D-Link Gigabit VPN Router —Perfect for Remote and Hybrid Work —4 Port Gigabit Dual WAN Failover —Enterprise-Grade Encryption —Follows TAA/NDAA—Limited Lifetime Protection (DSR-250V2)

I bought this to replace a DIR-655 (together with a set of DAP-2553). I am happy to say almost everything is now working to my liking and the problems I was trying to solve are fixed (in particular, availability of the Guest network from multiple access points, as well as the WAN failover - although I haven't tested that yet). However, be warned that the documentation (including D-Link KB) mostly consists of restating the obvious (i.e. the UI) and is basically useless when it comes to more advanced topics, like setting up a VLAN and ensuring VLAN separation. D-Link technical support did answer a pre-sales question correctly... but since then has failed to answer two post-sales follow-up questions. The DHCP capabilities of this router are inferior to the DIR-655 - reservations are next to useless because you can't name the devices, and the status page doesn't display the lease time, in addition to being monstrously slow. Schedules don't seem to work in association with Firewall rules. The firmware isn't being updated regularly, so the chances of getting these problems fixed are probably small. Nevertheless if you need the capabilities - dual WLANs and proper VLAN support - it does the trick. UPDATE: I've now tested failover and it works, but there are some caveats. First, by default it will take two minutes to discover that a connection is down. Second, the backup line is then brought up from scratch - it's inactive until needed - and that seems to take rather longer than it should - another one or two minutes. And finally, existing connections may timeout and will need to be re-established - more minutes. It seems that some of these are poor design choices. UPDATE: I did get a response from D-Link about the schedule issue; it was indeed a bug, and they supplied me with a beta build that fixes the issue. It also appears to improve the fail-over behavior. That deserves an extra star! UPDATE: Well, maybe not... while fixing the schedule issue, this beta build introduces other problems, including issues with failover, as well as a large number of error messages in the log on boot. There goes the star again... UPDATE: Tech Support seemed convinced that the beta firmware was better than the released version, and so I upgraded again, this time configuring from scratch. This finally resulted in a configuration that fully replaces the DIR-655 and adds capabilities. So while it was painful to configure, and there are plenty of minor bugs along the way, I'll give it five stars with a sigh of relief. Based on my experience I would budget a week of time, and four hours of work and downtime, to configure it. UPDATE: I'm taking away two stars again. Occasionally the router will update the dynamic DNS server with the address for the *wrong* WAN interface, making it inaccessible. And also occasionally, if you have a printer plugged into the USB interface, it will disconnect the printer and make it inaccessible, just because the printer has gone to sleep. These are pathetic, inexcusable bugs that should be fixed. UPDATE: Many of these issues were fixed over time. However, on two occasions new problems started to appear after a firmware upgrade. The only help from Tech Support was to suggest doing a hard reset, followed by a complete reconfiguration. This takes hours. There goes another star.... (Note : Firmware 1.09 introduced a memory leak. 1.08 however works.) UPDATE: Over time, and given the right firmware, this became a reliable and versatile router.

Dlink replaced this twice under warranty. All of them would work for a little while then simply lock up. Don't recommend.

Good product for home office. Can handle multiple PC's and VOIP simultaneously, but unit may not live forever. With 8 hr/day average use, getting about 3-4 years life on the unit.

Made in Taiwan. Get this one only , it works well.

System clock wrong. Cannot update the time. Logs show no time. WCF "Enable free trial" fails because of the wrong time. No other obvious path to get this "free" trial, for a trivial service that impacts such an important detail. Search/quick jump typos indicate a severe lack of detail orientation, e.g. "Adminsitration", Adminstration". Daily hangs. Complicated (and sluggish) GUI. Reports and details limited to a maximum of 15 lines per page. Port Configuration page displays an interface that cannot be disabled. Port status is frequently wrong. Firewall policies are inconsistent. Port forwarding: unable to loopback internally (internal IP > external IP > internal IP). Basically, the most important security device on a network: is flaky. Support replied quickly, but any level of QA should have caught these issues WAY before it was listed for sale. Very disappointed, and a total waste of time & effort.

