D-Link DVG-G1402S VoIP Wireless Router Review

Initial Impressions

I had a good feeling when I unpacked this router. It came well packaged and yet easy and quick to unpack, as do all D-Link products I have tried. It looks good - a little wider then your average D-Link router, and it feels solid. On the back is 1 WAN port, 4 LAN ports, 2 phone ports and 1 "console" port, thinner then the regular phone ports. There is no mention of this in the manual nor in the web configuration, so no idea what it's for. Also included are 1 RJ-45 and 1 RJ-11 cable.

Configuration

By default the wireless is set to 802.11b/g, however my 802.11b clients were not able to connect until I set the router to fixed 802.11b mode. So, my entire network now has to run at 11mbit instead of 54mbit. All other routers I have tried have worked fine in 54mbit mode, including D-Link's own DI-624.

Pretty much *every* change in settings requires a reboot. And it doesn't even ask for confirmation, it just tells you to go to tools > reboot > click reboot. No biggie, but very unnecessary.

The "Digit Timeout" could be set no lower then 4 seconds, so after I dial the number on my DECT phone and press the call button, I have to wait 4 seconds *after* the number is dialed.

There are absolutely no instructions on how to set up VoIP in this router, and clicking "help" will just give you:-

"VoIP is an advanced feature to setup service for the device. Your VoIP Service Provider usually provides these settings. It is not recommended that you change these default settings unless required by your ISP.", so newbies beware :)

I don't think that reading the manual will help either, VoIP is not mentioned AT ALL, other then the fact that it has 2 'phone ports. If this was a router that was bundled and pre-configured with a VoIP account it would be fine, but as it is sold as a generic SIP device the least they could do was provide a little support...

The VoIP settings are spread out over nine categories, something I found to be extremely annoying and unnecessary. Initial VoIP setup is not very easy, but when (and if) you get your VoIP account up and running it seems to work well.

In Use

Incoming calls work as they should, as does Caller ID.

I do however have problems dialing out with numbers that begin with 00, the D-Link seems to go mental on numbers starting with a 0 or 00. A few creative dial plans in VoXaLoT and I got around dialing leading zero's. I simply made a dial plan for all numbers that start with 1 to forward to 001 (US/Canada), and all eight digit numbers to forward to 0047 (Norway). This is enough for me, but users who dial abroad a lot may have problems. This should not have been necessary anyway, and is just another annoyance to add to my list.

Several times during configuration of the router it seemed to "forget" some settings, and did things like turn off the local DHCP server. After activating it again, it told all the PC's to use a 0.0.0.0 netmask! Seriously, come on D-Link, really...

No DynDNS/no-ip support, this is so much nicer to have in the router rather then have to run a client on a separate device. There is "ProxyDNS" support only, a service unknown to me until seeing it in the router. However, I prefer to use services I know are stable, so this is useless to me.

There is a firmware update available for the EU model of this device that did help a little, but lets hope that D-Link will fix some of these problems and release better firmware. As far as the hardware itself is concerned, it seems to be good.

Conclusion

All in all the D-Link DVG-G1402S VoIP Wireless Router needs to be more user-friendly, and the firmware needs to work properly. It's not that hard D-Link - you have a lot of other good products that work well.

Added:  Thursday, October 12, 2006
Reviewer:  Lance Tjessem
Score:
Related web link:  D-Link DVG-G1402S VoIP Wireless Router
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Language: eng

  

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Posted by dakatalyst on Jan 01, 2009 - 06:59 PM Your rating: I have been trying to configure this router to work with voipuser.org but no luck. Any idea what I might be doing wrong?

Posted by mwells on May 13, 2007 - 06:56 PM Your rating: I am a newbee. Can you tell me what is needed to configure this router with my globalinx service?