Before we delve into this Router let me give you a Brief run down of D-Link. D-Link as you may or may not know makes things!  Shocking and descriptive news there, huh?  Well basically it's like this- D-Link was incorporated way back in 1986 as a manufacturer of Networking/Data Communications Equipment.  D-Link ranks as the second largest Ethernet Network Interface Card manufacturer worldwide today. They deliver complete Ethernet solutions for the Small Office/Home Office (SOHO), Workgroup, and Enterprise environments.  (no not the Starship Enterprise :)  D-Link has it all, too, from Hubs to Switches to NIC's to Print Servers to Accessories and Now a Home xDSL/Cable Router.

One point that D-Link is marketing and pushing with this router is it's price.  You will notice this router is only $99!  A quote from D-Link's Vice President: "It was extremely important to get the price below that $100 barrier, so we can make it available to real home users."  "Combined with the lower price, Free PPPoE support should open up the market and make the DI-701 available to everyone with a DSL or Cable Modem connection."  And I think they might have something there with that price, it's a very compelling feature of this router, a feature that a lot of times determines weather people will buy it or not.

There seem to be many routers out now claiming and clamoring for the Home/SOHO user as THE xDSL/Cable router of choice.  More so then there was only 4 months ago!  Can the D-Link DI-701 live up and compete with other routers out there now?  You will just have to read on to find out ;-)

Specifications

Well the first thing I noticed, and you will too, is that this router is Clear.  It's a clear type of plastic that gives it that cool geeky techno look.  It's just a tad blurred so that it's not completely clear, but clear enough to see everything inside if you pay attention to it.  It's neat to see all the nice black chips on green PCB, though that's nothing special really it's just an appealing hardware look. It's actually pretty neat when you see it in person.

On the back there are 4 connection ports for different types of connections.  Going from left to right there are:

DC IN - to connect the provided power cord to give the router power
Console - a DB-9 Female Connector used for local connection for firmware upgrade and management
Global - RJ-45 connection for WAN (Internet) modem hookup
Local - RJ-45 connection for Local (LAN) to Hub/Switch hookup

There are 6 green lights and 1 red light on the front of the router.  The one red light is an "Error" light, if it ever comes on during normal use of the router then there is an error with the function of the router and it may need to be serviced or replaced.  The other 6 green lights are indicator lights to show certain functions that the router is performing.  The router is actually very, very bright in a dark room with the lights all lit up, the light travels inside the router and radiates out of the clear shell for a nice light show :P

They go in this order: 

Power - lit solid if the unit is powered
Link - solid if Local port is connected, blinking if transmitting data
10/100 - lit if Local connection is at 100Mbps, otherwise it's at 10Mbps
Half/Full - lit if Local connection is at Full Duplex, otherwise it's at Half
Link - lit solid if the Global Internet port is connected
Test - flashes when router is booted up and performing it's diagnostics
Error - lights red if there is a problem with the router

One other thing I noticed this router is All solid state.  There are no mechanical or moving parts in this router.  That means it's completely quite, no noise and that means it will last longer without moving parts.  That also means there is no cooling fan inside the router.  Also there are no heat sinks on any of the chips.  The plastic shell has two vents on the top left and ride sides, and on the bottom left and right sides, that's it for cooling.  Now in it's normal use it does get a little warm, not hot but just warm.  In a well ventilated room it should do just fine.  But if you were to stick it in a closet with no ventilation it might get a little too warm and shorten the life of it.

The rest of the specs are:

Protocols

• IP, NAT, ARP, ICMP, DHCP

Management/Setup Options

• Locally via direct serial cable connection through Console port
• Locally via GUI for Windows 95/98/NT/2000
• Remotely via Telnet

Local Port

• RJ-45, 10/100 Dual Speed Ethernet (MIX)

Global Port

• RJ-45, 10Mb Ethernet to an external Cable/DSL Modem (MIX)

Console Port

• DB-9 female connector

LED Indicators

• Power, Local Link, Local Speed 10/100, Local Full/Half Duplex, Internet Link, Error

Input Power

• 5V DC @2.0A

Physical Dimension

• 16 cm x 10.4 cm x 2.8 cm

Agency and Regulatory

• FCC part 15 Class B

Here are some shots of what you fill find inside the box.  From here on out in this review you can click on the images to view a larger more detailed image.  I'm going to go ahead and apologize now for the low quality images and blurriness in the shots, I only have one of those cheap $100 digital cameras for use. But even with that shortcoming you can still make them out a little bit, if you look hard, again I apologize in the quality of the shots.  

