Product Description

Belkin N1 Vision Wireless Modem Router

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #6024 in Consumer Electronics
• Brand: Belkin
• Model: F5D8632UK4A
• Released on: 2008-04-25
• Platform: Mac OS X
• Dimensions: .0" h x .0" w x .0" l, .71 pounds

Features

• Interactive Status Display shows your network&ap
• Plug-and-Play CD-less setup
• Easy Security Setup with support for Wi-Fi Prote
• 802.11n draft 2.0 compatible - 3x3 radio design
• 4 Gigabit Ports

Manufacturer's Description
Belkin's N1 Vision Wireless Router with integrated Modem shows relevant network information on its interactive network display. You can quickly view your network's broadband speed, computer bandwidth usage, and the status of your network devices - all from an easy-to-read display. Ideal usage: streaming video, music and photos; online gaming; surfing the web; chatting with friends and emailing. For optimal wireless performance, use N1 clients in your network.

Box Contents

Customer Reviews

Nice, shame about the wireless problem
I have been awaiting Belkin to release this thing since I first saw the cable version long before Christmas.
At last I have it.
It is nice. Its smaller than I was expecting, its shiny. Looks good next to my TV.
It has 4xgigabit ports, three ariels for N1 draft wireless, and an ADSL port, so no need for seperate adsl modem.
Setup is really easy, you just plug it in to your computer via a cable, type routersetup into your browser, and away you go.
Its fascinating watching all the different displays you can get about your network, and when the wireless works, its fast if you have an N1 compatible card (connects about 300Mbps max). My Vaio connects at 54Mbps, which is its max.
It also works fine with the Nintendo Wii.

The problem I have is that after a period of time of no wireless use, such as over night, or during the day, the router will not respond to anything wireless. It requires a reboot of the router to make it work again.
This is annoying and at the moment there is no solution, or even any support pages for this router on Belkin's site.
Hopefully these problems will be fixed with an update, so if you are thinking of buying one of these and you use wireless I suggest you wait a bit for the inevitable firmware release.

Since I wrote the above I have found that turning the authentication from supporting both wpa and wpa2, to only wpa2 corrects the problem. So if you are happy to use just one authentication like I am the router works fine.
I have also had no problems using this with a Nokia N95 and an Apple IPOD Touch.

Easy to configure, looks pretty but unstable
I bought the Belkin N1 Vision as I wanted to replace an aging Netgear router I'd been using for the past 3 years. I opted for the extra cost because:

I wanted a future proof device
I wanted to reduce the amount of hardware in my study
I wanted something that "looked nice"

Setup is a breeze. I'm technical, so happy to configure something like this but the "easy to use" configuration was easy and it had me up and running in about 10 minutes. If you're new to this kind of thing then this will save you hours of frustration.

It does look pretty.The screen on it is useful and provides useful stats regarding what the box is doing, download speeds, etc.

The big drawback is that it is unstable. It crashes roughly once a day. I do a daily reboot and it's fine again but, for what they're charging, this should not happen. If a device is supposed to be user friendly it shouldn't repeatedly crash. I'm sure Belkin will release a fix or patch shortly but, until you read a review saying "and I installed the patch and it works now" I'd have a look at another device.

Very Good Modem/Router
I bought this modem/router as a replacement for my Netgear (please reboot me often) DG834N modem/router..

The display is really cool and can help you keep an eye on things right from the router, you will either find this useful or useless depending on the type of person you are..

Its a nice and easy Plug-and-play "CD-less" setup, I assigned all my 6 computers, NAS, Printer, PS3 fixed IP addresses and away I went.

I edited the routers IP address to 192.168.0.1 as coming from a Netgear router, I didn't want to edit the IPs on all my equipment, this was fine for all my wired stuff, but the wireless just refused to allow anything to connect.. Once I edited this back to the default of 192.168.2.1 the wireless worked just fine with impressive speed, I just had to edit the fixed IPs on all my stuff, not sure why the change broke the wireless as all the settings were correct, but never mind as a change back worked.

Next thing to note is if you assign anything a fixed IP it will not show up on the DHCP Client List as a connected to device, everything works fine, it's just the router does not show you anything, they do however show up on the router display as Unknown. Connected items will only show up in there if the DHCP server assigns them an IP. This is simply a firmware flaw I am sure Belkin will correct in time, not a major issue.

I was able to connect fine with both Windows Vista and XP setups over the wireless, the speeds are good and have not had any issues or connection drops.

This router ships with firmware 1.00.06 - and you can download and use a pre-release firmware version 1.00.07 that fixes the following issues.

# A VPN connection problem with Cisco version 5 and Nortel Contivity VPN clients

# A problem where the router could drop some connections on 2-hour intervals

# The download speedometer not correctly reporting peer-to-peer downloads using Universal Plug and Play

# The number of wireless clients in the Status Screen does not include Guest Mode clients

As its pre-release firmware they advise not to use it unless you have any of the above issues, but I used it right away to make sure I didn't have any of the connection drop issues. I am pleased to say it's worked fine and I have not seen any problems at all..

All in All - this is a very good router, it's very fast and I got a fantastic internet connection improvement over my old Netgear. I would recommend this to anyone, and not take the people who moan about this router too seriously as after reading most of the other reviews it's easy to see those people had individual problems with their own personal setups and old hardware that didn't work with the newer wireless standards..

Oh and it's NOT wall mountable and only lets you select 11b+g+n for the wireless mode, so that MAY affect older wireless devices...

Thanks
Gary H