D-Link busts out "Green Ethernet" energy-saving firmware for existing routers

D-Link's been sipping power of late with its newish DWA-643 and DWA-556 desktop "Green Ethernet" switches, and now it's shipping those power savings upstream to its DIR-655 Xtreme N Gigabit router and DIR-855 dual channel routers with freely downloadable firmware updates. We'd scoff, but that's a power savings of 32 percent and 41 percent, respectively. It might only shave a few cents off those electric bills, but hey, you can always melt that copper down to make arrows for the coming apocalypse.

[Via TrustedReviews]

[rony @ Aug 8th 2008 4:35PM]

somehow reminds one of the statue of liberty....Bill Gates would agree.

[TheGasMan @ Aug 8th 2008 4:54PM]

anything green = reminder of the statue of liberty?

[CraigJ @ Aug 8th 2008 4:57PM]

Remind me of the glow in the dark toys that came in Frutty Pebbles...

[deyanimay @ Aug 8th 2008 7:54PM]

no he means the antennas look like her crown? if thats what it is.

[Hexing @ Aug 9th 2008 5:06AM]

*As you plug it into your 1300 watt gaming computer*

[anonymous @ Aug 9th 2008 6:34AM]

the router reminds me of the statue of liberty too, but what does Bill have to do with it?

[chef @ Aug 11th 2008 4:36AM]

Yeah, well, it's obviously 'shopped, unless a firmware can magically turn change the color of your router's plastic.

[Andrew Kinder @ Aug 8th 2008 4:48PM]

too bad d-link makes unreliable garbage :(

[Dmitri @ Aug 8th 2008 5:40PM]

D-Link cheap stuff is crap, but the DIR-655 is an awesome router, as well as most of their expensive gear.

[roman.kim @ Aug 8th 2008 6:25PM]

All cheap crap is crap regardless of manufacturer. Right now there is a flood of $50 shit routers that can barely handle html traffic. You really need to pay over $100 to get a good router. I've got one of those d-link gamerlounge routers, and it's been great, 1.2GHz CPU, and 256MB of RAM so the thing handles thousands of connections without ever dropping anything, and Excellent signal strength where my cheap Linksys router gives me Low signal.

[Pastry Chef @ Aug 8th 2008 6:40PM]

The DIR-655 is a great router. Handles tons of connections without problems. It just keeps on going and going.

[UnixSystemsEngineer @ Aug 8th 2008 8:08PM]

Jesus, they need a 1.2ghz CPU to effectively route traffic? Cisco would laugh.

[I LOVE THE CAPS LOCK KEY @ Aug 8th 2008 11:07PM]

3 years running solid, my Dlink DGL-4300 has not skipped a beat, never needed a reboot, and never dropped a connection; only a thermo-nuclear bomb would ever bring this router down.

[j_g_puff @ Aug 8th 2008 4:48PM]

Anyone know how much power these things dissipate anyway? I tried to look on the website, but their specs are notably silent when it comes to power.

[CraigJ @ Aug 8th 2008 5:06PM]

The power supply on my WRT54G is rated at .5 amp @ 110 VDC, or 55 watts. That is the maximum draw based on the power rating. I'd be surprised if the thing draws more than .1 amps (11 watts).

[j_g_puff @ Aug 8th 2008 4:49PM]

Oh, and regardless of consumption, i'm sure they'd make some worthwhile savings by loosing that useless display on the top of the box. What's wrong with web configuration?

[Neil Bradley @ Aug 8th 2008 5:42PM]

500ma 12 volts according to the wall wart switching supply. Worst case is 6 watts. Let's put it in perspective. Let's say that power is $0.10 per kilowatt hour. That means this device could run at full power for 166 hours until it'll cost you 10 cents. So, per month this device, at full power, which it doesn't always use, will cost you a maximum of about $0.42. In other words, at full power, which it hardly, if ever, draws, it'll cost about $5 a year to operate.

