D-Link Systems Wi-Fi AC750 Portable Router and Charger (DIR-510L)

[Review edited 4/18/2014]Pros:+ a/b/g/n/ac on simultaneous 2.4 and 5GHz+ Share network access with up to five devices+ 4000maH battery that can charge a tablet+ Can share an Ethernet connection+ Guest mode+ Multiple wireless profiles+ DLNA server for media+ Will power USB hard drivesCons:- Limited configuration- No repeater mode- Typical D-Link flakinessI admit it, I'm a sucker for travel routers. The DIR-510L is, let's see, the sixth I've had, though I'm counting an ancient 3COM 802.11b router. In the D-Link line, I have the  DIR-505  and  DIR-506L  - see my reviews of those. I also have two by TP-Link and one from ADATA. None of these have met all my needs, though the two D-Link models were usable after a few firmware updates. D-Link churns out new models regularly, often making minor revisions to an existing model (for example, DIR-505L vs. DIR-505), and then ending firmware fixes once a new model comes out. D-Link is also often a bit slow to release proper documentation, which sadly is the case with the DIR-510L. (Documentation eventually found - see edits and comments below.) But let's see what we have here.The DIR-510L is a portable travel router that includes a hefty 4000maH lithium-polymer battery that will power the router as well as a USB-powered external device. There are two USB ports on the DIR-510L, one is marked .5A (for phones), the other is marked 1A for tablets. The 1A output will charge an iPad, but only when the unit is switched to the Charger-only mode - in router mode it won't. A universal-voltage AC adapter is included with a hardwired MicroUSB cable.As a router, the DIR-510L supports wireless a/b/g/n/ac with both 2.4 and 5GHz support. It can not only connect to existing access points using those methods and frequencies, but it will itself serve as an access point with the same. There are three major modes of operation:Hotspot mode - this is what you use when you're at a hotel or coffee shop and want to use that facility's wireless Internet access. You connect your device to the DIR-510L's WiFi (configurable for SSID, security type and password), then open a browser on your device to go to the DIR-510L's home page. (By default the administrator password is blank, but you can (and should) set it.)Unlike every one of the travel routers I have used, the DIR-510L has a simple, easy to use home page layout that has just a few icons representing Internet access, the router itself, connected devices and SharePort (more on that later.) Tap on one of the icons to configure - in the case of hotspot mode, tap the Internet icon to select the access point you want to connect to and enter the password, if any. Once you do that and the router reboots, you can now connect to the hotel's access point on your device just as you would directly. The advantage here is that once you do this setup, any other device you have (up to five) can connect through the DIR-510L without further ado, all looking to the hotel as if it was one device (potentially saving connect fees.)Router mode - this is similar to Hotspot but for cases where the Internet connection is by Ethernet. Connect that to the Ethernet jack at the bottom and connect as before.Mobile Router mode - theoretically this allows you to plug in a cellular USB modem and get your Internet access through that, sharing it over WiFi. Unfortunately, this works with only a select set of USB modems. When I first wrote this review the list was not easily found - it isn't available from the "Downloads" section of the product page on D-Link's web site, but rather on a separate support subsite whose URL you can find in my comment of April 4, 2014. The list is larger than I expected. Before buying, make sure that your cellular modem is on the supported list.The DIR-510L is what D-Link calls a SharePort router, which means it will share media that you connect by USB from flash drives and hard discs. When connected, the DIR-510L runs a DLNA server to make that content available. On my iPad I could "see" and play movies and photos I had on a Seagate hard drive, both through the free SharePort app and with DLNA clients on the iPad. Curiously, the D-Link web site has a tiny footnote saying that DLNA would be enabled in a future firmware update, but it worked for me with the original version.Contrary to my experiences with the DIR-505 and DIR-506L, the SharePort app worked very well for uploading photos from my iPad - I could select multiple files and upload them quickly. The older models could not handle this at all. Just keep in mind that this is not a general purpose file server, though you can upload arbitrary files if the app can see them. Probably on Android this works better than iOS, which restricts access.One glitch showed, though. The admin pages suggest that you can use a web browser to get at the SharePort feature, either by http or https. This did not work for me - I just got an error.One big difference from the older D-Link routers was that so much of typical router functionality is hidden from the user. No pages for port forwarding, firewall control, parental controls, etc. You have control over basic features and that's it. On the plus side, D-Link did something wonderful - you can save multiple WiFi profiles for the various places you visit and switch among them with a couple of clicks/taps. No other travel router I have does this.Another difference is that there is no "repeater" mode, where the router just extends the range of an existing WiFi access point. If you want that, then look elsewhere.Unlike every other D-Link product I have used, the DIR-510L pretty much does what it claims, out of the box (I did not test cellular modem support.) While I haven't found the need to contact D-Link support for the DIR-510L, my past experience has not been positive. D-Link does operate a user forum where you can get help from other users, though.The D-Link DIR-510L is the best travel router I have used - and there have been many. It is NOT perfect, but its deficiencies are in areas that don't matter to me. They might to you, so read this review carefully and feel free to ask questions in the comments if you'd like.Edit: April 4, 2014D-Link hides it well, but they have published a full user manual, a list of supported USB modems and even updated firmware. There is no link to this from the main product page I can find. Amazon won't let me link to it in this review, so look for an April 4 comment from me with the URL.Edit: April 13, 2014I'm back from a business trip where I used the DIR-510L a lot. It exhibited some problems I had not noticed during my at-home testing. The major issue is that after the router has been in use for some time (could be an hour or more), the internal web server that handles its administration pages crashes, causing the status light to turn red. The only solution for this is to restart the router. Even though the web server is down, it continues to work as a router, so if you had already configured it for your environment, as long as you don't need to go back to the admin pages it's ok.I also had a chance to try out the profile switching. Each time I tried this, the admin pages froze, requiring me to restart the router. But once I restarted it, it had the new setting.I contacted D-Link support about these issues, which are not as serious as those I've had with other D-Link routers. Even though I told them I was using the latest firmware, I got the terse response "In response to your email, I would suggest to update the firmware of the router." I replied that I had already done this and got no further reply. I will try their phone support and see if I have any better luck.The wireless range of the DIR-510L is very good - I was getting a two-bar signal a floor down and some 40-50 feet away from the router that was sitting on the desk in my hotel.One last thing I noticed - when you power on the router, wait a couple of minutes after the status light turns green. If you have the 5GHz radio enabled, the status light will revert to flashing orange until the 5GHz radio comes up, which takes longer.Edit: April 18, 2014Ok, so I've been on the DIR-510L all day at home, with several devices connected to it. Nary a hiccup (or red light). There must have been something odd about the hotel environment during my recent trip.Also, I made a serendipitous discovery. I happened to notice that when I logged in to the DIR-510L's admin page that the username and password were sent "in the clear" as "GET parameters" in the URL. This is not as much of a problem as you might think, as if you set up WPA2 encryption for the router (not the default), it would not be easily interceptable, but it bugged me nonetheless. Hmm, I thought - might D-Link have implemented an SSL connection to the admin page, using https? Well, yes indeed, they did! It's a private certificate, so you have to tell your browser to accept it, but it's goodness.Edit: September 18, 2014I've continued to use the DIR-510L on business trips. The "red light" has returned, but only at some hotels (Hampton Inns seem to be a particular troublemaker.) Other than that, it continues to work well.

