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:
- The cool display on the outside of the router actually looked like it could be useful for seeing what is going on with the connectivity.
- The box claimed a freakishly long range, which I reasoned would be worth it if I could actually get coverage throughout my large house.
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.
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.
8) router runs VERY hot. this will no doubt effect lifespan of device.
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
thanks for the reply John. my comments for each issue …
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.
8) 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.
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.
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
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?