Review: DGL-4100 GamerLounge Broadband Gaming Router
Reviewer: Sean “Athildja” Kalinich
Reviewed on: 6 October 2005
Product cost: $107.00 (£60.53 €88.63)
Product provided by: D-Link
Introduction:
D-Link is probably one of the most recognized names in home networking. In fact they have won the Nova “Most Recognized Brand” award for two consecutive years. This is amongst the many other awards that D-Link has won. Founded in 1986, D-link has risen to be a global leader in innovation. Although many of you may know D-Link for their residential products, D-Link also provides SOHO and Enterprise class networking devices and is counted as one of the Top 5 Brands of the Year (By Quest magazine) in amongst such names as IBM and Cisco.
D-Link has now tailored an entire series of routers at the Internet gamer, the GamerLounge series. We at PlanetAMD64 have been fortunate enough to receive one of the DGL-4100 Broadband Gaming Routers from D-Link. Lets see if it is Lag or Frag.
{mospagebreak title= Packaging/Construction}
Packaging/Construction: 4.75 out of 5
The box the DGL-4100 arrived in is a very attractive dark blue and black box.
The front displayed a picture of the DGL-4100 as well as some of the highlights of the router. The back of the box has a few close-up shots of the router and a brief description of how the DGL-4100 will benefit you.
Inside the box we found a thin yet sturdy cardboard box that held the DGL-4100 and all of the accessories.
The bundle that comes with the DGL-4100 is nice; D-Link has included the following item with the DGL-4100.
1 6’ CAT5 Ethernet Cable
1 Power Adapter
Mounting Kit
Vertical Stand
CD-ROM (with Manual)
Quick Installation Guide
Construction:
The D-Link DGL-4100 is constructed of lightweight yet sturdy plastic. The front has bright blue LEDs and the GamerLounge Logo. The back has the ports for Power, WAN (Wide Area Network) and 4 LAN Ports (all are Gigabit Ethernet). D-Link has also covered the DGL-4100 in a very nice rubber coating this is similar to an acoustic coating and gives the DGL-4100 an attractive look and feel. The whole router is black and has a very clean and classic look to it; it has the same look and feel you get from seeing a rack of glossy black audio equipment. The DGL-4100 is an eye-catching piece of equipment and is the first thing many people notice on my desk.
{mospagebreak title=Configuration}
Configuration Score 4.75 out of 5
The DGL-4100 is probably the easiest router I have ever set up. D-Link has included a wizard for just about everything you would need to configure. When you first plug in the DGL-4100 and connect your PC, the DGL-4100 will not be optimized for your Internet connection, games, or any other networking functions you want to use. This is not a problem; D-Link has included a wizard to help you configure the DGL-4100 to make the best use of your home Internet connection and home network. To logon to the D-Link DGL-4100 you would set your network card to receive an IP address from a server, open any Internet browser and type in the address of 192.168.0.1. Once you do that you will come to the DGL-4100 Login screen, here you would select “admin” as the user name and click login (by default there is no password). Once in you will see the option to “Launch the Internet Connection setup Wizard” simply click this and you are on your way. The Internet connection setup wizard will walk you through, step-by-step, setting up the DGL-4100 to make the most of your Internet connection.
The first option that you set is the administrator password. This should be something easily remembered yet hard for someone else to guess. Next you will be asked to set up your Time Zone. The last thing you will be asked to setup is your actual Internet Connection. The DGL-4100 has been preloaded with most of the commonly available ISPs and their individual setups, by simply clicking the drop down menu you can select your ISP and the DGL-4100 will automatically configure itself to use your connection correctly. The final step in setting up the DGL-4100 is to save the settings and reboot the router, once this is complete you should be able to connect to the Internet without issue. While this setup wizard is very handy the DGL-4100 is not just for browsing the Internet, it is for gaming.
D-Link has designed the DGL-4100 specifically with online gaming in mind; to this end they have included options for setting up gaming rules (port forwarding etc) as well as D-Link’s GameFuel technology.
The DGL-4100 has a very simplified set up for games and virtual servers.
