One Mans Blog
Specialization is for Insects.
Posted on Aug 01, 2007 - 2:12am by John P. in Computing, Gadgets, Must Haves, Reviews
I can’t think of the last time I fell in love with a piece of hardware so fast as I did the Belkin N1 Vision Wireless Gigabit Router (Model: F5D8232-4).
I saw it on the shelf at Best Buy while looking to replace my crappy old Netgear router, and after reading some of the literature I could not resist grabbing the only one they had to take it home and give it a try - despite the $200 price tag.
I picked it up for two primary reasons:
I have to stop for a minute and talk about the packaging. It looks like Belkin has been studying Apple’s playbook, because the N1 box is a work of art. Not only is the outside packaging attractive, but when you open it up the inside is even better! It’s like you’re unwrapping a present and it’s just so nice, shiny and cool that it makes you feel good about the money you spent on it.
So, after unboxing it I set it up on my desktop counter - as opposed to below the counter where other routers get relegated. As soon as I plugged it in and saw that sexy display come to life I was hooked.
I whipped out the one page quick install guide and proceeded to immediately log into the router’s interface. Note: you must use an ethernet connection to do the initial configuration, but then you can disconnect it and go wireless. Configuration was as simple as any other router I’ve ever used, if not simpler.
In addition, I found that the Wireless security implementation was the easiest I’ve ever used, and was pleasantly surprised to learn that you can have two SSIDs! One for your primary network, and another that you can allow guests to use. I’ve never seen this in a consumer product before.
Once things were configured and working I went to playing with the fabulous display on the router, eventually ending up with the inbound and outbound traffic graphing on permanent display. After that there was only one other thing to check… the range.
So, I grabbed my laptop and carried it to the farthest corner of the house and proceeded to discover that I still had 4 out of 5 bars! Damn! It’s the holy grail of home networking!
So, the bottom line is that this is about the most expensive home router that you can buy - but in my opinion it is worth every penny! It is very, very fast (it will improve ALL of your Web surfing speeds), it has the longest range I’ve ever seen, it has some incrediblly useful information on the display, and it is just a sexy, sexy looking piece of hardware. Frankly, this router deserves a whole stack of awards based on what I’ve seen and I recommend that everyone go pick one up ASAP!
By the way, Belkin also has a demo of the N1 Vision that you can watch here.
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That thing is beautiful! and adding a screen is a great idea, it will tell you which pc/user is sucking up the bandwidth, there’s one small thing missing though, a usb port for an external hard drive such as the D-Link DMS-600.
Ooh, that looks cool - I’m gonna have to remember that! My dad is fixing to give me a laptop and I’d love to surf/blog on the balcony, in bed, and in the basement, while hanging with the kids! I do actually have a “wireless” router already - funny thing was, though, it came with a ‘wire’! Ok, I’m no techno-geek (wish I was!), but, that’s just weird.
yeah, it looked nice, but i think its a POS. i spent an evening trying to get the darn thing to work. i had no problems getting online or accessing the router administration, but did have the following problems:
1) router “save” feature is broken. have to save things two or more times to take effect.
2) buttons on front of router suck. have to push repeatedly to (as many as 30-40 times) to make them work. ho,ding them down isn’t enough - you have to hold them down and/or find that tiny sweet spot on the pad where they work.
3) VPN functionality is broken, or at least is for my Nortel VPN software.
4) Wireless mac filtering functionality is broken. doesn’t work as expected.
5) SPI firewall sucks. only protects against a bunch of old denial of service exploits that were all patched in Windows 95.
6) Security log is less than worthless. It deletes logs after an hour, and doesn’t display enough info to make the logs of any use. a much better solution is the one i reverted to - linksys router with 3rd party linklogger software.
7) router admin password fucntionality is not properly documented. due to issue #1 above, that means you may spend hours trying to set or change a password that is not saved properly and won’t let you login, and consequently forces you to do a hard reset and start all over again.
9) Belkin support sucks. about the only thing i could understand (Belkin outsourced support to India) was him repeatedly asking me if i could access the net. when i said yes, he replied that the router was working fine then (despite #1-8 above that i politely detailed to him) and that i could not get an RMA. in the end, i was finally able to determine that Belkin apparently knows about all of these issues, and might fix a couple of them sometime down the road, but most likely won’t do anything about #1, 2, 5, 6, 8. I’m not going to hold my breath for them to fix #3, 4, 7, 9. this piece of crap goes back to best buy tomorrow and i’ve already gone back to my very reliable, well-designed, bug-free, much more secure wired and wireless routers (WRT54G and BEFSX41).