What I want you all to notice is the translucency of the router and the fact that it has mounting brackets on the underside of it!  Yes you heard me right it has mounting brackets and screws included so that you can mount this on your wall just like your hanging a picture!  The LED's on the front of it are constructed so that they can be viewed from a Flat Sitting on a table view and from a Wall Hanging view.  I suppose one good thing about hanging it on the wall would be to get it out of the way of having to sit it on something.  The Ports on the back of it are positioned so that when it's hanging on the wall the ports will now be on the top, so you have to plug everything in topside.  Personally I didn't like that idea too much about having the ports on the top when hanging, because if you attach your cables from the top their own weight will pull them down over the router and perhaps bend and pull at the connections, making it have more force on the cable then one would want.

the front of the retail box

this is the back of the box

Here are the contents, notice the Manual, Serial Cable, Ethernet Cable, CD, and Router

The top of the router, notice the clearness

The bottom of the router, with mounting brackets on both sides

Installation

Well I was pretty excited to get this router and review it because I already have the Linksys Etherfast Cable/xDSL router and I wanted to see first hand what another one would be like and how it would compare to Linksys' offering.  There were a few things that I haven't fully gotten working or had to take some time setting up on the Linksys so I was interested in seeing how the D-Link router setup and how easy it was to get services working behind it.

When the Package arrived I ripped the box open and took the D-Link box out.  I opened it up and laid the things out so I could see them all at once and get to parts easily as I needed them.  I was happy to see a nice foldout for quick installation of the router.  It was basically all I needed, as an advanced user, to install the Router.  Though there is a regular fully paged manual to help those install it if you require more detail on installation and setup.  I actually referred to it quite a bit for some command code options detailed in it.

Because this router does not have a built in switch or hub you have to provide one of your own if you wish to hook it up to multiple computers on a LAN.  For this I brought out my lucky Switch I have, it's a nice fast 10/100 Full Duplex 8-Port Switch with Uplink Port.  I plugged power into my switch and sat the Router on top of it.  I took the included blue Cat5 Ethernet cable and connected it from the Local Port on the Router to the Uplink Port on my Switch, this allows it to send to all ports on the Switch.  I then took the Cat5 Ethernet Cable from my Cable Modem and connected it into the Global Port on the Router.  Then I plugged each computer, 3 total, into Ports 1, 2, and 3 on my Switch. (BTW Each Computer was turned off at this point).  I then plugged power into the Router and waited for it to boot up, which took about 20 seconds total time to boot up.  After all lights were done flashing on the Router I proceeded to Turn my Main Computer on so that I could configure the Router for my Cable and LAN.

The router comes with a CD, included on this CD is the setup.exe program, this setup installs the software necessary to configure the Router with.  After I installed it I realized it won't find the Router until I change TCP/IP settings on my own computer so that it can find the router.  I set IP to "Obtain IP Automatically" and I added a Gateway of 192.168.0.1 because this is the IP of the Router, and I disabled DNS.  After my PC rebooted I proceeded to run the D-Link software.

Setup

In order for it to find the Router so you can configure it you have to click on the Find Button, after you do that it will find it and look like this hopefully

Management: This is the Initial Setup for the Router. In the Device/Computer name you enter either any name you want to call this device, or if your ISP, such as @Home, requires you to have a computer name such as C12345-a then you enter that here. In the latest firmware version 2.22 which I have installed you also have an option to enable and setup PPPoE here. And here is where you can also change the Password to login to the router.

Local Port: This is where you setup for the DHCP function of the router, also called the Local Port. The IP Address of the router is the first setting 192.168.0.1 you won't have to mess with that one, and then the subnet of the router is 255.255.255.0 this one you also won't have to mess with, unless you need to. And below that is where you can really tweak the DHCP, you can Disable it all together if you want to, one advantage of this would to be if you wanted to statically assign IP's to your PC's on the LAN, which would be the best way to go especially if you want to do Port Forwarding called a Virtual Server on this Router. Or you can leave DHCP enabled so it will shell out IP's automatically, and it starts out at 192.168.0.2 with the number of PC's set at 32.

