Belkin N1 Vision Wireless Router for Cable Connections

First, I am an IT professional of over 25 years. I can honestly say that this is the first bad Belkin Router I have come across. There are always bad 'apples' in a box, and you should not let that spoil the rest. But this router is just on the lowest end of the scale.AS A ROUTER (WIRED)I can give this product as a wired router 5 stars. Ease of use, setup, security, and speed. All top rate on the product I purchased.The problems come when you are 1... not using it just on wired connections, and 2, when you have multiple computers trying to connect to it.AS A WIRELESS ROUTERI can only give this router 1 star for wireless use. I can see for some people, if they are only using 1 wireless device/computer, and there are not many other routers in the area, it will work very well for them. I am sure as I have read all the reviews here, most without complaint.The problems come along when you have more than one wireless device.Even with PROTECTED mode switched on, one, or all devices, will very soon start to drop in speed, possible even lose connection to the router.Even upon reconnecting automatically back to the router, the device will not get a totally successful connection. The wireless device will need to be disabled and re-enabled, or the computer restarted.As an IT professional, it took me a good 2 hours of constantly adjusting many of the parameters, and channels that the router was broadcasting on, to get a setting that worked 'almost' satisfactory on 2 out of the 4 laptops I have trying to connect wirelessly. I have had to resort to only 2 laptops connecting wirelessly at a time. The correct channel on the router was the key. The one laptop that runs on 802.11g varies in speed from 36.0Mbps to 54.0Mbps. The 802.11n wireless laptop runs anywhere from 56.0Mbps to 144.0Mbps.Belkin claims speeds of up to 300Mbps. This must be when using only Belkin N1 products at both ends. With my 802.11n laptop 2 inches from the router, the maximum speed acheived was 144.0Mbps. Maybe if you switch of all security you can get closer to 300Mbps.VPN CONNECTIONI use a standard MS VPN connection to the office, and it seems to work fine. Using MS Outlook and Exchange, most of the time, it works without fault. There are times where MS Outlook cannot see of authenticate to the Exchange server, even though you can ping the server and see it outside of MS Outlook. This is NO FAULT of the Belkin N1 wireless router. After much research from myself and my colleagues in the office, we have to turn our attention to the internet providers and VPN connections. If you research the internet on your internet provider (one of the largers ones that also provides cable TV) VPN connections, and bandwidth limitation. You will find a number of articles where the internet provider is limiting connections when they see VPN bandwidth usage. The only way around this is to pay for a business connection, with a guaranteed high bandwidth. So, sometimes it may work, sometimes it may not. The best thing to do is when it's not working, reset your cable modem, release the IP and renew to another, and try again.OTHER FEATURESThe other features on the router seem to be very useful. The gigabit connection for wired devices, and statistical display. The display very useful for those times when you need to gauge whether or not you are getting your full bandwidth up, and down.OVERALLIf you are looking for a good wireless router, do NOT bother with the N1 Vision. If you want a router that sort of works, and looks pretty, with a few bells and whistles, then it is a good router for you.

I purchased this product to replace a Belking "Pre-N" router (which is Belkin's way of saying it's a wireless-G just like everyone else has) that was no longer functioning well.This unit comes with instructions to plug in the unit, type in an address in your browser's address bar and then follow the instructions to set it up. I followed the instructions in detail and they didn't work. When I attempted to follow the automated setup the router would freeze up, restart, close the internet connection and so forth. Each time it would freeze or close the internet connection either it would re-start the setup procedures or it would simply close the internet connection (thus forcing me to restart the setup procedures manually). Finally, I skipped the auto setup, typed in the IP address of the router in the address field and manually set it up.I wanted to use WPA security instead of WEP due to the increased security. I have five computers and they all support bot security types. All but one of the computers didn't connect to the router consistently with the WPA security. Most would connect, then restart the connection repeatedly. It became apparent that the router had an issue communicating, or that there was some sort ofa compatibility issueBelkin advertises that this unit connects at up to 300 Mbps. I have a brand new Dell laptop with a Wireless-N card and it would only connect to the router at a maximum speed of 164 Mbps (this is good compared to 54 Mbps, which is hat my Wireless-G router gave me, but it's still not 300). After a few hours though I began connecting at only 48 Mbps or even lower, despite not having made any changes to the router. I tried several locations in my home, restarted the router several times and nothing helped. I contacted Belkin tech support and their only response was to change the channel (which had previously been on Auto). I tried every channel and each had similirly poor results.I checked the router's pre-loaded firmware and found that it was not up to date. Apparently, according to Belkin's website, the firmware is two or three years old. I was very surprised they are sending out new equpiment with such old firmware. There have been two firmware updates and neither has been loaded into their routers. I downloaded new firmware and the router's "upload" and "browse" buttons on the update firmware page were disabled, giving me no way to update the firmware. I followed the update firmware instructions three times and got the same result so I know I was doing it right. I contacted tech support and got no response.Belkin advertises this as having a range of up to 1600 feet with ideal conditions. I can't comment on the range except to say that we had full signal from our master bedroom, which only had about 3 bars out of 5 with our Wireless-G router. That's abut the only good thing and I can't verify it. My suspicion is that this is range was probably obtained in an open field or something with no walls and with perfect weather and atmospheric conditions. I'm sure the stars were aligned and the Belkin techs consuled their palm reader to verify the location and time of day.I did find the router's external display to be unique and nice looking. Some reviewers have found this useful. Unfortunately, my router is usually in an office, closet or someplace out of the way so the display isn't very practical for me. The buttons on the display are also hard to push. I also got relatively clear audio with Skype, which wasn't possible with my Wireless-G router.Overall, this router doesn't meet my expectations or what I understood from the advertisement for speed, security, connectivity, compatibility or utility.

