D-Link DHP-300/301 BoPL adapters = junk
Maybe I won the SPC challenge and got the bad one, but it’s D-Link so there’s a pretty good chance you could win too.
One of the D-Link “HD” BoPL adapters that I got for my wireless link to bridge the network between the guy’s house (where the cable connection is) and his garage (where the antenna and radio are mounted) called it quits a couple of weeks ago after 6 weeks of use. When I first got them and plugged them in they ran so hot that I immediately assumed that D-Link’s BoPL adapters are the force behind climate change.
The thing got so hot that it managed to reflow the solder around the pins of header J2 on the board opposite the one with the heat sink.
Even ignoring the fact that the thing ultimately failed, it sucked anyway. Typical latencies of 80ms were just acceptable given that it was just a bridge to a cable internet connection, but frequent occurrences over multiple consecutive hours of 3000+ ms latencies just blew. More than once I got pissed off enough waiting that I switched to using my dial-up connection. The problem was probably noise from something, but there was nothing different running off of his electrical panel when it happened. It could have been a neighbor that shares the same transformer, but given that the signal doesn’t seem to make it past where the neutral is bonded to ground I’d hope that they’ve got enough signal headroom to overcome outside noise.
So with one of the units non-functional (the BoPL side of the unit is non-responsive) I’ve now run some indoor cat5e across the guy’s yard (which is both cheaper at about $10 of cable as opposed to 2 of the $100 DHP-300s and a heck of a lot more responsive with <1ms latencies) until he digs a hole to add onto his house this summer (at which point I’ll bury some outdoor cat5e). I don’t even really have a use for them anymore (nor want to use them anywhere with their sucky 3000+ ms latencies) I’m not even sure if I’m going to bother dealing with getting D-Link to warranty them. Perhaps I can convince them to send me some network cards instead. If you work for D-Link give me a shout!
In any case, I guess I’ll go back to my assertion that pretty much the only reliable thing that D-Link sells is their DFE-538TX 10/100 PCI network cards.
28 comments May 30th, 2007
