DGND3300 Router Addendum

Despite my research and attempts, it appears the at the DGND3300 is not capable of port forwarding/translation- and therefore it is useless to me.

I have several system that all use port 80 internal to my network (such as my GeoVision Security system, my TL-150 module for my alarm system, etc) and I need these tall to be available via the internet via different ports.  Since I cannot change the ports on the devices, my only alternative would be to put a router with port translation in front of the router- making my new $160 router about as useful as the box of old routers I have in the attic…

I pulled out on ‘old’ WNDR3300 (which appears to be almost identical to the DGND3300 – save for the integrated DSL modem) and found that it has the same limitations- which may be the reason I abandoned it in the past: I have rediscovered why NetGear Routers are useless for me…

This device goes back to Fry’s tomorrow…

Comparison between DGND3300 and WNDR3300

As I stated, there is not a lot of difference between the WNDR3300 and DGND3300 from a software perspective; there are some small additions in the newer hardware, but nothing really dramatic (such as port translation).

Menu Comparisons:

WNDR3300	DGND3300

 

The two routers handle ports opening in different ways: In the WNDR3300 ‘Port Forwarding’ is handled under ‘Advanced’, but in the DGND3300 the ‘Firewall Rules/Services’ appear under ‘Security’. 

WNDR3300	DGND3300

 

Both routers use a similar method for port forwarding; a ‘service’ must be created (or a default one uses) and forwarded to a specific IP on the internal network.   The DGND3300 also allows for denying, disabling and creating source IP rules (and disabling logging per service). 

Interesting enough, ‘Port Triggering’ is absent from the newer router.  I am not surprised by this as I see this feature being a very rarely used option: When ‘Desktop A’ makes an outbound connection on port ‘XX’, create a rule that opens port ‘YY’ inbound and directs it back to ‘Desktop A’.
  

The only use I can personally see for this option is for opening the inbound ports for BitTorrent to a client when it fires up a torrent client.

It looks like my other options for a 802.11x router with integrated DSL is the D-Link 2640B– which only support 802.11b/g.

What would be VERY awesome is an OpenWRT system that supports dual-band 802.11n (i.e. MIMO), QoS, and shared USB storage- but I guess I will be waiting a while for that…