A copy of this message is going to be delivered to DLink as feedback. I
thought you might be interested. Its a bit of a rant but its also the story
of my transition and shows both good and bad points about the device.

Hi Folks,

As earlier mentioned I switched my Rental M1122 for a Purchased DLink DSL500.

The UI is nice. Fairly easy to follow and lots of useful information, from
both a user and from helpdesks POV :)

I did have some major and minor gripes with it, but today having done a
firmware upgrade on my unit - one grip is gone and replaced by a few even
larger ones.

On setting the device up initially, it has a default IP of
192.168.0.1. Thats fine, I use 192.168.1.x as my range inside my LAN, and
192.168.2.x in the DMZ between my Linux Firewall and the Router.
192.168.2.254 is the Router address in the DMZ.

First thing I do is put an alias IP into my Windows 2000 workstation of
192.168.0.2.
I then connect the DLink directly to my PC, login to the GUI Interface and
change the LAN IP to 192.168.2.254. After changing this it prompts me to
either continue-without-saving or save-to-activate-changes. I save
changes, let the router reboot. I Then plug it into the Linux Firewall and
remove the alias'ed IP from my Win2k box - the Device is now on my LAN.

Therefore my situation is this:

Internet-IP
->[DSL500]<-192.168.2.254----192.168.2.1->[LinuxRouter]<-192.168.1.254----
(Other LAN PCs here in 192.168.1.0/24 space)

Relogin to the GUI and begin to set things up. The router comes
preconfigured with a bunch of standard DSL types ( I Hope eudora dumps
these to plain text OK):
Profile Name VPI VCI Connection Type
1 AU_PPPoE 8 35 Router with PPPoE
2 AU_PPPoA 8 35 Router with PPPoA
3 NZ_PPPoA 0 100 Router with PPPoA
4 AU_RouterR1483 8 35 Router with R1483 Bridged Encap.
5 AU_IPoA 8 35 Router with IPoA
6 AU_Bridge 8 35 Bridge with RFC 1483
7 ISP1 1 32 Router with IPoA
8 0 0

Type 3 is the Default for NZ Shipped units. It also comes preconfigured
with the default username of user@jetstreamgames.co.nz. This of course
means you can see instantly if your line is correctly configured for DSL as
it will sync up and login to the games realm.

Change the Username and Password to match the ISP details. Then you
realise that there are buttons on the bottom of this screen that say
'connect' or 'disconnect'. If you 'disconnect' from the games realm it
wont save your newly entered information.. Maybe thats me being a pedant.
Anyway, Click Disconnect, screen refreshes. Change username and password,
click Connect. All Good So far.

Next, Pinholes. I have Apache, FTP and SSH running on my firewall. Also
Bind. So I start adding pinholes. Helpfully, a few common services are
prelisted, including WWW, FTP...
First problem. For FTP i note it tries to pinhole ports 21 and 22. Isnt 22
for SSH ? Im pretty sure its supposed to pinhole 20 and 21...
Anyways I used it. I added a pinhole for SSH also. WWW is easily pinholed.
However for *each* pinhole it again asks 'save now and reboot' or 'reboot
later'. What a pain in the ass when you have about 8 pinholes to add.

Next hiccup. Try to pinhole both 53/tcp and 53/udp. No Show! It cant
differentiate the protocols and considers the second pinhole to be a
duplicate. I pinhole TCP Only at this stage and keep going.

Other useful bits. The modem has a decent set of summary information, and
will give you your attentuation levels, etc, and also a graph indicating
how well data is transferred over the range of frequencies used by the device.

Anyway, I add the last pinhole and decide to let the router save and reboot.
Once online I email D-Link (their NZ contact is via Australia) asking about
the pinhole problem.

Within a week or so I get a response back from DLink. 'Click here to
download updated firmware. Install this to fix your pinhole problems' was
the gist. I downloaded it. Took me this long to get around to installing
them. (~2weeks)

The Upgrade is a Zip file. I open the upgrade in Winzip and discover a
Win32 install program. Lucky im still using Windows for my desktop in the
main, as I dont see it working under Debian. Install the DLink Software
which Creates a start menu entry called D-link DSL Family and has one Icon
- the upgrader.

