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Belkin F5D8230au4
Pre-N Wireless Router
Comments: Belkin were kind enough to send me one of
these to play with and I've got to say that I was very impressed with its performance.
While the blurb on Belkin's website of 800% better coverage and 600% greater
speeds than 802.11G may lead people to expect greater performance than the reality,
they're still one of the best performing wireless devices I've ever tested.
What to expect:
First I thought it would be worth testing with other brands of Wireless Network
cards just to see what would happen.
Using a Netgear WAG511 I got pretty much the same performance as the majority
of standard 802.11G Wireless Routers will provide with a true throughput (using
Qcheck)
of around 18-22mbs. Worth noting that the WAG511 Network card is capable of
speeds of up to 108mbs (around 40mbs in true throughput) with other Netgear
802.11G+ equipment, but connected to the Pre-N Router the best it would come
up with was 54mbs speeds which is what generally happens when mixing up different
standards and/or brands of wireless products.
Range wise I was able to take the Laptop directly in front of my house (I face
a street with a cul-de-sac and public park at the end) around 100 metres away
with the Router inside behind one single brick wall before the signal got too
choppy to be usable. This is pretty much the kind of range I see from most of
the better Wireless Routers. However, another Laptop on the 2nd floor above
carries a Minitar MN54GCB Wireless Card which usually shows a signal strength
of "Good" in its usual spot. Connected to the Belkin Router it showed
a signal strength of "Excellent" so there was definitely some improvement
there (going through a few obstacles).
Adding wireless security didn't slow things down noticeably. 128bit WEP showed
pretty much no change in throughput, while a drop of around 10% was evident
using WPA-PSK. However, I did notice that throughout often dropped noticeably
after changing a security setting until the Router was rebooted.
 Swapping
the Network card over to Belkin's
F5D8010 Pre-N PCMCIA card made things a lot more interesting.
(The PCI version for Desktop PCs called the F5D8000 is yet to be released.)
Throughput improved to 38-42mbs which I was still achieving almost 100m away
at almost 70% signal strength, and I was still getting a reliable connection
a bit over 150m away which was well into the public park. This was a good 20m
further than I've previously been able to achieve with any other Router in the
same circumstances. Awesome!
So, if you plan on using the F5D8230 with existing 802.11B & G cards then
although you will get some pretty decent performance, it may not be worth the
extra dollars compared to a few other products that can perform pretty much
the same for quite a bit less money, but use Belkin's Pre-N Wireless Cards with
the F5D8230 and it's a very worthwhile investment.
Other features include a well thought out interface that
I found very easy to navigate without reaching for the manual.
The built-in login client was easy to use and didn't even look like dropping
out during the couple of days I had it plugged in.
Firewall features include the ability to forward
port ranges, and IP filters which can restrict access to certain Internet
activities for certain computers at certain times. Wireless
security features include 64 & 128bit WEP, WPA-PSK and Mac Address control.
There's also a check box to enable QoS ability for VoIP, but I'm not sure why
this is only for the Wireless PCs and not any attached by cables.
There's also a unique one click button to turn into just an Access Point (no
firewall or Internet connection or sharing) which makes this process a lot easier
than with most other Wireless Routers.
Parental control is subscription based (free for 6 months). A subscription service
allows much better parental control with up to date information constantly being
made available. Subscribing is easy using the Web Interface in the Router, but
unfortunately there's not a shred of info anywhere to be found on Belkin's website
about what exactly it does and how much it costs apart from this
press release I found on Belkin's USA site. Here we learn that it's the
Cerberian service which is also
available with a variety of other manufacturer's products including Cyberguard
(Snapgear) and very well respected as one of the best content filtering services
available.
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