A Belter from Belkin (Belkin 54g Wireless Cable/DSL Gateway Router)

Member Name: LegendaryMrDude

Product:	Belkin 54g Wireless Cable/DSL Gateway Router
Date:	27/02/05 (4756 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Cheap, Fast WiFi

Disadvantages: Fiddly Configuration, Poor Wireless Range, Limited Firewall options

When my old Netgear wireless router broke down (for the fourth time) at the beginning of December I decided that enough was enough.

A trip to PC world saw me return with one of these puppies (and £60 lighter in the pocket). 30 minutes after getting home saw my Internet access and wireless network reinstated. Yup, 30 minutes was really all it took, and that included unwrapping it, fiddling round with the power supply & cables as well as some basic configuration. This was helped along by the excellent quick-start guide on a large, fold-out sheet with it's clearly numbered and documented steps.

At about the size of a large-format paperback, it's middle of the road in terms of size. Aesthetically it's not going to win any prizes, but it does the job. There are screw-holes on the base to allow for wall-mounting should you desire. An array of LEDs on the front panel flash to show you that things are happening, 4 RJ-45 ports on the back allow you to plug up to 4 PCs into it and there's a 5th Ethernet port for connecting to your Internet connection to it. All are clearly labelled so you shouldn't have any problems. All 4 of the PC ports will automatically detect if they are being used to uplink to another switch/hub which is handy and saves fiddling round with buttons. Also on the back are the two stubby WiFi aerials that don't look half big enough for the job but seem to work. The power supply is a separate brick with a generous lead to both the plug and the device, giving good range when it comes to positioning the box, something that is important for a Wireless access point.

From a hardware point of view, it supports all of the major standards. The 4 computer network ports are capable of regular Ethernet (10Mb/sec) and FastEthernet (100Mb/sec) switched and give good performance between attached computers. On the wireless side, it supports both the older (and slower, 11Mb/sec at best) 802.11b and the newer (and faster 54Mb/sec at best) 802.11g. They are supported side-by-side out of the box so it is perfectly possible to have a mixture of devices, but as they both operate at the same frequency you will find that 'g' devices will be held back if there are 'b' devices using it as well. There is also support for the two wireless security mechanisms; WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy) is available at 64 and 128bits but the configuration is messy and WEP has been proven flawed. You'll only use this if you are running older WiFi equipment that doesn't support the newer WPA (WiFi Protected Access), which is far easier to configure and more secure.

As an aside, the main benefits of securing your Wireless access are around bandwidth "theft", bearing in mind that typically an Access point in the home will be good for your neighbours both sides and across the road, depending on the size of your garden! It's also useful if you have more than one PC on your network and you share files between them as it would save anyone coming along and taking copies of your shared files. That said, it may not be such a problem with the Belkin as I have had disappointing results with the WiFi coverage from my Belkin. I live in a modern, stud-wall constructed house and my old (802.11b) Netgear used to give me good coverage throughout. The Belkin struggles to provide coverage from front to back so careful placement becomes more important.

Configuration of the device is all through a web-interface, so there's no driver or configuration software installation required. Password protection is available and I'd recommend anyone set up a password, especially if you're not going to secure your Wireless access with either WEP or WPA.

The other major security feature of the Belkin box is it's built in firewall. This effectively protects you from Internet-based hacking attempts and while it will not be able to guarantee 100% protection it is certainly a lot better than nothing. It's safe by default and the only reasons to change its configuration are if you want to do something slightly tricky, like host Internet multi-player games, or your own web-server or similar. This is where you will run into the first limitation of the Belkin. Unlike some of the more expensive firewalls out there, the Belkin only allows one incoming connection type to each internal PC, so it's not possible to set up your PC to hose Wolfenstein and Medal of Honour games at the same time, it's either one or the other. Thankfully Belkin have realised the limitation and tried to make it as easy as possible to change this aspect of the configuration. Other aspects of the firewall are slightly less intuitive to configure and are probably best left alone unless you are experiencing a particular problem. Fortunately the on-line help is pretty solid across all the configuration areas.

Some of the other more useful features are a semi-automatic firmware update check, a backup function for the router configuration and a Parental Control option, although the latter is subscription based rather than user-defined keywords. It also has the ability to support Universal Plug n Play (UPNP) should you need it, although this is off by default. Finally, there is good support for VPNs so all you corporate users that like to work from home (me included) are well catered for.

It all sounds pretty good so far and, for the money I suppose it is. But I've been spoiled by my Netgear so some of the limitations that bug me are:

- There's no support for Dynamic DNS, where the router automatically registers it's dynamically assigned IP address with a constant domain-name for easy reference anywhere on the Internet. So I have to do it manually once a month. Not a big deal, but mildly annoying.

- The firewall isn't as flexible in it's configuration as I'd previously been used to, either allowing me one service through the firewall per internal PC or everything to the PC with no firewall protection at all. There are workarounds to this (assigning multiple IP addresses to internal PCs is one way) but it's messy. Similarly, while scheduling of firewall access is supported it's also a bit fiddly to implement should you want to do so.

- The subscription-based parental control drives revenue, what's wrong with user administrated keyword filtering? It can't be that hard to implement.

Ultimately, you get what you pay for. My old Netgear was £150; this was £60 (now £50 in the PC World Sale). For 1/3rd the price, you certainly get more than 1/3rd the functionality so despite its shortcomings, I am pleased to say that it was a worthwhile purchase. If you need a basic home router/WiFi access point, it's just the ticket. If you want something more complex and you have the technical knowledge to understand what you need, the Belkin is flexible enough that you will probably find a way of making it do what you want although it may be a bit long-winded and some things may remain a manual task. In terms of its competition, I don't think there's anything out there to touch it on price. Pay £20 - 30 more and you will get most of the features that are "missing", but how much you really need them is up to you. So it's 4.5 stars for the Belkin, let down by some of its software features but rounded up to 5 for sheer value.

[ Originally posted on www.ciao.co.uk by me at the end of 2004 ]

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