D-Link Exo AC2600 (DIR-882) Enthusiast Router Review

Interface: Features and Functions

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The Features and Management menus are where the router functions hide. Well, they don’t hide, the reside here.

QoS

QoS stands for Quality of Service and it is a method of traffic prioritising. D-Link’s system doesn’t offer a lot of customisation, instead, its very easy to use. Simply drag and drop connected systems into the respective slot and save your changes. Now the systems will have internet priority based on your settings and you can make sure that you don’t drop our of your games because someone else starts a download.

Time and Schedules

The time settings aren’t spectacular as such; they’re what you’d expect. But hidden within the Time page is the Schedule page and that’s a lot more interesting.

You can create ten different time schedules which then can be assigned to the various features such as filter, firewall, and parental control.

Each schedule has its own name for easy recognition.

Website Filter

The website filter is pretty self-explanatory, as most features here. Allow or deny specific websites in order to keep your workplace or home in order.

Firewall

The firewall comes with basic anti-spoof checking and DMZ as well as similar features.

IP filters, both IPv4 and IPv6 are also found here.

Port Forwarding, Virtual Server, and Static Routes

With smart devices and remote connections becoming a thing in more and more homes, the port forwarding and virtual server features become more vital than ever. They’ll make sure that your devices are forwarded the proper way for remote access.

Logging and Statistics

Every headless system needs some sort of logging and notification system in order to keep you informed of its status. Both features are present in D-Link’s routers.

You can also look at throughput statistics of the various connections.

VPN

The Quick VPN feature allows, as the name says, a quick and easy VPN setup.

Dynamic DNS

With remote connection abilities, you might want to set up a DDNS service too. With it, you can easily remotely connect to your home network, even if your internet connection has a dynamic IP.

Administration

There are various administration features for the device, such as changing the password, enabling Captcha, and define the admin connections.

The system settings can be imported and exported for safekeeping, backup, and restoration. Periodic reboots of the device can be scheduled too.

The previous user configuration was for the file access through USB, so they won’t work for the web interface. You can also create nine users for the GUI login.

The parental controls are simple with block and access rules based on schedules. While simple, they’re very useful.

Last but certainly not least, you can upgrade the firmware. There is an online-check built-in, but it isn’t always successful in detecting new updates. If in doubt, check the device’s support page for an updated version manually. Just make sure you download the proper hardware version are defined at the top of the GUI.