Global Port: This is where you setup the router for the Global Port which is your actual Internet Connection. You can let it obtain IP Automatically from your ISP if they use DHCP or you can Statically assign it. Also, there are fields for the Gateway and DNS there too. Finally, if you need to, you can Release and Renew the IP from your ISP if you need to.

Virtual Servers: this is where you can forward special services through different ports through the firewall to individual PC's on your LAN. In order to do this you have to disable DHCP and statically assign IP's to your computers so that you know which IP belongs to which computer. Here you can see I've forwarded two different ports to two different PC's, as you can see it recognized Port 21 as an FTP port.

Firmware

One thing I want to touch on here is the difficulty at which is required to upgrade the firmware on this Router.  From using Linksys' Router for so long now and upgrading and downgrading firmware a lot to figure out the best one that works for me I found the D-Links upgrade process tedious and demanding.  On the Linksys Router it is a simple matter of downloading the firmware package which includes the firmware itself and the program to upgrade the firmware.  You simply install the program on ANY client machine behind the router on the LAN and just run the program and tell it where the firmware is on your PC and what the IP and password is for the Router and it installs it nice and easy.  

However it's not so easy on the D-Link. D-Link thought this might be a security risk by allowing anyone to gain access to such sensitive features of the router through the Ethernet Ports, so they put a Serial Port on the Router that you have to hook up to a PC and communicate directly with that.  Now this kind of baffles me as the D-Link offering is meant for the Home user and NOT the Business user, now in Home use Security of this matter isn't really that necessary.  If this Router where meant for a Business setting instead of a home setting then I could totally agree with this serial port, but because this is a Home offering I just don't see the need for such tight security.

In order to install the firmware you have to first download the firmware package from D-Link's website then disconnect the router from everything and move it closer to your computer so you can attach the supplied RS-232 Serial cable from the Console Port on the Router to a free Com port on your PC.  Inside the firmware package there is an easy setup program you run, now at this point you have to have the Router unplugged, THEN when it starts looking for the router in the detection process is when you Plug it in, then and only then will it detect it and actually work.  It will proceed to automatically upload the firmware to the router, then it will want you to reboot the router, you simply unplug it and plug it back in to reboot it.  This whole ordeal can take a bit of time, especially if you are a novice, the manual does cover it and the firmware package does have good instructions, just follow them and you should be fine.

Then you can hook your router back up and all should be well with the new firmware fully installed, it is a bitchin process that I wish was made easier.

Services

On to the Services!  Ok, how did this thing work when running things like ICQ, FTP or mIRC?  Well it performed very nicely actually.  All I had to do in a few cases was forward the correct ports through the Virtual Server feature and the applications worked flawlessly.  ICQ2000 worked like a charm after I set it up appropriately, I was able to send and receive files just fine in ICQ.  mIRC worked just fine after forwarding a Port for it I was able to connect to any server.  FTP worked just fine if I forwarded the correct port to the PC running the FTP Client.  All in all any of the services you need to work all you have to do is forward the correct port and it should work.  One feature this router doesn't have though and I would have liked to see is the ability to place one ore more PC's completely out of the protection of the Firewall, in a DMZ type of setup.

Some more cool shots

This is my networking bookshelf, here right now you will find my Linksys Router, Switch with the D-Link Router on top and my Motorola Cable Modem:

The router lit up with Cable Modem

The D-Link Router vs. the Linksys router (yeah, at the time of the review they had one such product each, lol)

"top shot"

Conclusion

Ok so should you buy this router or not?  Well that's up to you, you have to look at your needs and see what you need.  If you already have a Switch or Hub you can use then this router is a very very cost efficient choice.  However if you don't have a switch or hub then it will be required that you buy one if you want to use this, that will add to the overall price of equipment that you need.  If that's the case you need to look at how much more it will cost and if it is still a viable option for you.  Whatever you do buy make sure it has a return policy so that you can return it with a full refund if you are un-satisfied, otherwise you may purchase something, not like it and may not be able to return it, then you'll end up shooting yourself in the foot, and I have a feeling that wouldn't feel good.

Rating
Overall Rating: