Belkin Wireless N 4-Port Router

10 Review to this product

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  Philip W. Yoder
  October 14th, 2008 on 1:59 am

  Rating

  I have been using this router about 2 weeks and works perfect,haven’t had any problems. The wireless is very fast.itlooks nice and very satisfied.
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  Lizard
  March 9th, 2009 on 9:40 pm

  Rating

  Odd many people gave it negative reviews because I have not had a single problem with it; in fact, I can’t even tell it’s wireless-works as good as a cable setup. No dropped signals.
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  maggie
  March 18th, 2009 on 3:32 am

  Rating

  this was a lifesaver after we went through linksys hell. the think was slower than i ever though possible and didn’t keep a connection for more than a minute. so we thought anything would be better and decided to try this one out. it’s great! it’s fast, there’s no connection issues, and we use it for our on demand, xbox, a wireless computer and a reg computer, and cell phones. o, and a slacker. SO happy with it!! plus we got this and a wireless adapter for about the price we had originally paid for the linksys. and it’s not just good compared to the crappy one, it’s honestly a great router!
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  Webster Clickworthy
  March 26th, 2009 on 8:17 pm

  Rating

  I’ve had a wonderful experience with this router, so the negative reviews don’t make sense to me. In general, I’ve found most routers to be unreliable and a pain to deal with. But with this one I’ve had almost perfect sailing. I’ve had it for a few months so I can attest to its reliability. Works with both Windows XP and Vista.

  Setup: Very easy. Belkin really did an excellent job in this area.

  Range: Unknown. I live in a small apartment. It works at least 20 feet away.

  Security: Excellent. You have the choice of security encryption, such as WEP and WPA2.

  Speed: Good. This is probably the one area that could be improved, but it might just be my DSL connection. I can stream Hulu TV shows wirelessly to my laptop. Occasionally I’ll get a brief hiccup of a second or two, but usually the streams are fine.

  Reliability: Very good. I’ve only reset the router once in the past few months. When I’m gaming online with my Wii, sometimes I’ll get knocked off, but I can’t tell if it’s the Wii, the router, or my DSL provider. I suspect it is the Wii, because my laptop has had no problems establishing a connection to the router.

  For the money, this router has been an easy to work with and a pleasant surprise. I have no regrets buying it.
  
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  David Mendoza
  April 14th, 2009 on 5:24 am

  Rating

  I’ve owned this router since January of 09′ and I have not had any problems with the router. It was simple to install and gives my laptop fast download speeds and I am able to watch videos without having to wait for them to buffer during the download. I also have a Elite pkg DSL from At&T. Your speeds will depend on your internet speed. I have no problem hooking up my Xbox 360, playstation 3, nintendo DSi, or my laptop. I did however had to set the security to a level that would accomidate all of them (I still have a secure network). I use to use a Lynksis, after that one would keep dropping signal every 10 min I got rid of it…I even called customer service and they tried everything to get it running but it would not stay on…I noted the license on that lynksis was only 10 but I could not change it, my belkin has it set to infinity. I suggest if you do not have wireless already on your laptop or pc that you use a belkin wirless N adapter. This allows you to use the faster speeds of the wirless N, otherwise your just using a A, B, or G connection.
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  Datahound
  May 30th, 2009 on 4:58 am

  Rating

  Having used Belkin products before, I wasn’t surprised as to how easy it was to install the Series N router. Immediately my wireless download speed rose from 3MB/second to 15MB/second (I’ve had a Belkin Series B wireless router in my home for several years). I had been complaining to my ISP that my download speed was way under the rated speed, and just in case, I bypassed my router and direct wired one PC to the cable modem to see how fast the ISP signal really was. The download speed immediatey went up to 15MB/sec. I now knew the source of my problem. Once I purchased the Belkin Series N router, my wireless speed matched the direct cable modem connection speed. I am now a happy camper, and the price was excellent as well.

  - Alan
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  Marcus Beale
  August 8th, 2009 on 5:19 am

  Rating

  This wireless Belkin N router does the job well. It is simple to setup, the lighted icons are useful, it’s much smaller and cooler than my previous Belkin router, the range is very good (located on the 1st floor and my laptop connects on the 4th floor and outside), and the cost is reasonable. I believe recent firmware improvements corrected the problems other reviewers have posted.

  My internet is through Comcast and I use a Vonage VoIP phone with the V-portal adapter. After reading reviews on the V-portal device I attempted to connect the Belkin router directly to the cable modem and the V-portal device off the router. However this configuration caused the Vonage calls to break up pretty badly and even drop calls. This is due to the fact the Belkin router does not have a QoS feature. However I easily solved the problem by connecting the V-portal device directly to the cable modem and then connecting the Belkin router to the V-portal. Now the call quality is excellent, no dropped calls, and the wireless internet connection is fast and stable. I also tested the download, upload speeds with both configurations and found only a negligible difference. I’ve been using this setup for 3 months now.

  The V-portal router has a lot of features for such a small device. The Belkin router also has a nice set of basic features.

  I was able to easily get my Wii and both windows XP laptops (after some fiddling) to connected to the wireless network using WPA2 AES encryption. One note however, I was not able to get the Ubuntu 8 laptop to connect with WPA2 AES encryption. I did easily get the same laptop to connect after installing Ubuntu 9.

