D-Link DIR-615 Wireless N Router review

An AirLink AR680W Wireless N router that I had for about a year was dropping all of the connections from time to time, which really annoyed me.  Since I really didn't want pay too much money for a replacement D-Link DIR-615 for $40 seemed right. The old router disconnected and the new one in place. I wish I could say that the setup was painless, but it wasn't. In fact, I was trying to get it running for about an hour. Considering that my job requires me to be able to configure any kind of network equipment. And even though I knew that all the settings were right, the unit would not obtain DHCP information from the cable modem/ISP. There was something that was preventing the system from working correctly. Note, the configuration was done all in manual mode without using any "wizards" (scripted step-by-step setup assistants).  The settings were very basic - just the internal IP, lan DHCP server, and that's all. Yet, it would not get an IP. Even after connecting laptop, obtaining DHCP information from ISP and then putting it into router manually it wouldn't work. There is some type of setting in the router configuration that is not shown to the user. As a measure of last resort, I went through the wizard - and it worked! I've looked at the settings...Yes, everything was same as when I have configured it manually.  The only difference was that during the wizard setup - it prompted me to select ISP. Whatever, that selection means during the setup - it has some system setting associated with it.

The speed of the connection through the router was the same as when I was connected directly to cable modem with a laptop. And that's great - it means the router hardware is capable of processing all the firewall rules and settings without slowing down the connection or dropping sessions.

Now the the actual review of the product. Unlike many other similarly priced units - D-Link DIR-615 has all the important features such as:
- port forwarding
- port mapping (or port translation),
- SPI (statefull packet inspection) engine
- NAT (network address translation)
- QoS (quality of service - traffic shaping)
- DMZ (while not a true DMZ as on higher end firewalls, you can still achieve similar result with D-Links version. Instead of havign a dedicated port which can be assined to a machine with public IP, on this unit you assign a computer with internal IP on one of the LAN ports)
- advanved filtering options
- website filtering (you have to input sites to block or to allow), IPv6 for future use when IP version 6 servers become common
- ability to use dynamic DNS (DynDNS)
-  sending log files via e-mail
- WPA2 personal and enterprise for the wireless connections
- MAC filtering
-  and much more......

Hoever the device has some quircks :
- almost any change of settings is accompanies by a 15 second delay in order to apply it and re-read the rules. This is quite annoying when you are setting up the router, but once you are done - it won't be a problem.
- the wireless connection seems to work fine, but the connection that I've made with the laptop sitting two feet away from the router was only 130mbps and not 300mbps (which is the maximum supported). 
- layout of the configuration pages is somehow not very intuitive. You can get used to it, but for some reason it feels like not right. "Save settings" buttons are located at the top of the page and not at the bottom. Main page that you see when you log-in shows the links for configuration wizards and not your router's essential settings. You can experiment with the interface on D-Link's router emulation page here.

And at the end i can say that I would recommend the product with some minor reservations - if you don't mind some strange behaviour during configuration and it's somewhat strange interface - you will like this cheap but fully functional router.