What's new

D-Link HD Media Router 2000 (DIR-827)

  • SNBForums Code of Conduct

    SNBForums is a community for everyone, no matter what their level of experience.

    Please be tolerant and patient of others, especially newcomers. We are all here to share and learn!

    The rules are simple: Be patient, be nice, be helpful or be gone!

88keyz

Occasional Visitor
Recently grabbed the new D-Link HD Media Router 2000 (DIR-827) and thus far my experience has been simply fantastic! This is what the DIR-825 should have been. I have always been a fan of the D-Link line of routers going back to my hardwired DI-604 (which was traded up to a DI-614 and so on). Quite simply this is the best one yet. Over the years I have owned the DI-604, DI-614, DI-624, DIR-655 rev.A3, DIR-655 rev.A4, DIR-655 rev.B1 and DIR-825 rev.B1. The DIR-655 was a night and day difference in performance from my DI-624. Everything about it was better. When I gave my A3 revision to my in-laws and bought the A4 it afforded me the same familiar performance as my A3. I briefly tried the DIR-825 but found the distance lacking and I wasn't a fan of the new open source firmware so back to the DIR-655 I went (eventually moving to the rev.B1 which in itself was a step backward from the A3 and A4 other than the support for IPv6).

The DIR-827 has a fresh new firmware setup but doesn't deviate from the classic D-Link firmware interface. Navigation is crisp and the customization options for the device are almost limitless. Performance wise the DIR-827 takes the DIR-655 to school. LAN transfers over gigabit seem faster, I haven't done any formal data collection but everything seems to happen quicker. Wireless range over 2.4GHz is better to the tune of an 8db increase from my second floor to my basement. As with the DIR-825 this router supports true dual-band connectivity as well as supporting guest networks on both bands. For the 2.4G band you also have the option to turn the good neighbour policy on or off under the advanced networking options. A nice addition after the horribly restrictive good neighbour policy on the DIR-655 rev.B1. However the good neighbour policy operates more like the DIR-655 rev.Ax series so turning enforcement on or off isn't really necessary.

Some new features include a USB 3.0 SharePort Plus port on the back and a SD card slot on the front. The SharePort Plus technology allows you to share printers and removable storage on your network by simply plugging it into the router. You can turn any USB storage device into network attached storage. SharePort Plus also adds DLNA streaming to the mix allowing you to stream video and audio files to a network ready media player (ie. PS3, WDTV, Boxee Box, Blu-ray player, etc).

The one downside for me so far has been my inability to connect to my ISP's IPv6 service. The router will make a connection but doesn't properly pass the protocol over the network which results in web browser timeouts. (This did work properly on the DIR-655 B1 but only with firmware 2.01, it was broken in firmware 2.03) However this is a minor complaint since this router is likely to see many more firmware updates in the future and I'm sure one of them will resolve this issue.

Overall I am completely blown away by the DIR-827. My go to suggestion for people over the last 4 years has been the DIR-655 (and with it now half the price it was when I bought my first one it was a no brainer to recommend) but going forward I think my recommendation will be changing to the DIR-827. Sure it's more money but you certainly get your money's worth.

I look forward to a professional review of this product to see what you think of it and to find out more about the internals as I am reluctant to take apart my $160 router.

I would be interested to hear about other peoples experiences with this new router.
 
Hi,

Have You done some USB HDD read and write speed tests while its connected to router? I'm planning to buy same router, but I'm not sure that this is good idea. Maybe i have to build some PC based NAS server...
 
Last edited:
I was looking at picking up this router myself. I've been happy with my dir-655 for a number of years now. Could you tell me if the router doesn't support 802.11b? I don't see it listed on the official specs but a number of other web sites list it.
 
Last edited:
I was looking at picking up this router myself. I've been happy with my dir-655 for a number of years now. Could you tell me if the router doesn't support 802.11b? I don't see it listed on the official specs but a number of other web sites list it.

The router does indeed support 802.11b modes in a variety of mixes, very similar if not exactly the same choices as the 655.
 
I am a major fan of the Ubicom based processors for routers, and have been looking forward to a reviews of the 2000 and 3000 version of the router. The 1000 was based on legacy buses-PCI instead of PCIe-and showed a lacking in performance. Although, I wonder what the maximum connections will be for the higher end router because the 1000 was limited to 4000 connections. This is very limiting and should not be in practice even for lower end router. The 3000 version should be in stock soon and was simply thinking (impulsively) of getting it.

Curious, when you open a port does it cause the router to reboot? The DGL-4500 used to not do that then after one firmware upgrade it would reboot if you opened a port. I hated that!
 
Last edited:
Hi,

Have You done some USB HDD read and write speed tests while its connected to router? I'm planning to buy same router, but I'm not sure that this is good idea. Maybe i have to build some PC based NAS server...

I conducted some read/write tests using a 1596 MB file. Copied to and from a USB memory stick (Sony 8 GB - USB 2.0 - FAT32) and a USB external HDD (Seagate 500 GB - USB 2.0 - NTFS). I also included file read/write tests for my custom built Ubuntu Server based NAS (1 TB - ext4). All transfers were over hard wired gigabit ethernet and timed to get average transfer rate.

