I've had this wireless router, a D-Link DI-624, for over a year now. It's wireless, but like many alike, there are also 4 ports for wired connections. For a major part of this year, actually all up until about a month ago, it worked very well. Not sure if the speed was the best, but it suited our needs. But recently, it's been acting up.
At first, I did not know what was going on. We were losing the network connection from all our computers (2 wired, 1 wireless) at the same time. A popup message from the Windows tray said "A network cable has been unplugged" or similar, and then not more than a few seconds would reconnect, and another popup would say "Now connected to network". There could be a gap of many hours between two disconnections, but often, we would get disconnected every 5 to 10 minutes. When sufing the web, this goes almost un-noticed, except from the popup. But internet radio would be interrupted, as well as online games, downloads would have to reconnect, and also, when I work from home using a VPN, that of course would disconnect also. That is unacceptable. It wasn't that bad even bake in dial-up time.
I decided to call our ISP. The tech guy suggested it might be the cable between the modem and the router. Makes sens, so I changed the cable, and it seemed fine since we talked for a bit, and he made me do a couple of tests, and I did not get disconnected. So I hang up, but sure enough, shortly after, it happened again. I called them back, and this time, a level-2 tech suggested that if my router is close to the modem, it interferes/confuses the modem - mine was about a foot away, which would seem to be much too close. So I believe him and put the router 5-6 feet away from the modem. No luck - it happens again. The other thing the level-2 tech suggested is to connect one PC directly to the modem, and see how this goes. That's the next thing I tried, and what would you know... Everything worked fine, making the culprit... the router!
I went and read reviews for this router, and it seems like A LOT of people are having the same problem. Even a few using the router with no problem for a period of time, and then the disconnections started. Also, I posted this to the TechReport forums, and it seems like people have different experiences with different routers. Some switched to Linksys or Netgear because D-Link sucked and are now satisfied, and some switched to D-Link for the same reason, and are satisfied too o.O
Oh well, I guess I will have to guess and try something from a store where I can bring it back if the problem is still there...
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This further reminds me - for gaming, you should probably go wired (whether through a wireless router or not). Or do what my brother used to do at my parents how: completely bypass the router and plug directly into the modem when you want to do gaming.
Yeah I always played wired, that's a given. And the direct connection is an even better idea, but that would cut off the connection to others. And these others might not like that ;-)
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