When I ordered this product, it was for 85 dollars here. 150 dollars on the Belkin store page. This router is everything you want in a router, and then some.First thing is that it's aesthetically pretty to look at. I have it standing up next to my PS3 and they compliment each other. The LCD screen always shows the date/time on it, at a glance. When my brother came to visit me, he didn't notice the little antennas off the back and assumed it was just a high-tech clock of some kind lol. It looks that nice.Next thing is no CD to set it up! You plug in ethernet to it, go to a webpage, and in 5 minutes it's set up. No exaggeration. It also broadcasts 2 wireless connections, one is the normal full access one, another is Guest. You can thumb through pages on the LCD to bring up the Guest PIN number to allow anyone visiting to log into your network as a guest, who can't access the other files on the network. Nice touch.Third, and a big concern to a lot of people, is range. I have it at one end of my apt. I can go outside, on the opposite side of the building, and still have a solid 1 bar connection (about 200 ft, with 3-4 walls inbetween). The speeds are excellent. I am actually a Cable Tech and have 15-20 mb down on a wired connection. Wirelessly, on my old dell inspiron, i'm pulling constant 14-15 mb downloads, 2 mb on uploads. Which is pretty much what I get right out of the modem.If you use your internet heavily, and want to upgrade to a great router at a very fair price point, this is your obvious choice.

I bought this Belkin N1 Vision in september, i had a brief try at installing it within the first 2 weeksthen tried again a few weeks later, no luck then finally tried this week. The instructions look very simple but alas they were not working for me, I had to phone belkin and was on the phone for nearly 2 hours, the first technician got my internet connection completely cut off, so i had to phone virgin to get me set up again,back at Belkin i was put through to a level 2 techi guy and he talked me through everything slowly as he could see i was now annoyed and wanted my money back ( which they refused and said you can only have a replacement)so finally i got it working and i am now wireless.So far so good, I am not sure if download speeds have been affected but it does appear that the daytime has got slower but than before but nightime was a breeze.The main complaint i have is the instructions don't actually make you wireless, they tell you how to put the plugs etc but it doesn't then tell you where to go to change your connections, so you can then removethe wires and be wireless.Hope it is easier for you than it was for me to set up.!

I recieved this product 3 weeks ago as a replacement for my original wireless G system which worked tirelessly for 4 years. Hence going for a BELKIN again. Bit concerned about the packaging - with such a sensitive bit of equipment it concerns me.Set up quite straight forward- just replacing old cables.When working really good - like the guest feature. However the LCD display is very basic - but does the job.However I'm having the odd problem with it 0- it keeps freezing a few times aday resulting in the need for a hard re-boot. Will be seeing how good the help system is over Easter.If this worked all the time definetly 5* (4* because of packaging)

I have had this for a month now, when its running ok its great, I get 19mb+ through it. It has crashed and locked up about 6 times now and when it does it is not usually just a case of rebooting the modem by disconnecting the power. I end up having to power down the router then the modem, apply power to the modem then the router. On the last occasion I ended up phoning virgin as I couldnt get a connection there answer was it was the routers firewall blocking everything, I had to power down as above, wait 2 minutes, then power up as above, then restart pc to get a connection. If things carry on this way, I may be contacting amazon for a cure or replacement. The router is already running the latest firmare as when you first plug it in it automatically checks for an upgrade.All in all,I would recomend this router because of the speed, previous routers I've had including a dlink "draft n" have started off with a decent speed but drop off after an hour or so,sometimes less, and i Have ended up with speeds of less than a couple of meg when paying for twenty. The belkin doesnt seem to suffer this problem giving me a fairly constant 19+ mb.

This router is not reliable, crashes all the time and then it failed completely and would even boot - just out of warranty of course!! I'm not the only one with these issues neither - my cousin had exactly the same router and his was also very temperamental and then failed too after less than a year.

Excellent Article . Excellent seller (IT Solutions). Excellent service.It's a good buy, I firmly recomend it. Very good communication with the seller, efficient enterprise.I'm in love with this model of router. In my opinion it is the best for its design and its features.