HOWTO: D-Link DSL-520B Firmware Upgrade

This is a post for folks who are using the D-Link DSL-520B ADSL modem. My user recently complained of performance lag and I decided to check for newer firmware. The currrent and shipped firmware version was 1.00. After resetting and updating the firmware to 1.22, my user reports a significant improvement.

 

 

If you were to download firmware 1.22 from D-Link, released 14 May 2010, and try to upgrade using the “Update Software” page of the modem’s administration, it may just tell you that the “image upload failed“. Googling for some help revealed a D-Link Indonesia blog with instructions to transfer to the firmware image via TFTP.

I’m re-writing the instructions from that blog with what works for me. Note that you need to have some skills in installing software and executing command line instructions.

Here we go:

1. Download the DSL-520B firmware version 1.22 from here or direct from this blog in case I decide to buy D-Link and dissolve it, then extract the 2MB image file into a known path of your computer, say C:\.
2. Download TFTP server software from here and install it.
3. Turn off or disable all software firewalls and anti-virus software on your computer.
4. Turn on the DSL-520B modem and plug the network cable between the Ethernet port and your computer. The default IP address of the modem should be 192.168.1.1.
5. Manually set the IP of your computer to 192.168.1.99.
6. Start TFTP and set its current directory to C:\.
7. Ensure that the interface IP in TFTP is set to 192.168.1.99.
8. Open a Windows command prompt window.
9. Check that your computer is able to reach the modem by executing the command: “ping 192.168.1.1“. If not, repeat from step 4 or reset the modem.
10. Execute the command: “telnet 192.168.1.1“. At the login prompt, enter the default username “admin” and password “admin“.
11. Once logged in, enter the command: “tftp -g -f DSL-520B-SE_1.22_07202009_cfe_fs_kernel 192.168.1.99“. The image filename should be “DSL-520B-SE_1.22_07202009_cfe_fs_kernel“. This instructs the modem to download the image file and proceed to flash to the new version, which should take a few minutes to complete.
12. There will be a new line in the command window to indicate that the firmware upgrade process is complete.
13. Close the command window.
14. Reset the modem to factory defaults.
15. Open a web browser, enter the URL: http://192.168.1.1, login, and verify in the “Device Info” page that the firmware version is indeed 1.22.
16. You may uninstall TFTP.

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