This unit has worked well and I have only a few complaints that cause me to rate this 4 stars rather than 5: 1. Every few weeks the router has disconnected from the WAN and require a reboot or power cycle to reconnect. 2. The interface is functional but not well designed. For example, determining if the unit is connected to the WAN requires going three menu choices deep (and the menus are not named in a way that helps you find it). Opening ports for outside access to things like Windows Remote Desktop requires similarly obtuse menu navigation and the documentation was of limited help. Solving the problem required a call to DLink support (which eventually figured out how to do what I wanted). All that being said the unit works for the primary purpose for which I purchased it: getting full use of the 100Mbps down/30 Mbps up service for from Comcast. The OLD (10 years?) Dlink router I had was designed for much earlier era and limited speeds to a fraction of those.

I took a chance since the Amazon listing said 240 VAC (eg. European etc.), but being sold in the USA on Amazon's USA web site, I felt it probably was USA compatible, meaning 120 VAC, and was glad to see that was a correct assumption. This surely will avoid a number of returns, and folks avoiding purchase thinking this was the wrong voltage, when it is, in fact, correct for USA. (120 VAC plug etc.). OK, and sure, it is a legacy product, but seriously, docs on a CD rom, and a serial port cable for console device. Just a good thing I'm a dinosaur and still have a CD drive and serial port on my PCs, most have neither these days. Although, I suspect the same PDF is on the web and the serial cable can also be the USB port for you modern folks. Since it has only RJ45 (and one USB), I'm assuming it is NOT a WIFI device, so I have not a clue why the ratings ask about the "WIFI Signal" which really needs a "N/A" answer. Geeshe. But seriously, I believe this to be a solid product, but this is simply first impressions.

I have been using a dlink dir825 (with latest dlink firmware) as the gateway to my home lan, sitting between my ISP gateway and my lan. The dir 825 worked perfectly, except it could not do static routing on the lan (it is limited to static on the wan). I purchased the dsr-250 so I could do static lan routing. My home lan uses only dlink products ( 16 ip cameras, 3 wireless AC routers in addition to the dir825, 2 additional dir825 with dd-wrt providing vpn service, and dlink switches.) I run a Linux server with DNS and web servers. I have considerable experience with this technology, especially dlink products. After installing the latest firmware 2.11_ww (mine was hardware ver A3 - it was not easy finding firmware for the A3 on the dlink web site), I programmed the dsr-250 in a manner just as the dir825 was programmed, making changes for the router interface differences. I use extensive port forwarding for the cameras and the dns & web servers, as well as a couple VPN servers and clients.) It is a little complex, but not extreme. Once I placed the dsr250 in service with all of the settings matching the dir825 (I did not add the static routing at first), the unit worked correctly except for port forwarding. The "standard services" ftp and dns worked perfectly. However the standard http service did not work reliably. When I booted the dsr250 the http (access from outside the home) would work for a few minutes, then it would quit working till re-booted. It would then do the same thing - work a few minutes and then stop (this problem only occurred when connecting to http from outside the home.) None of custom services I programmed (primarily for IP cameras, and vpn access) would work. They never worked. I programmed these like I have done on other dlink products and like I did on the ISP gateway. I also compared my settings to the dlink web instructions for port forwarding, as well as other instructions I found on the internet. My settings matched every reference I lookup at. It just did not work. I tried several variations on the settings and nothing worked. Without changing any settings, I hooked the dir825 gateway back up and removed the dsr250, and everything worked immediately, just as it should. Clearly a dsr250 issue. I then tried setting up 1 lan static route. When I first set it up, it worked immediately. After the first dsr250 re-boot it never worked again. I tried several things including removing and re-entering the static route. It never worked again. I worked on this for 3 days straight - about 30 hours. I tried hard resets, re-flashing firmware, followed by hard resets, reloading saved config files. Nothing would fix the forwarding or static route. It would be well to mention that when I accessed the dsr250 web page using ie11 (windows 10) the web page certificate was not valid, so I had to override the exception every time I accessed the dsr250. Not a big deal, but not good. I think the firmware on this product is not ready for prime time. It is not robust, and I think it is buggy based on my observations, especially the http port forwarding and static routing. I still need a device that does lan static routing.