This device does not have a usable DLNA server. It's there, but the way it's designed, it's completely useless.I should make note of a couple of things before I explain the problem. First, even though it is true that the DLink site indicates that the DLNA feature is coming on a future firmware upgrade, other users/reviewers had noted that it was already on the device, though I'm sure none tried to use it. So, I called DLink prior to purchasing the device and got confirmation that the DLNA server feature was in fact active. Well, it's not, at least in any usable way.I was very excited a few weeks ago after purchasing this device on Amazon. I set it up and connected a flash drive with a sampling of audio and video media. I was able to play my FLAC files in the car, and my kids were able to stream movies, all via the 510L'S DLNA server.I was about to leave a stellar review here, when I went back to the device and realized that each time you either remove and reconnect the media or turn the device off and back on, it removes the index it had previously built, and begins indexing the media from scratch. Now, this wouldn't be a problem if it took a couple of minutes to do so, but I tried putting just half of my music library and a handful of video files on a flash drive. An hour and a half later it was still building the index.The only control over the DLNA server provided in the admin interface is to name it and turn it on and off. I installed the recent firmware release hoping to see some added control over the indexing, but nothing.This makes the DLNA server useless for a mobile device. Think about it, if the power goes out in my house in the middle of the night or while I'm at work, and my home router has to reboot, and re-index, then more than likely by the time I wake up or get home, the re-indexing will have taken place and I'm good to go. Generally, no problem.But if I turn the device on when I start my car, and want to listen to music on the way to work, how am I going to be able to do that if the existing index is tossed out, and it begins from scratch re-indexing. Right now it's indexing pretty slowing, but no matter how fast they get the indexing to work, it's not going to get through my entire collection in a few minutes. As it is currently indexing, it might take, let's say, 3 hours. But even if they reduce it to 30 minutes, I'm still at work before all of my content is available to me.It's a mobile device, but the feature requires that it be left on at all times in order to be usable.It's not as if it would require any serious logic to provide some re-indexing control in the interface. The index is written to the media, not built in memory, so it's still there when the device is turned back on, and it's there when the media is plugged back in.DLink just took this off of some other device and put no thought into it. I put up a note on the forum, but it appears that DLink tech staff do not participate in that venue. I called tech support, got to a 2nd level, and was told they were sorry and would put a feedback suggestion.I'm really disappointed in this company. They put out a product with a feature without putting any thought at all into it. It's a shame, really, because I really like this device. It does most things well. The interface is functional and relatively well designed. But this DLNA limitation brings it from a 5 to a 1 for me.Just gotta find the box to send it back.