Wow! I can’t believe you had all of those issues… Let me address my experience with them in the order you mention:
I had far, far more issues with my WRT54G, though I was running the factory firmware and not the after-market firmware. My WRT had to be rebooted randomly every 2-4 weeks because it would just lock up. The range on was pathetic, and the speed was poor.
John
I had same problem with vpn. i finally managed to get my work laptop to vpn via router. by putting it in dmz.
you can’t use firefox as the browser, I’m sure someone else has chimed in and clued people in but just in case I’ll post this for the poor sob like me that racked his head trying to figure out why the password was shite, it’s the browser mate!
-Jim
fyi - this is to #6 from the previous poster
err uh #7 that is
thanks for the reply John. my comments for each issue …
mine was VERY hot after just a few minutes use, and it was in a well ventilated area and not near any other heat sources. my linksys routers are always cool.
1) in retrospect, i wonder if this had anything to do with me using firefox instead of msie. the router was definitely designed to be administered with msie. i say that because the CD included with it specifically run msie for things like the “special offers”, instead of just running whatever browser is set as default.
2) buttons on mine definitely sucked bad. i’m pretty hip about buttons on gadgets too, and can appreciate things like buckling springs on old IBM keyboards, and the subtle differences between the keypads on the HTC ppc6700 and HTC ppc6800. as far as the belkin buttons go, i’d have to rate them as close to the absolute worst i’ve ever used (which is saying alot when i think about how crappy some of my previous cellphone keypads have been).
3) definitely had problems with the Nortel. worked fine when switching back to the linksys befsx41, so it wasn’t an isue with my vpn server.
4) with mine, either the wireless mac address filtering didn’t work at all, or it “denied” macs that i had specifically “allowed”.
5) belkin listed things like ping of death, land, and pingflood as some of the attacks it protects against. if thats what they think a modern stateful packet inspection firewall is good for, then they don’t know crap. my linksys befsx41, for example, when running factory firmware, can be configured to dynamically block IP addresses based on user-defined triggers.
6) after using linksys + linklogger at home, or even the windows event logging system, i expect a certain level of security logging. the belkin is pitiful.
7) neither the manual nor the router admin help info state what kind of characters can be used, or how short or long the password can be. belkin support told me it could be 64 characters long but could only use letters and numbers. after a bit of trial and error, i was able to determine that the length is well below 64 characters (more like 8-12 characters), and i was able to use special characters and spaces. the fact that linksys support had clearly incorrect info led me to decide that the feature was poorly documented.
9) you’re of course right. everybody’s support sucks. i don’t think i’m being unreasonable though to expect, as an absolute minimum, an Indian accent that is neutral enough that i can tell whether or not the person is speaking English or Hindi. the belkin support guy sounded like he had a very thick Punjabi redneck accent. i wasn’t even sure if he was speaking English most of the time. my boss is Indian, and i’ve seen every Simpsons episode with Apu Nahasapeemapetilon, so i’m pretty good at understanding English spoken with an Indian accent.
all ended well for me though, because Best Buy took the router back with no hassles, and i used the $ to help finance a Sharp Aquos 32″ 1080p LCD HDTV purchase. now i just need to figure out how the heck i’ll fit my new “desktop HDTV” on my desk.
i’ll have to keep an eye on your blog from now on, and see how things go for you. maybe Tom’s Hardware will review this router sometime soon too.
I had to use an uplink from my old router to the Belkin so I could get my Nortel VPN in front of the Belkin.
What’s the dill, pickle, doesn’t anyone test? Even my customers test better than that.
You’re Awesome! I thought i was up sh*t creek without a paddle. Anyway, I had the same issue. I could connect to work VPN using Nortel Client on my OLD-Trusty Motorolla Router, but could NOT connect via the “slick” Belkin N1 Vision. So I hooked up the internet to the OLD router and plug the new router to the old router (NOT via the uplink ports on either router). Then I connect my work laptop to the old router and connect. Or if I am up in my bedroom (furthest point away from the New router) I connect to the New Router to grab normal Internet connection!!!
I love you so much!! Great Idea, Man!
Correction. I connected Belkin (new) Router to Motorolla (old) Router via the Uplnk on the Belkin and a regular port on the motorolla. Again, the motorolla had the internet plugged into that router. The problem i had was even when I selected to connect to the Belkin it would connect to the Motorolla (via wireless). So i had to change the name of the SSID and the password so it wouldn’t auto connect on me.
