If someone could point me to something that would lift the fog it would be greatly appreciated. That you very much NetFixer! The Cisco paper is defintely thorough, and I can sort of understand some of it. Which is a major advance for me. If I can summarize my understanding of the difference, probably mangled, when a user intitiates an online game session they open a port for a response from the specific IP address with symetric binding that specific IP can access the port, but with full cone NAT any IP can.
Perhaps thats necessary for the multi-player online games where things need to be flipped from one player to any of a number of others for response. Intuitively, it seems to compromise security, but by how much is beyond me. And probably always will be.
So it appears that the compromise of security comes well short of opening the floodgates on my home network. Perhaps thats a misplaced sense of security, but it helps. I'm still scratching my head wondering how Dlink markets this router as being Xbox Live compatible and supposedly ready to use out of the box when this is by default disabled and nothing on their website or telephone tech support says a word about the need to enable it.
I can't help but think this may be attributable to this particular router or game console. I wish that Dlink says they recommend it be disbaled whenever games are not in use that they at least give some hint as to why.
Thanks again! Maybe this thread will help some other frazzled soul experiencing the frustration I was. The latest batch of firmwares for this router don't support XBLA. Main items are organized in a menu to the left and sub-items are organized in different tabs on top. The main part in the middle of the interface displays the settings of the current sub-item for you to customize. It's generally self-explanatory. As I used the router, however, I found that the interface could use a lot of improvement: major configuration items are scattered in a disjointed way and some common settings are missing.
Take StreamBoost, the selling feature of the router, for example. This feature senses Internet traffic and automatically prioritizes the bandwidth, in real time, to make sure lag-sensitive applications such as online gaming and video chatting get priority while other, less important activities, such as file downloading, take a back seat. While this feature functioned well for the most part in my trials, the way it's organized in the interface is terrible at best.
First of all, to turn StreamBoost on or off, you'll need to go to Setup in the main menu and then the StreamBoost tab. Here you can also opt in to StreamBoost's Automatic Update, which regularly updates information on what application needs what type of priority. Joining this is generally a good thing, however, it does mean the router will send Qualcomm information about your network.
Once on, StreamBoost prioritizes the Internet by applications as well as by clients, which you can manually adjust in an entirely different part of the interface, the Priority tab in the My Network section.
This separation makes StreamBoost and the priority list seem unrelated. It would be better if StreamBoost and all of its related settings were in one place.
Secondly, the priority list itself is very badly designed. Once StreamBoost is turned on, the interface arbitrarily puts all connected clients in a numeric order with No. If you have multiple computers in a network, rearranging this list to match your desired priorities is usually a must, but unfortunately not easily.
This is because you can move only one client at a time and only one step at a time. For example, if you want to move a computer from 3 to 1 you have to first move it to number 2, and then from 2 to 1. In other words, if you have 10 computers in your network and need to move the one at the bottom to the top, you will have to move it 10 times.
It would be much less frustrating, especially in a large network, if you could just drag and drop the clients at will. Also, I found it a little problematic that all the connected clients are put on this one priority-hierarchy list once StreamBoost is turned on.
This means there's no way for you to put a few clients at the same level of prioritization. Other parts of the interface weren't well thought out, either.
The visual network map, which is very helpful in general, doesn't always show all connected clients, and the interface at times freezes up or lags during a transition. In all, while the new Web interface seems much richer and more advanced than the old traditional D-Link interface, it needs a lot of polishing.
For now it's a little confusing and frustrating to use. Hopefully this will be improved via a firmware update. This enables you to easily set up remote access to the router's Web interface, as well as set up over-the-Internet application servers within your network, for free.
For hard-core gamers and advanced users, DynDNS support is a must, because you then can run your own game-related server at home, such as TeamSpeak. The lack of DynDNS makes things a lot harder and also doesn't make sense. Most, if not all, routers I've reviewed have this feature. D-Link told me that it will add DynDNS in the next firmware updates, however, and personally, I wouldn't consider using this router at all until then.
All this makes this router the most unfriendly to Internet-based remote applications that I've seen. Performance The DGL is the first For more on Wi-Fi standards, check out this post. As with all Wi-Fi routers, your results may vary depending on where you live. That said, in my testing, the router's performance was quite good but not as good as you'd expect from a device that costs so much.
More specifically, the router gave a sustained speed of Mbps over a short distance 15 feet and Mbps long distance feet away. These numbers were about those of a regular 5GHz Again, since the DGL is the only dual-stream AC router on the chart all others are three-stream , it was normal that it didn't score comparably. Whether this was the typical performance of a dual-stream AC router will be determined when more dual-stream AC routers are reviewed.
When working with regular On the 2. The router's effective range, however, was just about feet. In stress tests, where it was set to work continuously with multiple Wi-Fi clients for a long period of time, it passed easily on the 5GHz band.
This is not a big deal since the client was reconnected immediately, but other routers can go for 24 hours or more without disconnecting at all. Interested parties should wait until D-Link significantly updates the firmware, hopefully improving both performance and the clunky Web interface.
A beefy price cut should also be a prerequisite before purchase.
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