4.08.2009

NetGear DGND3300 Dual Band Wireless-N DSL Modem Router

I picked up the NetGear DGND3300 at Fry’s last night for about $160.  This is a wireless router with an integrated DSL Modem- pretty cool as it eliminates one more device in my equipment closet (and one less power adaptor as well). 

I did my initial setup and then replaced my current D-Link DGL-4500 and DSL modem.  Let’s just say that this firmware appears to be in its very early stages of development and debugging.  It works, but it often hangs, disconnects and pauses when changing options/page. For example, when running the ‘wizard’ to detect my DSL, it was stuck in a ‘detecting settings’ loop for about 15 minutes.  I closed my web browser and re-connected to see what was happening and I received the message that ‘this device is being managed by another administrator’ as I did not properly log out when I closed my browser session.  I received the same message for the next 10 minutes- until I power cycled my router.

It also appears the NetGear hardware is designed more for the ‘typical home user’ as it lacks many options and features that I would like in a router- number one on this list would be port translation. 

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I run several different devices on my internal network- and many of them run on standard ports. I can do a one-to-one NAT translation for port 80 on one PC with no problem.  If I have a second device in my network that must also be on port 80 (some of my older IP cameras and one of my security DVRs) I would like to be able to do a port translation from a different external port to the internal port 80; something along the lines of:

   65.1.1.1:81 –> 192.168.15.2:80
   65.1.1.1:82 –> 192.168.15.3:80
   etc.

It does not appear that this is an option via the web browser.  I can create a ‘Service’ with start and end ports (in the example below, the service is the ‘WTF’ protocol) and then add an inbound rule to connect this service to an inside IP address (and restrict what WAN users have access):

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Telnet is not enabled by default on the router, but I found that by enabling debug mode turns this on:

   http://192.168.0.1/setup.cgi?todo=debug

I can then telnet to the device where I am greeted by:

   Busybox v1.00 (2009.03.06-06:20+0000) Built-in shell (ash)
   Enter ‘help’ for a list of built-in commands.
   #

I haven’t found exactly what I am looking for to do port translation, but it does appear that IPTables is available on the device:

   iptables v1.3.8: no command specified

Looks like another weekend project has been added to my list…

9 comments:

  1. Anonymous8:46 PM

    As another data point, it worked just fine out of the box for me. My DSL settings (but then I don't use PPPoE and similar crud) were correct by default, and my IP is static so I did have to manually configure that.

    The only issue is that sometimes settings don't take until you reboot the device, like port forwarding. (Remember the olden days when these kind of devices rebooted on every settings change!)

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  2. Anonymous3:38 PM

    From what I can tell, your review is the first I could find for the dgnd3300. You brave soul.

    The router looks like it has 4 ethernet ports. Can you tell me if the ports are either 10/100Mbit or 10/100/1000 ?

    Hoping it has gigabit.

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  3. The DGND3300 sports a 4 port 10/100 switch; I guess they cheaped out on the GB for now.

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  4. Anonymous9:49 PM

    > The DGND3300 sports a 4 port 10/100 switch; I guess they cheaped out on the GB for now.

    Thanks for the info, Broo!

    Geez, in gamer terms, this is "epic fail" on Netgear's part.

    They probably designed this unit to be a leading edge all-in-one router, but decided to skimp on the features.

    I imagine something like this took place:

    Engineer: Hey Products Mgr - shall we go with current day tech (gigabit switch), or decade old 100Mbit speed and save around $5 ?
    Product Mgr: Let's save the five bucks.

    Broo, they probably "cheaped out" in the middle of the manufacture cycle, because if you look at the netgear.com spec page, it does not even list the switch speed.

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  5. Anonymous9:40 PM

    See also this post which includes details of all the chips used etc.

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  6. Has anyone else experienced the problem of public IP being dropped every hour at times when in use?

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  7. Have you been able to get the USB drive capability to work properly? I set it up without password enabled and it works fine. But, once I enable access requirements (e.g. admin account), I can't connect. It asks me to log in, I enter the correct name admin and password, but it says denied access?

    I also solved a problem with a slow wireless connection to it. See my blog: www.lightcogitation.com

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  8. Do you know what the command is to show your dsl stats (ie. snr, line line attenuation) after you've telnet-ed to the router

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  9. adslctl info --stats

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