I set up a wi-fi hotspot for a private campground. The office-lodge houses a full kitchen, bathrooms, game and meeting rooms all on one level totaling about 3000 square feet. The N1 Vision absolutely floods the building with signal despite numerous walls, appliances, furnishings, etc. It floods the parking lot too and certainly does ‘G’ better than a ‘G’ router does.
In fact, a web surfable ‘G’ signal travels through the office wall, across a canal and two streets with trees and RVs between. The ‘N’ adapter one-ups with even better throughput. Placing the router outside on the roof, about eight feet up, a router-accessible signal propagates nearly 700 feet away through 100-foot tall trees and many RVs. That’s in one direction. It likely travels 700-feet the other way too. I can even comfortably surf a poor signal data-rated 2Mbps. Impressive indeed!
The N1 Vision router setup works automatically with local cable however, after several minutes, the cable modems require rebooting. I suppose this is a cable company issue and could be remedied via the router’s manual setup. But DSL is more stable here so, that is the route pursued even though the company isn’t listed in the built-in (cd-less) setup.
The N1 Vision box claims a maximum of 16 WLAN users something you don’t see on Belkin’s website. But after checking with them, it’s 16 simultaneous download-users. You do see that it comes with a lifetime warranty however….. get that from China..… or WashDC. The Belkin N1 Adapter and N1 Vision router make this job easy and for awhile, I am a warm and fuzzy celebrity to these vacationers.
iPC,
That is an AWESOME story. Thanks for sharing it, and I’m glad you had a similar experience to mine. I just can’t believe the range this sucker puts out!
Take care,
John
[...] Now, I’m not promising that every month will be a $600 prize, but I will tell you that every prize will be something that I would personally love to receive. And as most of you probably know by now I’ve got some tasty toys. [...]
Demo-ed the wi-fi on a big-screen for about 150 members. Now gonna wi-fi the park with just 3 N1 Vision Router hotspots, N1 and Wi-Fire adapters too. Got some hoops to jump but, wish me luck!
Side note: even after wow-ing them at the demo, about five-percent adamantly believe computers and particularly the internet are ‘evil’ entities (as an underpaid computer tech, I sometimes believe they are too). But most sadly, one naysayer is a recently retired school teacher. Ugh! If that don’t explain a lot.
Only after I bought this router and installed did I find out that it doesn’t support assigning fixed IP addresses according to MAC addresses unless you completely disable DHCP altogether. I’ve never had a router before that didn’t let me run DHCP and still assign fixed addresses to certain machines. Am I missing something?
this thing SUCKS!!! MY NORTAL VPN WILL NOT CONNECT EVEN WHEN i PORT FORWARD!! 200 BUCKS DOWN THE DRAIN PLUS
3 N1 USB RECEIVERS. ALSO FRONT BUTTONS SUCK ASS!
I agree with the comments about VPN problems. Doesn’t seem to do transparent ipsec tunneling over UDP either with Cisco Windows Vista Client or Cisco WinXP client. Switching back to a Linksys router, I get a VPN connection no sweat. Belkin tech support says I have to create a virtual server with an open port to match my work VPN server (IT says no go - it’s security violation to reveal the ports they use). A Google search shows that other people complain about VPN problems with Belkin routers.
I took the Belkin N1 router plus my Vista Laptop to the VPN network analyst at my university. Under the CISCO v5.x client, he said that the Belkin appeared defective in a very early step in handshaking with the CISCO server software. He said that turning the N1 simply into a wireless gateway down stream from another router would probably lead to kludgy complications further down the line and his recommendation, since I’d just bought the router, was to take it back to Best Buy and exchange it for a Linksys, which I did. My new Linksys WRT350 doesn’t look as pretty, have the nice LCD or quite the range as the N1, but it works great with VPN. Interestingly, the Belkin N1 worked fine with a CISCO v4.9x VPN client on my MAC mini but the network analyst said that Windows and the MAC are very different when it comes to VPN. The analyst noted all the complaints on the Internet about Belkin and VPN as part of his reason for recommending a return, CISO, Nortel, opensource VPN clients, etc. Given all the problems people have, you would think that Belkin would have come up with a fix by now or at least step-by-step instructions on things to check. Since the tech support was so clueless on solving my VPN problem (open the ports, etc), that was another reason I took the router back.
I have the same problem with Version 1.00.11 firmware. Someone from another forum sent me a Beta version, which is 1.00.11a and it solves the problem. I can use Cisco VPN client without any problem now.
If you are interested, send me your email address on googzzhk@gmail.com. Of course, you use it at your own risk.