  In terms of out of the box security the Belkin router passed all test using Shields Up – “[...]“. The V-portal device needed a rule setup to redirect the SSH port 22 traffic to a non-existent ip address on the local network before it passed all test.

  I got the Belkin router at Best Buy for $[...] and the V-portal device through Vonage for $[...] dollars after rebate (had to mail back the previous Vonage device). It’s a pretty nice setup and I recommend it.
  
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  S. Kopuri
  September 13th, 2009 on 11:42 am

  Rating

  I read reviews on amazon and other store websites (best buy, etc.) for this and a ton of other routers because this was my first router purchase (my parents have a D-link but I needed one for my new apartment). I spent a lot of time going back and forth on different routers because I wanted something that could last for awhile but be affordable. Most of the reviews for this Belkin router were either “I’ve had this router for a week and its amazing!” or “this is a waste of money do not buy!!”. But after going through all of these reviews, most of which were unhelpful but some not so bad, I realized the biggest issue people had was that they had to reset the router frequently (I think people were exaggerating about how annoying that is because that usually happens with most modems and routers).

  I decided to order this one because it was a really good price for an N router, I figured I know computers pretty well and won’t have problems like some of the other people posting bad reviews, and if I did have a serious problem with it not working, I could always just return it.

  I’ve had this router for over a month (which I’m pretty sure is a good amount of time to see any ups and downs) and I love it. It has really great coverage, but I live in an apartment so if you have a house you might want to find a review by someone who lives in a bigger place. Setup was incredibly easy. I don’t understand why some people say you should not follow the setup instructions that they give you. Trust me, follow the directions exactly, and you’re good to go. The first week I had the router I had to reset it once and that was it for a whole month. Just a couple days ago my internet wouldn’t work and I thought it was the router but it turned out I had to reset my cable modem so it wasn’t the router at all. I also really like the way the router looks, but that’s a personal preference.

  BTW I have not had to call Belkin customer service for anything so I don’t know firsthand if they are as difficult as people say in their reviews but I have not had any reason to call them. (If you need help with anything, try looking it up in google first before calling the company because you’re probably not the first person to have a certain problem with whatever product and people tend to post helpful solutions on the internet!)

  This router works great and I don’t foresee any problems with it. My advice is to decide what your budget is, do research on technology websites like CNET, etc. and also consumer sites like amazon, best buy, etc., and don’t really worry about customer reviews until you narrow your list down to either a brand or a few different routers that fit your needs. Then check the reviews but don’t listen to EVERYTHING that people say!
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  Rick Ven
  September 25th, 2009 on 12:38 am

  Rating

  After reading much about the N Routers available, I decided to purchase this one. Coming from the G router world with a D-Link 524 this was a fantastic leap for me. The D-Link was a very good router in its time. I almost went for their N router but I did not need the extra features to spend the $100 for it.

  What I like about the Belkin:
  
  1. Downloading Podcasts. Every podcast was successfully downloaded. Previously, I would lose about 40% of the downloads and would have to make multiple attempts to download.
  
  2. Streaming audio/video. Seamless wireless streaming into my living room where the PC is connected to the home theater, while the unit is stored in my home office a couple of room away. Excellent connection with no drop outs. I am able to watch programs on hulu, youtube, you name it. High bandwidth with no problems. Currently I am using an ISP with 6Mbs speed. The audio on one particular station in iTunes would never play for more than a second at a time when using the G Router. Now, it is seamless.
  
  3. Easy setup. I have Vista Home Premium and it was very easy to setup the wirless connectivity. The security wizard failed during setup which required me to set up manually through the router’s GUI. I would rate the process as light skilled. You must know how to access the router’s GUI and know a little about security to set up what works best for your environment. But, the process is still easy to access and implement.
  
  4. Stability. I have been using this unit for a month now and it has been very consistent in its performance.

  I have not used it for internal networking so I cannot comment on home networking. Overall, I am very pleased with the unit.
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  Catamaran'78
  November 25th, 2009 on 5:19 pm

  Rating

  The router was easy to set up and am using it with the Belkin F5D8053 N Wireless USB Adapter on a four year old Windows XP system. Anyone who has trouble setting this up is probably not following or reading the step by step instructions on the setup program. I am using the WEP 128 bit encryption standard, recommend you write down and save the numbers/letters in the security code you get from the setup program so you can enter it in on all wireless devices.

  I formerly had used a Linksys-G which at 8 feet was slower than this Belkin at 40 feet. The Linksys dropped connections even at 8 feet. Usually, the Linksys-G dropped connections every 5 minutes or so causing me at times to nearly throw the laptop against the wall. I would say upgrading to N for computers that don’t have it is well worth it.

  I have never had to ‘repair’ the connection once in 4 days, and can now even download Windows updates at 40-45 feet distance on the wireless while surfing. Every corner of the 1-story house is covered and the speed is almost like when on the wire. The router has the nicest and most helpful display of indicator lights I have seen, showing the status of each computer connection and the cable modem feed.

  The price was a lot less than the Linksys-N.

  Gibson Research Corporations ‘Shields Up’ security checking site gave the router a 100% rating for cloaking all ports so my network is invisible on the internet.