Featured Category #1

Belkin N1 Vision Wireless Router F5D8232 4

Belkin N1 Vision Wireless Router F5D8232 4

Packaged in a new sleek and sophisticated design, N1 Vision offers the best in networking performance with its wireless (up to) 802.11n 3×3 radio design and wired gigabit ports. The N1 Vision wireless router continues Belkin’s commitment in providing the best user experience in the home market through its Plug-and-Play “CD-less” installation and simple network security setup.

User Ratings and Reviews

1 Star horrible consistancy
Pros: It looks pretty, finally a piece of home networking equipment that is nice to look at.

Cons: If you use skype, or play online games, or anything else that can’t be buffered expect to get disconnected at least every 2 hours. Belkin support will tell you to make changes to your computers when you can just go back to old hardware.

Summary: This is a good looking piece of equipment that doesn’t work. Being in constant communication from home to family and friends is just as important as streaming audio and onine games. But, this router doesn’t deliver. We get disconnected frequently from these services and though we can typically log back in, it’s fustrating and annoying. Belkin Support has requested that i make changes to the computers on my network instaead of making changes to the router itself when I can just replace the router and all the problems go away. Unless you like trying to fix other peoples mistakes this router isn’t for a consumer that wants reliable performance.

5 Stars Kinks Apparently Worked Out - Excellent, Fast, Beautiful, Highly Functional
I’m sorely tempted to call all of the earlier reviewers who slammed this router cry babies - or worse. My experience with this was 97% positive. But I understand that people bought these at various times from various places, and may have early versions of the hardware or firmware. That’s all I can think of to reconcile my experience with theirs. This is an awesome product, which I heartily endorse.

I got the newer version of the hardware (v2000) and it came with the latest firmware (2.00.03). Before you buy this, ask your retailer to confirm that they’ll send you v2000 hardware (or later) and not v1000, which most of the complainers likely have. You can download and install the latest firmware yourself if it’s not running the latest when you get it.

It was the easiest setup ever (I have Vista Home Premium) - I plugged it in, followed the 3 minute super simple instructions and voila! It is super fast, easily configurable; the LCD gives you lots of information, and allows you to change various settings with the pushbutton (including disabling/enabling the wireless aspect - no reason to have it broadcasting to all corners of my property when I’m sitting 5 feet from the router connected using Gigabit ethernet cable, or when I’m on vacation, etc.)

Speaking of the pushbutton . . . unless they have changed it to make it much better, it is just ridiculous to complain about how hard you have to push it. On a scale of 1-10, 1 being super easy to push, 10 being super hard, it’s a 5 or a 6. It’s not even close to being a problem.

Another complaint I found when I googled for reviews about this was that it ran hot. It doesn’t. At least mine doesn’t. It’s just slightly warm to the touch (compared to my Netgear Gigabit Switch, GS605, which could fry an egg).

The only problem I had was, with one of our laptops, it dropped the wireless connection every 35 seconds - over and over again - after I set the security to WPA-2. The solution was to set channel mode at 20MHz rather than 20MHz + 40MHz. It didn’t affect the speed at all, but cured the disconnecting problem immediately. The other laptops I tried with it had no problems whatsoever.

I bought this and then sort of held my breath while making sure I set it up within the return period (I sometimes let things sit around a couple of weeks until I have a lot of time), since there were so many horrible reviews. I’m SO glad I bought this. No regrets. It’s a beautiful piece of technology - near perfect, to me.

1 Star Abysmal Router - What a waste
Bought this router thinking it was advanced technology. This things is advanced garbage. The buttons have to be pushed with force to work. As far as the connection, our two computers constantly dropped connection or could not connect at all. Only after disabling the network security could we maintain a stable connection, and the transfer rate then was extremely slow. This router was a total waste of money. Thankfully, Best Buy accepts returns and exchanges.

4 Stars Easy setup, useful display, very good range and speed (ver. 2000, not 1000). See fix for disconnect every 2 hours.
I suspect most of the people with issues or complaints have version 1000 and / or old firmware.

Additionally one needs to use this in conjunction with 802.11n wireless adapters (preferably Draft 2.0 for future upgradability / compatibility) in order to obtain the maximum benefit out of the router, at least from a wireless performance perspective.

I recently purchased version 2000 of the N1 Vision (check the sticker on the bottom of the box). I have it mated with two PC’s with 802.11n Draft 2.0 (2T2R - 2 Transmit 2 Receive) wireless USB adapters (each with just an internal, but high quality, antenna).

I was up and running in no time.

I also had no problems using VPN to connect to my office network.

I am using WPA2 with AES encryption.

For extra security I have it set up with (broadcast SSID set to ‘off’ and have specifically only allowed my two wireless adapters by entering their MAC addresses in the ‘MAC address control’ of the router’s setup utility).

Upstairs (one room away from the N1 Vision I get 95 - 100% signal quality and 90+ signal strength with a pretty consistent connection speed of 270 Mbps! (not the full 300 maximum but certainly close enough for me).
Downstairs (one floor down and all the way on the other side of the house relative to the router), I get something like 45 - 75% signal strength depending where I am in the room. The speed varies between 45 Mbps, at worst (will have to verify this tonight as I only used it one night and believe this minimum can be improved upon), to a more typical 170 or 210 Mbps (wide range, I know, but I only tested it one night and haven’t tweaked settings or placement yet via the flexible silver mini extension cable).

The display is useful in that you can see who connected to your network in the past 24 hours (if an unexpected visitor enters your wireless network, at least you will have a way of knowing it).

I am pleased with the Vision N1’s speed, range and overall performance, other than the disconnect issue for which there is an easy enough workaround until they fix it permanently, hopefully, via a firmware upgrade for the 2000 model).

Keep in mind my testing was done using Draft 2.0 802.11n wireless USB adapters. Wireless G adapters won’t have the same performance or even close to it.

The one thing to note is that there is a known issue where some of the ‘version 1000′ units of the N1 Vision disconnect every two hours (wireless or all around). This occurs when the router software connects to the time server to get the time (check the router setup page’s security log and you can see the entries every two hours).

There is a firmware fix for this, but the N1 Vision 1000 hardware has other issues (reported overheating etc.).

I gave it 4 stars due to the issue with it disconnecting every 2 hours and the fact that version 2000 does NOT have a firmware fix for this, even though the older version does.

This should have been caught during pre-release testing. If not, at worst, a firmware fix should have been created for version 2000 very early on.

2 Stars Not good for more than one wirless device….
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 ROUTER

I 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 CONNECTION

I 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 FEATURES

The 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.

OVERALL

If 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.

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