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The Graveyard - Products No Longer Supported => Routers / COVR => DIR-857 => Topic started by: pcrupp on May 14, 2012, 10:40:51 PM

Title: DIR-857 vs CISCO E4200v2 vs Belkin N750
Post by: pcrupp on May 14, 2012, 10:40:51 PM
I just wanted to post my non-technical review of these three routers. Starting with a little background. I had a DIR-625 for roughly 4-5 years... and never had an issue. I was looking for a replacement that 1) has gigabit ports 2) had wifi capable of 600+ 3) had usb 3.0.

E4200v2
I had high hopes after reading the reviews, but this router simply would not work in my house. I bought this to replace my D-link DIR-625 (which has been a rock for years - no issues) so I could take advantage the 300mb + 300mb speeds (that's what my laptops can handle) and still plan for upgrades later on.

The plan was to simply swap routers. I have a Sony BDP-S570, Wii, Onkyo Receiver, epson proj, Tvix 6600, Bitwise controller, couple of Desktops, couple of laptops, and a few other things. When setting up any of the computers, it was a cinch... literally plug and play. However both laptops would get horrible signals. It would spike like I've never seen before, going from 270 mb to 12mb and average about 65mb. The location I was testing was one room below and one room over from where the router was, maybe 35ft away (thru 3 walls + 1 floor). I tried playing with the location of the router, using different frequencies and different standards. I got a few things to work, but in making the signal steady, I lost the bandwith (max 78mb).

Figuring I could work something out, I moved on to my other devices. The Blu-ray player wouldn't connect at all; not wifi and not hardwired. I kept telling me It had a network connection, but no internet connection. I tried static IPs, changing the gateway, turning off the firewall, and turning off any filters... nothing.

I then tried the Wii. This took about 8 tries; on a rare chance it connnected over the wifi, i got it setup. I can't say what I did to make it work... but i think it had to do with changing the security type.

After this I tried my blu-ray player again and after reading a ton of forums and posts... i gave up. I shouldn't be this hard. I then disconnected the router and put my Dlink back in. it took all but 3 minutes to restart all of devices and everything was backup and working.

The other major issue i had with this router is the Cisco software / Firmware. It would lock up my laptop completely. I could not cntl+Alt+del, Alt+F4, alt+tab, nothing. I had no response from the mouse or keyboard. It did this 4 times, each time when I clicked save and it was restarting. It did not do this every save, just every so often.

There's nothing good I can say about this experience. I'm just glad I can return it.

NOTE: I did not try setting up my Tvix, Bitwise Controller, or receiver due to the problems I was encountering.

Belkin N750
After returning the E4200v2 i bought this Belkin. Honestly I was a little skeptical, but this router worked great. Setup was a little iffy when trying to get the 300mb connection to work, but once I figured that out, everything else was pretty easy. I would have kept this router, except it didn't have all of the functionality I wanted (I wanted DHCP reservation and better control of the router). This is a decent router for the price and I would recommend it for people not trying to do advanced setups with servers, NAS or such.

DIR-857
Now that I've had this up and running for 4 hours... I love it. This was literally the easiest router to get all of my devices connected. I would say the range on the Belkin was slighly better (according to inSSIDer) when it came to signal strength. The Belkin had a RSSI of 38-42, and the D-Link is pretty consistent at 50 (this is for 5ghz). on the 2.4ghz the Belkin was around 34-40; D-link is 46-50. The one thing the D-Link router does though is drop signal significantly (not connection) on the 2.4ghz band about every 2-3 minutes it will spike and the RSSI will be in the high 80s to 90s. Regardless of all of that, I still get an "excellent" connection where I need it (on 1 floor up, 1 room over from the router - maybe 18-20 ft away through the floor/wall)

Lastly, I'd have to agree that this router does run hot. Compared to the other 2 routers + my Dir-625, this is a hot router.

I didn't upgrade the firmware yet... it's still 1.00 not sure it would make any differences.

Anyways... just my experiences and I thought I'd share.
Title: Re: DIR-857 vs CISCO E4200v2 vs Belkin N750
Post by: FurryNutz on May 15, 2012, 11:50:14 AM
Nice review, thank you.
Just FYI, there isn't any FW updates as of yet. We'll keep everyone posted when and if there is some.
Also, this is a 450Mb WiFi router, the other 2 routers are only 300Mb WiFi capable routers. Hard to compare them to the 857.  ;)
Enjoy.