Belkin Wireless Internet Router - My Own Personal Experience Of Using It (Belkin 54g Wireless Cable/DSL Gateway Router)

Member Name: andrew_dav

Product:	Belkin 54g Wireless Cable/DSL Gateway Router
Date:	30/09/09 (48 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Packed wIth Security, Good Price, Good Functionality

Disadvantages: Terrible Issue wIth Signal Dropping Out, Not Overly Reliable With Wireless.

I moved back into a cable area recently so with that needed a purchase for a cable router. On a midnight jaunt through the supermarket I picked this one up for about £30 and took it home to play with.

It's packed full of features once you've set it up and really lets you take control of the security of your network. It has all of the encryption you'll need to make the network secure and stop anyone with a wireless device that comes within range of your network gaining access to it. And you can take control of the network, assigning individual addresses to it in order to make more efficient use of your router. For example, I have a server on mine which takes care of all of my files, and therefore for the purposes of accessing it remotely, I tend to find it easier when the address is the same.

You can also access your restrictions on applications and games that require access to the outside world, by opening ports and gateways to enable this to be done as securely as possible. If you're required to access any of your computers from the outside world, ports can be opened to gain access to those as well.

On the router you can connect a vast number of wireless devices along with four wired ones. This is handy if you're out of wireless connectors or your simply prefer the reliability of having a wired connection. The transfer rates are fast as well. I generally find that when I'm copying a file from one computer to another then wired to wired is about 6mbps, and is it's to a non wired computer than it's about 5mbps: still one of the fastest transfer rates I've personally seen.

Other than that the features are fairly standard. I do have one serious issue with this router though. It does tend to drop out and loose signal if you're working on a wireless device. This can be incredibly frustrating knowing that it's the fault of the equipment, as I've noticed from friends and family that I know who own Belkin routers, and from the reviews other people have written on this product that I'm not an isolated incident. It's not overly frequent - about every three or four days and requires you to unplug the cord and reinsert for it to boot up again.

For me it's not my greatest concern as most of my items are wired but I know from experience that when you're doing something that involves a critical connection and the box stops working for no reason whatsoever, then it can be the most annoying thing on the planet!

Otherwise it's a great device, packed with internet security at its heart and is small, sturdy and cheap. If you plan to make the most out of the wireless functions and want it to be reliable though, maybe a different brand might suit you as I honestly cannot recommend this product on that basis from my own experience.

Summary: Great Product - If The Wireless Worked Perfectly It Would Be Faultless.

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