-6 motherboard. Back in its day. Current generation routers kick the crap out of the old ones performance wise.

Or go with a current generation router that supports DD-WRT if you're hellbent on running DD. I'm running my wireless on a Linksys N series with DD...the wrt150n.
Click to expand...

LOL I totally disagree! Most wireless N routers I use lag far behind the performance of my WRT54GL w/tomato, or other rare super high quality routers. It's always amusing when I have a more responsive and lag free internet experience on my home G network than others have with their N networks + a trash router.

In fact the router we had at my office previously was a wireless N router, and it sucked. We have a warehouse in a warehouse complex with probably a dozen other wireless networks all around us. The WRT54GL w/tomato can scan all available channels and tells us which channels already have connections running on them, even how many other routers are using that channel.

Now the office network on the G router performs immeasurably better than it did before. I mean no comparison, obviously raw throughput might be lower from pc to pc on the network (which makes up about 0.0001% of our overall usage), but the increase in responsiveness and abolition of lag more than made up for it.

In general most routers suck. You need to do proper research and get a good one. Especially when you start talking about torrents with massive #'s of connections going, or god forbid several computers with file sharing/torrrent apps going; a quality router with quality firmware/os is going to outperform a crappy router, no matter how new it is or what hardware it has inside.

Above is entirely IMO, but based on years of experience!


What I am looking for now is a good quality affordable gigabit/wireless N 300mbps router =)
 
I have the DGL-4300 and have had it for about 3 years. It functioned as a router, switch, and AP for 2 years solid, and now I'm just using it as a switch + AP and it is still rock solid. I'm using firmware version 1.8 dated 03/2007.
 
Malakai said:
LOL I totally disagree! Most wireless N routers I use lag far behind the performance of my WRT54GL w/tomato, or other rare super high quality routers. It's always amusing when I have a more responsive and lag free internet experience on my home G network than others have with their N networks + a trash router.
Above is entirely IMO, but based on years of experience!
Click to expand...

As is mine, and I usually have around a dozen various routers sitting around at any time. If I put my wrt54gl back in place, I don't get the wireless range or speeds I do if I put my N router back in place. I've had the same thing at quite a few clients.

If I take my linux router out of its job, and put the wireless routers in place as my router...the old 54gl can't keep up with my gaming needs at home, the wrt150n does a better job....naturally neither are anywhere near what my linux router can handle..but that's not the point. Right now I'm on the far end downstairs in my 3 story house, wireless AP is up on 3rd floor..I'm full signal and surfing quite snappily. The 54gl was quite slower, and signal was only about 40-60%. I can reproduce this all day long.

Try alternative firmware on current generation hardware, you'll stick with it.
 
i vote you get a dlink 655, just don't worry about upgrading the firmware

the router itself is a solid piece of technology, I have one and never bothered to upgrade the firmware, I believe I bought it 2 years ago? in September 2008 and haven't had a problem with it since.

can't say the same about this belkin router i blew a shitload of money on in 2005 and ended up not using at all, i shoulda returned it to the store but for some reason I was lazy, it was a piece of shit, never buy belkins
 
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