Wake me when there's some actual worthwhile savings. This is a marketing stunt to sell more units. Routers/access points don't pull any appreciable amount of power in the first place.

[TavisJohn @ Aug 8th 2008 9:06PM]

It may not make a difference to some... But if you have LOTS of devices drawing a small ammount, it all adds up. So if you can trim a little here and there, suddenly you have cut out alot of usage.

[manny75586 @ Aug 9th 2008 2:18PM]

absolutely. Sure it might cut more on aggregate, but this just reeks of a marketing ploy. Beside is there any word on if it still performs up to spec? I mean if it uses less power but sucks at its job there is no use for it.

[sabrewulf @ Aug 8th 2008 4:55PM]

Unreliable garbage? My experience with DLink has been a good one, compared to Linksys crapware that I always need to be patching with firmwares.

[Kris S. @ Aug 8th 2008 5:04PM]

Linksys crapware? My WRT54GS V2 has been going strong now for over three years without any problems.

[I LOVE THE CAPS LOCK KEY @ Aug 9th 2008 2:55AM]

Are you running Linux on your router or the factory firmware?

[Nik @ Aug 8th 2008 5:38PM]

Are you sure they've included the DIR-655, there isn't any new firmware to download on their website.

[FNG @ Aug 8th 2008 5:53PM]

Yup. I went to get the firmware for my 655 and nothin doin

[wiiittttt @ Aug 8th 2008 5:44PM]

yea no firmware for the 655 confirmed

[Joseph @ Aug 8th 2008 7:44PM]

Paul Miller made a mistake in summarizing the article. He should have typed "soon it will be shipping" instead of "now it's shipping." The original articles says it's an "impending firmware update."

[james @ Aug 8th 2008 5:55PM]

Who cares about the DIR-855 you can buy them anyway. Not sure why everyone talks about them yet not one store has them in stock

[KeeferMadness @ Aug 8th 2008 6:16PM]

Reminds me of mary jane?

*cough cough

[griffin.brian @ Aug 8th 2008 10:26PM]

"savings of 32 percent and 41 percent" - 41 percent off from the crap they sold before? maybe. if you compare those to others routers they won't be greener in no way.

[symetry @ Aug 8th 2008 10:32PM]

It's probably one of there betas. ftp://ftp.dlink.com/Gateway/dir655/Firmware/

[Pei Up @ Aug 9th 2008 1:35PM]

Boy that color looks more like "radioactive" green than "natural / sustainable" green. I like the idea of power-saving routers but the outside doesn't match the product concept.

[Jay_Nite @ Aug 9th 2008 8:59PM]

i thought the green desktop switches are DGS-2205, and DGS-2208

[Dy Phan @ Aug 10th 2008 12:56AM]

32-41% drop in wattage... from 10 to 3 or 4.... That's almost nothing, a few cents a month.

[Bradh2o @ Aug 10th 2008 1:23AM]

When you consider how much power is wasted on devices in standby mode, don't bitch at these efforts, as they do add up... 10,000 units, a million...? Think ENVIRONMENT!

[JohnLennon @ Aug 17th 2008 1:19PM]

Don't upgrade to DIR-655 latest firmware version 1.20 if you use VoIP. I upgraded and I couldn't use 75% of the VoIP services I use and the one that worked were unreliable, had very bad call quality and would take 40x longer to register. After 24 hours I downgraded back to 1.11 and the issue went away immediately. Note that I had this issue from both my PC using X-Path and a Linksys Sipura device going to 4 different providers, What is strange is that the Sipura would eventually log in to one provider overseas but my PC couldn't to the same, nor Gizmo would work among others. After the downgrade everything is back to normal.... Well, plus the fact I have to reboot my router every night or after 3-7 days the SIP quality degrades too much, very weird. I was hoping some improvements with the new firmware but no, no luck.

In case you wonder, it isn't an issue with my connection, I have 6 Mb / 1 Mb with a quality of service of 97-99% as measured by visualware's myspeed voip http://myspeed.visualware.com/voip/index.html