2. Setup Browser Battles

Both Windows and Mac computers are supported by the G600, so I started configuration using my Apple iBook. The G600 uses network auto-discovery protocols, supporting both Bonjour (the protocol formerly known as Rendezvous) and UPnP. D-Link advertises this as a way to automatically add the network drive to your system, but it's not quite that easy.

What this feature really means is that the configuration web server on the device is advertised on the network. On my iBook, it showed up as "DSM-G600" under my Bonjour bookmarks; under XP, I got a new UPnP icon in the System Notification (Tray) area. In both cases, the automatic discovery process was just used as a way to get to the web configuration page.

Using Safari - the default web browser on my iBook - I used the Bonjour bookmark to start down the wizard path on the initial configuration page (see Figure 2). It was there that I found standard settings for changing the default administration password and network parameters. But after two configuration pages, I could get no further.

Figure 2: Setup Wizard

The "Next" button here had no effect; even though Safari was listed as being supported, I assumed it was a browser issue so I started up Firefox and went down the same path. This time I got all the way to the end of the wizard, but once again I got hung up, as the final "Restart" button had no effect. I could only quit the wizard; none of my changes could be applied (see Figure 3).

Figure 3: The Setup Wizard and Mac OS X don't play nicely together

I next tried Internet Explorer on my iBook, but it hung up on the very first page of the Wizard. Sigh. Admitting defeat, I retreated to my Windows XP system, where I found that I could get all the way through the wizard using Internet Explorer. This tells me that D-Link is probably using some questionable JavaScript code in their configuration web pages; while they may be usable under Macintosh, you can only fully configure the device under Windows.

Once I had the basic settings configured using the Wizard, I started exploring the other options.