USB thumb drive - Read - 16.6 MB/second (96 seconds transfer time)
USB thumb drive - Write - 5.3 MB/second (302 seconds transfer time)

external HDD - Read - 12.8 MB/second (125 seconds transfer time)
external HDD - Write - 6.6 MB/second (240 seconds transfer time)

custom NAS - Read - 88.7 MB/second (18 seconds transfer time)
custom NAS - Write - 59.1 MB/second (27 seconds transfer time)

So as you can see this router won't replace a pre-built or custom built NAS. Write speeds are on the slow side and read speeds while better are still not great when compared to the custom NAS.

I also tested DLNA video streaming over a wireless connection to my WDTV HD Live. Streaming was done from the basement (router) to my second floor (WDTV). Three different files were picked to represent different data stream sizes.

2257 Kbps - Played OK
6587 Kbps - Played OK
11601 Kbps - Played OK

All 3 files played back just fine with no hiccups or stuttering. FF and RW worked just fine and I was able to skip forward and back through the files as well as stop and resume. The only issue I noticed was that there is no way to manually refresh the files on the external device. I had to reboot the router to get it to recognize the 3 files on the USB stick. I'm sure it checks at some timed interval but I left it for 30 minutes and it still hadn't found the files but after quick reboot they were all visible to the WDTV.

Been a couple of weeks now and I'm still very impressed with this router. So far it seems very stable and I've only had to reboot it when I was changing settings. Otherwise my DSL internet and wireless connections have been stable with no wi-fi dropouts at all.

I am a major fan of the Ubicom based processors for routers, and have been looking forward to a reviews of the 2000 and 3000 version of the router. The 1000 was based on legacy buses-PCI instead of PCIe-and showed lacking in performance. Although, I wonder what the maximum connections will be for the higher end router because the 1000 was limited to 4000k. This is very limiting and should not be in practice even for lower end. The 3000 version should be in stock soon and was simply thinking (impulsively) of getting it.

Curious, when you open a port does it cause the router to reboot? The DGL-4500 used to not do that then after one firmware upgrade it would reboot if you opened a port. I hated that!

Yes, when you open or change any port settings the router needs to reboot before the changes take effect. However, you can postpone the reboot [Reboot Later] and store multiple changes and only have to reboot once.
 
Yes, when you open or change any port settings the router needs to reboot before the changes take effect. However, you can postpone the reboot [Reboot Later] and store multiple changes and only have to reboot once.

Man, that is really disappointing to hear. I cannot believe that they cannot allow punching of the holes without reboots still. I was really disappointed when my DGL-4500 wanted to reboot after I opened some ports and then later to close them; interrupting network traffic twice. This was after a firmware upgrade, and obviously something they have done because it use to not be like that. This is not by Ubicom's design.
 
The external HDD speed is low enough to suspect the hard drives contoller being the bottleneck.

Have you tried hooking up any USB 3.0 devices t it?

Both of my external HDD's are USB 2.0 but testing the drive connected direct to my PC yields the following results using the same file.

Read - 76.0 MB/second (21 seconds transfer time)
Write - 44.3 MB/second (36 seconds transfer time)

I'm pretty sure that the limitation is the router, not the drive. The difference in read/write speeds between the thumb drive and the hard drive are likely only due to one being FAT32 and one being NTFS. It has been demonstrated in the past that the file system can affect read/write speeds for router connected storage devices.

Also, the external HDD is a 5400 RPM 2.5" drive so that also likely explains the difference in read/write speeds versus my custom NAS which are 5400 RPM 3.5" 1 TB drives (which as mentioned are formatted as ext4 by Ubuntu).
 
I'm pretty sure that the limitation is the router, not the drive.

With Ubicom processors I/O processing is usually done in software via one the of threads, hence the SMT of the processor; it is also to keep BOM lower. However, The diagram and notation is that the USB is a hardware interface. So, hopefully there will be an improvement in speed, and that Superspeed USB is not limited too. The RT-N56U for me gives full USB 2.0 speed on writes (30+MB/s) with NTFS. Basically, there is no difference for read and writes with my router and PC for my external USB hard drive and USB flash drives.

To note, many USB flash drives can be low in write speeds. So, a USB flash drive can be a poor test datum due to limitation of the device itself. Curious, have you tried SD speeds? I would really like to see a test for that too, please :).

I wonder if the 2000 and 3000 version of the router will have different clock speeds for the processor, or will it only be different radios for wireless? I do wonder what clock they did chose for the router or routers too. Honestly, I cannot wait for the site to test one and even open them up. Higgins are you reading this??
 
I absolutely agree that USB flash media can and will limit read/write speed results and that is why I chose to test with both flash and magnetic media when I ran my tests.

Your file transfer speed results for the RT-N56U are quite a bit higher than the reported results for that router here on SmallNetBuilder. If your results are typical then that would make the RT-N56U the go to router for NAS. Biggest drawback to that router is the lack of a guest SSID, otherwise its pretty awesome for the price (just horribly ugly if you ask me).