Load the upgrader. It attempts to detect the presence of the
Router. Because im working via a Linux NAT Router, it fails. Theres no
other way to get the thing to address the router via my Linux box manually.
Cant specify a target IP or a route. The only buttons available are
'detect' or 'cancel'. No Online Help (Pressing F1 does nothing, theres no
menu interface.)

I login to the Router GUI And try to upgrade manually. It keeps telling me
the firmware file is invalid when I select the appropriately-named-file in
a subdir of the Program Files/D-Link directory.

So we do it the hard way. Unplug Router from Linux Box, unplug W2k Box
from the lan. Alias a 192.168.2.x address to my W2k Box, Plug the router
directly into my PC. Ping to check. Yes it works. Rerun the Router Upgrade
Program. It picks up the DSL500 first time and gives me a MAC address, etc
etc. It now lets me proceed.
Two options are given. "upgrade" or "restore backup". Under Upgrade it
shows the firmware currently loaded, and the one to be loaded. It shows the
ip of my workstation and asks me to specify the router IP.
PROBLEM. The router ip being given is fixed as 192.168.1.[type in
here]. The subnet mask is fixed. Cannot change the destination subnet
even though it shouldnt work as its not correct. Anyway it piked a default
of .3 (my workstation being .2). I changed to .250 (to avoid clashes with
existing LAN machines should i need to screw around later) and clicked Upgrade.

It uploads the firmware to the router and then starts updating the flash. A
progress bar keeps you informed. Problem - after waiting for the progress
bar to get across the screen a popup box says 'timeout!'. Uhoh.
Restart the upgrade software, repeat process. It appears to work - tells me
the upgrade was successful and the router is now rebooting.

Open my browser and try to find the router GUI interface.
No luck with the 192.168.2.254 address.
No luck with 192.168.1.250 either.
Whered it go?

Plug in console cable and open hyperterminal. The prompt says '192.168.0.1'
(the default IP again.)
So I type in a few commands via console (zero documentation on how to use
this is supplied with the router. The interface reminds me somewhat of an
NI500. 'help' at each command level shows other commands but theres nothing
that lets me see how to change IPs...)

Anyway from some digging the firmware update has also overwritten all my
settings. The active username is user@jetstreamgames.co.nz again. All
pinholes gone, and its gone back to its original IP.

Alias the 192.168.0.x address again, log back in, set it up all over
again. Each time I make any change at all, it asks me if I want to reboot
the router... again. What a pain in the ass. Also worth noting that
rebooting is the default choice. Means if you hit enter or OK by accident
youre gonna have to login to the router again.

However, I can now pinhole both TCP and UDP on the same port number.
However, when readding the FTP Pinhole I noted it again tried to select
Ports 21 and 22, instead of 20 and 21. It also shows on the screen as
'21&22' (unusual) but when I tried to edit this to 20&21 it gave me an
error. I pinholed 20 and 21 manually.

Summary:

Plus's:
* Nice UI. Intuitive enough to wander through if youre savvy enough to
manage your own PC.
* A Helpdesk technician with a little knowledge would be able to walk
through joe-user and get them online.
* The modem seems to be stable, my connection has been reasonable of late
(excluding ISP issues.)
* Gives pretty good information to the user without being too hard to get at.

Minus's.
* Why couldnt my configuration be stored somewhere before the Upgrade? Why
did I have to lose all my settings? Hell my nokia got *replaced* and they
were able to load the settings from one device to the other.
* Why does it give you a seperate prompt each time you make a change that
asks you to reboot now or later - with the default option being NOW? This
is a SERIOUSLY annoying feature. There should be an ability to make
multiple changes, and save/reboot to committ afterward.
* The Upgrade Software needs *serious* work.
-- Why cant a user just put in the IP of their unit and have the installer
find it? Why does it want to detect it, and why does it need to be in the
same subnet for that to happen?
-- Why does it ask for user inputted information (IP address info) and then
appear to *ignore* that information?
-- Why did it timeout the first time I did it but not the second, even
though nothing had changed ?
* Documentation supplied with the unit is lacking. A list of basic commands
for the console would be good - or at the least, a link to an online version.
* Simple errors in the Pinhole system when adding the 'FTP' Default Pinholes.

It is my hope that D-Link will take this story, and feedback, seriously,
for their next product or upgrade to this product.

I hope this is of some use to the DSL user community :)

Mark Foster
ADSL Support Coordinator
Quicksilver Internet

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