You simply navigate to the advanced menu and select gaming. Once there you check add game rule, then use the simple drop down menu to select the game you want to set up this rule for, next you can either enter the IP address of the system you want this rule to apply to or select the system from the drop down menu, the drop down menu only works if you have the systems set up to use DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol). If you want to use static IP addresses, you will need to add the system as a Static DHCP client. This will allow the DGL-4100 to see the system and show it as an option in the drop down menus.
GameFuel:
GameFuel is what makes the DGL-4100 rise above the competition. With this technology you can give your online games a healthy boost even when you are performing bandwidth intensive work.
GameFuel is made up of two key parts, Dynamic Fragmentation and Packet Prioritization. With Dynamic Fragmentation the DGL-4100 will monitor for time sensitive traffic and by fragmenting lager packets from lower priority traffic the DGL-4100 can reduce the latency created when running many bandwidth intensive applications at once. The second part of the GameFuel technology goes hand in hand with Dynamic Fragmentation and is called Packet Prioritization. The DGL-4100 has 256 priority queue levels for packet priority; these can be set up automatically or manually and are used for determining transmission priority. Once the GameFuel option is enabled, the DGL-4100 starts monitoring the traffic streams. The DGL-4100 will look at many different parameters to determine time sensitivity, such as protocol, port number packet size and inter-frame gap. This will place the traffic into one of the priority queues. Higher priority traffic will then be transmitted before lower priority traffic preventing lag that is commonly seen when multiple high bandwidth applications are running, this means that your Game traffic will be transmitted before other types of traffic. To enable this function simply click on the GameFuel option in the Advanced menu. Once you are there simply check the box marked enable GameFuel, then check Dynamic Fragmentation. Any Game Rules that you have set up will automatically be given a high priority.
For virtual servers the setup is pretty much the same with a similar drop down menu for the service you want to map. You can also setup your own mappings manually.
Another nice configuration menu is the Special Applications menu this allows you to set up ALG (Application Level Gateway) or port triggers. In effect the DGL-4100 will keep these ports closed until you activate the application that needs them. Once that happens the DGL-4100 will open them for the duration of the session and close them after it is completed.
D-Link has also included an Access Control feature; this allows you to set up many different parameters for limiting access to the Internet by different systems on your network. This is a great parental control feature. Once you enable this you can select the system you want to control and enable the features you want to apply to this system (Web Filter or Log Internet Access) you can also block specific ports and IP addresses. Using the MAC Address Filter you can allow or deny Internet access to any or all systems on your network. Using the Inbound Filter you can block specific external IP Addresses from attempting to access your network from the Internet. The Last Menu in the Advanced area is the Scheduling menu. In this menu you can set up times you would like certain firewall or access control features to be active, you can set this by day or by week.
The last thing we will cover under configuration is DYNDNS. This is found in the Tools menu; here you can setup a connection to a DYNDNS (Dynamic DNS) service. By setting this up you can (If you are running a personal server) enable the DGL-4100 to automatically update any changes in your IP address to the DYNDNS servers you use. This helps to prevent any down time from a sudden change of IP address.
The DGL-4100 is also compatible with Xbox Live.
{mospagebreak title=Performance}
Performance: 5 out of 5
The DGL-4100 GamerLounge router was nothing short of amazing, once the configuration was complete (which took very little time) I was off and running. For testing I set up a small network of four systems, these we comprised of Intel, AMD, and MAC based systems. All have Gigabit Ethernet ports so they are equal on the network.
All systems were powered up during all testing, different networked applications were started during and before game play to note their effect on game speed. Tests were run with and without GameFuel enabled for comparison. Additionally an E-Mail server was continually running in the background this server receives continual traffic and was used to show the routing capabilities of the DGL-4100.
Test Network and Systems
I have labeled the systems in the following manner:
FTP system:
Dual Opteron 246
Tyan K8WE (S2895)
1.5GB OCZ ECC RAM
2x Western Digital Raptors (RAID0)
Windows XP x64 Edition
Gaming System:
Intel Pentium D 820
ECS PF5 Extreme
Corsair XMS2 Pro DDR2 667 RAM
2x Hitachi 160GB SATA II 3GB Drives (RAID0)
Windows XP Professional
Server:
Dual XEON 1.8GHz
Supermicro Dual Xeon Mainboard.