Estoy desarrollando un producto wifi portátil (no puedo dar detalles, está pendiente de patente).El D-Link DIR-510L es portátil, robusto, con gran autonomía y gran alcance wifi.

Ne fonctionne pas en simple routeur branché sur une freebox en ethernet (enfin il a fonctionné une demi seconde)Mot de passe limité à 13 caractères pour la connexion à un réseau wifi (selon le proto de secu) donc en gros si l’hôtelier à mis un mot de passe à rallonge ce routeur vous sera inutile.DLNA qui reindexe le périphérique USB à chaque redémarrage.Il semblait bien pourtant

Nice device ,I set up this device in my tiny dairy farm and I am so happy about the performance.i am using airtel 3G dongle to connecting to the internet.no configuration required for the Internet .Thank you D-Link for such a nice product.

Articolo alla fine restituito. Non ho trovato niente di buono a parte di bel design moderno, piccole dimensioni e batteria potente. Ma i problemi che ho riscontrati sono stati:1)difficile accesso alla menu del router da cellulare. Facevo salti da uno browser al altro per far uscire schermata menu da desktop dove si può aggiornare impostazioni per collegarsi ad internet. Ma ci voleva un miracolo per far uscire questa schermata. Normalmente usciva schermata menu per cellulare che non serve a niente. Poi questi impostazioni si perdevano, si perdeva connessione internet e tarantella iniziava da capo. In ogni caso menu del router è scarsissimo.2)mio smart TV non si collegava bene al router via WiFi. Una volta si riconoscevano uno altro poi no.3)router non si carica in macchina da semplice caricatore che lo uso per caricare smartphone. Caricabatteria del router che era fornita per caricare dalla presa elettrica ha un aggeggio sul filo che probabilmente serve a qualcosa. Invece se voi usate normale caricabatteria per accendisigari questa probabilmente priva di questo aggeggio e questo causa impossibilita di caricare router nella macchina.

The product sent to me was not new and had scratches all over its body.Also the product was manufactured in 2014. A Lithium ion battery only has a life of about 2 years and loses its capacity to get charged after this period of time. Hence the battery inside the product I received would not have functioned properly.