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(More customer reviews)I'm one week into EVDO service and still learning new things every day in that regard. One thing I learned is that you need to choose equipment that is reliable, consistent and durable. Sadly, the D-Link DIR-450 is none of these things.
I looked into the D-Link model as they are the actual vendor for the Kyocera KR-1. The KR-1 is a highly regarded consumer grade model in what is admittedly a pretty small field. For most consumers it appears that the KR-1 is the default suggestion for those looking for a router solution for the EVDO service.
I should have been wary of the D-Link even before purchase as it did not support all of the same cards that its older sibling supported, but the most recent (and only) firmware upgrade added support for my card so I figured I was set.
Everything went well the evening I installed it and I went to bed with visions of salvation from satellite internet while stranded in rural American. Imagine my surprise when I woke up and could not enter the admin page using the password I set up. Then I could not access the router at all. I had to go into the crash firmware reinstallation mode to resurrect the box - with ~12 hours of ownership - Strike One.
Strike 2 was the painfully ill designed UI that requires arbitrary rebooting between setup steps. The rebooting process takes around 80 seconds, so even entering a small set of DHCP reservations is a time consuming chore. Half an hour later I had all my static IPs entered but on the next reboot carried out by the UI all of the settings were reset to default...
Strike 3 was today when it would reset the subnet I had setup back to the default. Doing this ate my DHCP settings, but I thought I had outsmarted the demon box and backed up the config using their UI option. Oddly, the restore seemed to only affect the wireless and basic network settings and did not include the DHCP. I spent another 30 minutes entering the reservations when it both reset the password and on the following reboot reset the subnet again.
I have little doubt that D-Link will straighten this out, but am extremely surprised that they have a relatively new product in the field that is the mirror of a well established model *that they designed and support* and it is so flaky. In a rural setting, setting up EVDO can be challenging so having unreliable equipment is one extra headache you don't need. Wait for this product to mature slightly and check out other support boards to see how others are handling it in the field.
Click Here to see more reviews about: D-Link DIR-450 3G Ev-do 4-Port Switch 802.11G 108MBPS Mobile Router
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