1GB RDRAM.
2×80 GB Western Digital PATA drives (RAID1)
Windows 2003 Sever with MS Exchange Server 2003.
Wild Card system:
MAC Powerbook G4 1.25GHz
1GB RAM
OSX (10.4)
FTP:
FTP downloads to the FTP system were done using FileZilla and the built in FTP protocol in Windows XP.
I did notice an improvement in download times after switching from my old D-Link router (DI-614+) to the DGL-4100. This improvement was on average 1-2 minutes for large files (100MB+). For testing I downloaded from random driver sites and the demo of Windows XP x64 Edition from Microsoft.
Torrent:
Torrent downloads also seemed to improve. For testing I used the torrent version of Ubuntu 5.10.
Online gaming:
Online gamming, this is where the DGL-4100 excels; with the DI-610+ I would have a normal ping of between 90 and 100. This was due the background traffic from the server, the Internet phone service I have and actual Internet connection I have. Once I hooked up the DGL-4100 my Ping dropped to around 30-50 this is a very nice drop. I have noticed that the games I regularly play (Counter Strike Source, Battlefield 2, and Neverwinter Nights) are more responsive.
Combination:
For this test I played Counter-Strike: Source on a few different servers. I would play with out any other Internet applications running and at different times. I would randomly start different downloads or torrent files to see the effect on gaming. With anything other than a VoIP conversation my Ping would rise dramatically. Rising as high as 700. (This was during a torrent download the down speed was over 600Kb/s)
GameFuel:
GameFuel is where the D-Link DGL-4100 gets its edge. With this option turned on. The performance was awesome. Even while running the same torrent download at the same speed, with an FTP transfer running and a VoIP conversation my Ping never rose above 75. I was floored by the performance. To be perfectly honest if some one had told me about this I would never have believed them. Yet on every occasion I witnessed the same performance.
With GameFuel the DGL-4100 puts you in a class of your own.
{mospagebreak title=Price/Warranty}
Price/Warranty: 4.5 out of 5
Price:
The D-Link DGL-4100 Gamers Router sells for around $107.00 (£60.53 €88.63) this is a very good price to pay for the amount of features and the amazing performance this DGL-4100 brings to the table. In fact there are no gigabit routers in this price range at all. The DGL-4100 is simply an awesome value.
Warranty:
The warranty on the DGL-4100 is 1 year limited warranty that covers the router from defects in manufacture. The RMA process if needed is initiated by calling 1-800-453-5465.
{mospagebreak title=Conclusion}
Conclusion:
The DGL-4100 exceeded all of my expectations, while I knew I would see a nice improvement in performance and a decrease in my ping during online gaming, I had no idea the improvement would be so large. To see my ping drop from over 100 on average to below 50 was a very pleasant surprise. To actually be able to maintain that ping while downloading from an FTP and a torrent was something that I was absolutely not expecting. I can honestly say that the DGL-4100 is one of the most amazing routers I have ever worked with. The setup is extremely intuitive, and made for all levels of experience. D-Link has made an incredible product with the DGL-4100, so if you are in the market for a high quality and high speed router for your online games, the D-Link GamerLounge DGL-4100 is a must have.
Pros:
4 Gigabit Ethernet ports
Simplified configuration
GameFuel (dynamic fragmentation and packet prioritization)
Access Control
Attractive appearance
Cons:
None
Scores:
Packaging/Construction: 4.75 out of 5
Configuration: 4.75 out of 5
Performance: 5 out of 5
Price/Warranty: 4.5 out of 5
Final Score: Score: 19 out of 20
With all of the features and the awesome online gaming performance the DGL-4100 offers we are proud to call it a Must Have and award it our
Acknowledgments:
I would like to thank Darek Connole at D-Link for providing us with the DGL-4100 for this review.