The 1.00.13 beta firmware available on Belkin’s UK site worked perfectly on my Nortel VPN client problem. It now finally works. I agree with other postings that the buttons suck. The router is pretty cool toy.
Hmmm. I’m sorry everyone is having so many issues with their Belkin. My is chugging along just fine.
If you are going to go with a Linksys you might at least consider using an aftermarket firmware to improve the performance.
Good luck,
John
I have a linksys n1 router and I also purchased the linksys wireless nic with two antennas for almost another 100 bucks to use in my garage. I can connect at much faster speeds but the range on my old wireless G router was much better. I guess there are other things I can try but I guess I am just going to run a wire out to the garage and be done with it. The speed is not that significant for that expense. I would have been better off waiting. In my opinion N1 is not worth the expense (at least in my case)
Cisco VPN client version 4.8.01.0300 working great on my Windows 2K IBM T43 laptop through the N1 Vision wirelessly without port forwarding.
I am very interested in learning how to port forward so I can open up a file server on my network to the internet for remote file sharing. Anyone know where I can go to learn how to do this?
Coupled with a few Belkin Repeaters, Belkin N1 and hField WiFire Adapters, I’ve had just two N1 Visions covering a 25 acre, 300 member RV park for months now. 5Mbps at an annual cost of less than $10 per member per year. And I see it just made the 50 Top 10 Lists of 2007 at Time. I’m sold:
http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/top10/article/0,30583,1686204_1686305_1690859,00.html
Sadly I was sold by snazzy display… reality soon kicked in when I tried to use this thing for real.
1. As previously mentioned, so much effort is required to navigate the front panel, extremely unresponsive (hardware issue for sure)
2. Device frequently locks up, wireless and admin GUI become unresponsive - only option is to power cycle and wait for the slow boot up
3. Extremely limited configurability (for a router) - no way to assign names to devices etc. (unless using built in DHCP)
4. Not possible to see which wireless devices are connected
5. Agree with above comment about the log, it’s a complete waste of time - syslog would be a start
6. Had very bad performance when using WPA-WPA2/PSK, had to revert to 128-bit WEP
7. Belkin support has to be the worst experience of my life - apparently, the reason for my lockups (requiring a power cycle) is because I need to change the WiFi channel number — hmmmm….
I really can not recommend this device for anyone that needs a reliable wireless network - for now I’ve disabled wireless functionality so I can at least use it as a switch/hub and some of the router functionality but will be chasing Belkin for my RMA number.
This is a worthless pile of junk of a router. Even if you could get all the functional things to work like ……..I dunno, how bout some basic security. I never got the security to work. The stupid thing only works unsecured. (and yes I have all N Nics in all my machines) And by “work” I mean it drops the wireless PC’s about every 20 minutes or so. Then you have the pleasure of resetting your NIC and then when that stops working after 4 or 5 resets you get to reset the router. (which takes 3 minutes to boot up). Try scrolling through the screen and the sucky squishy buttons can’t sense jack!!!! keep pushing….. It won’t take long to wear a hole right through the button. How bout the power input gets so hot you could probably light a cigarette with it. (who knows maybe is a feature) Bottom line: This is the first and last Belkin product I ever buy. If this is the best they have at the top of their product tier then forget it……..I’m done. I might as well resort to smoke signals and carrier pigeons for what this pile of junk is worth. Looks like this one is going back to the store. Never buy this hunk of junk. It will let you down, and tech support will run you in circles. At this point I think wireless N is a hoax. I hope the next shipment of these fall into the Pacific Ocean on their way from China.
HATE THIS PRODUCT
i agree with most of the original post.
buttons are one of the worst parts of this router.
the only other things bothering me are that too many connections (think torrents) cause the router to soft restart in a way. the internet connection drops out for a few seconds, and the main display goes back to the first page (with the # of wireless clients).
i’ve solved this by limiting my max torrent connections to around 500. but, i still wish there was a way to set the default lcd view (i always want to see total upload/download speeds).
overall, it’s pretty cool!
Bought my router in April 08. Got home set it up. It worked all of 10 minutes before the connection dropped. Still had power to the router but could not get a connection even tried wired no no avail so called a tech friend to come take a look to see what was up. He finally was able to come over last night and tried to get it running for me. It was disconnected since it stopped working the night I bought it and it crapped out on me. When he tried to plug it up there was no power at all. The stinking router would not even power up. It is completely useless. So today I tried to return it for an exchange to no avail. The store will not even exchange it so now I have to go through Belkin to try and warrenty it. Needless to say I am not pleased.