Lastly, I don't have any decent SD card media here to test with, might pick up a class 10 card at work this week and do some tests. I'll post the results if I do get around to it.
 
Your file transfer speed results for the RT-N56U are quite a bit higher than the reported results for that router here on SmallNetBuilder. If your results are typical then that would make the RT-N56U the go to router for NAS. Biggest drawback to that router is the lack of a guest SSID, otherwise its pretty awesome for the price

Well, I decided to test it again before work, and I am not getting the results I once did with previous firmware. I am maxing out at with an average of 10.3MB/s via Network Neighborhood copy of my MP3 folder. When copying a large 7GB file I was getting an average 12.3MB/s. I did not test FTP. Hmn, this is about half of what did get, all well; call me a liar :).

Edit: Ahha! So I was getting 30MB/s, but it was via FTP. But I still recall have faster transfers with via SAMBA.
 
Last edited:
Well, I have to say that I am disappointed with the DIR-827 (I am surprised I am saying this too). If I was to come from only my DGL-4500, or a previous router in latter day design I would be pleased. The unfortunate, situation for the DIR-827 is that I owned the RT-N56U prior to its purchase. It seemed that overall, even with the reduction speed that it would not be noticeable, but the difference was perceptive to me. Especially when I was testing my games, and I am very sensitive to latencies. It should not seem as so, the 8K processor used is at least 600MHz which is 100MHz faster, and the layer 2 does have hardware NAT offloading (if it is implemented is unknown). So, compared to the RT-N56U it should be at least equal or almost faster with hardware NAT being implemented at least, but is not at all.

I am finding that the raised monolithic designs seem to be better for cable management, although ugly to some and I thought to myself but not anymore. It is attractive with nice contours and not much of an negative look to it atheistically. The indicators are subdued, and do not light up a room too much.

The router menu interfacing is one of my favorites, attractive, and with speedy response to the user. It also has what is probably the best support system integrated within the router. If you are ever curious what that option means it is most likely located there with its defined context. The option to change a toggle or add a configuration and not have to reboot the router has always been a favorite of mine; and should be integrated to all firmwares. One big gripe I have is the log entries are not allowed the length they used to have. It is only about 8 rows long causing the user to click next or previous often to parse.

It does get warm with light use, and it is definitely hotter than the RT-N56U. Hot environments can possibly cause an issue with this router. Again, the raised monolithic design shows it perk for hotter logic’s used.

The NAS function was not great at all for me. I was getting 5MB/s with my external 160GB USB drive. Even with Super Speed USB flash drive I was not breaking the 5MB/s barrier. Within the logs I was getting I/O errors, which makes me think there was an issue of some sort. But NTFS is recognized and mounts the drive properly, according to the logs. I really like the Shareport Plus utility. It is easy to attach a drive and safely remove it with its menu. Mounting the drive is easy and will map the drive automatically for you to Z. I wish the USB physical was located to a side of a router rather than the back. I wish this on all of them. You have to right click on the drive within SharePort to have the menu option to remove it safely. I prefer the openness of the RT-N56U, but not how it automatically creates shared resources for you. SharePort leaves the drive to the user's bidding.

Speed, networking wise, from client to client was speedy. I was getting roughly a couple of MB/s faster than the RT-N56U. The device posts itself properly to Windows as a DLNA device and networking gateway device. I did not test wireless, because my disappointment did not allow me to pull out the laptop to test, and it was getting late.

I would not be surprised if 3rd party firmware will be released in sometime. Ubicom released DK's for their processors around the beginning of the 7k processor and has OpenWRT support (at least is supposed to). They made the shift from their awesome ipOS (GNU based) to Linux. One piece of literature included explains how to acquire the GPL sources. I would not be surprised within a year or two to see something in the OSS community pop up.

I like that it has support for recent technologies (UPnP, DLNA, IPv6 Gold), and it is even certified for it. It is speedy, but not the fastest available. USB function, is easy with the utility, but a bit disconcerting that it does not include any interfacing within the firmware including with what it can support. This is also lacking in documentation too. Performance, is oddly questionable with reviews showing higher throughput, but still not as fast as the RT-N56U for me. It is not bad but I feel that it is a lesser router when compared to the RT-N56U. If I had no other I would be pleased to own, but would feel a bit lacking to what is coming out or is released. For $150 I just don’t feel that it compares to the RT-N56U even with all of its own negative attributes.
 
I recently got a 827 and am not happy with it's QOS. I've been using a Dlink DIR-655 for a long time now and it works awesome.
The problem I think with the QOS not working on the 827 is that it won't auto-detect my upload speed and I cannot enter the correct value manually.
I have a 5Mbps upload speed. When I try to enter that, a popup window comes up and says only values of 56-2048 are allowed.
I've sent a ticket to Dlink support about it but they havent answered yet.
I did some tests and it defiantly is not working.
I hope a new firmware will fix it. If not, I'll be looking for a different dual-band router.
 

Sign Up For SNBForums Daily Digest

Get an update of what's new every day delivered to your mailbox. Sign up here!
Top