I bought this router after going through 5 different models / brands in the last 3 weeks as a replacement for a Microsoft G router, which was extremely stable and treated me well for a few years. We just bought our house and I wanted to upgrade to an N-based connection to reach out about 60 feet AND through three walls out to the garage where my workstation is set up.
This router is amazingly simple to install and setup! If you are not the techie type and don't want to mess with the security settings, it comes preset with an SSID and password ready to go. At the same time it offers you the option to change all the default settings! I'm not a networking expert, but I am familiar with wireless settings, so I dug in to the router's interface and WOW! It offers a lot of advanced settings for you to tinker with! All the security features including my favorite, the MAC address filtering!
The router is connected to a desktop running Time Warner's cable modem on a Vista Home 32 bit OS. My laptop is running Windows XP Pro with sp3. The Print Genie feature is GREAT! Contrary to what the so-called expert reviewers like CNET say that you must have the PC that's connected to the router on to print wirelessly! NO, you just connect to router and it automatically detects your printers and if no one else is one that printer, it gives you access to it until you release that access.
***The only thing is to make sure on your VISTA machine to set an exception to Port 1631 in your Firewall settings, and it will run like a charm!*** On my XP laptop, the Print Genie works without any additional settings to the firewall!
As most of you may know that any 5GHz spectrum is much lower in bandwidth at greater distances than the 2GHz. That goes for any dual-band N router. But of all the routers I tried, this one give me AT LEAST 54Mbps at 5GHz with 3 of 5 bars strength showing, at about 60 feet and 3 walls away! That's great range for and bandwidth for 5GHz. I am able to VPN to my office PC and it's as if I'm literally right there at my machine, which runs a lot of high-powered software development apps like Visual Studio, SQL Server, and ShareaPoint, etc.
The 2.4 GHz band is very stable and high-powered as well! I've been playing with different channel settings (as I can detect other WAN's in my area and want to avoid interferance) and I found that leaving it either on AUTO or on a channel not being used by others, usually 11, I get a steady 108 - 162 Mbps at my workstation in the garage.
To use the dual band features though, you will need a dual band adapter. I would have liked to keep my adapter the same brand as my router, just for ease of use and compatibility but I didn't find a dual band one by Belkin yet so had to go with a NetGear RangeMax adapter. But the router works great with that adapter either way.
The router comes with other apps like a back up program and a music mover app, but I doubt I will use any of that. If you're a gamer, it offers great QoS features to set your priorities for either gaming or mere internet browsing!
Overall, I am very impressed with this router and like I mentioned before, I went through about 5 of these over the last 3 weeks. None gave me the range, power, stability, and printing like this one. I have used Belkin routers in the past, and because of that experience I tended to shy away from N routers UNTIL this new series came out.
Well done Belkin! Now get busy on that dual band high powered adapter!
M. Hashem
Torrance, CA
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Get it May 10 - 17
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