Customer Reviews

Belkin F5D8230-4 Wireless 802.11x Pre-N Router

5 star:		(119)
4 star:		(27)
3 star:		(17)
2 star:		(23)
1 star:		(40)

 

 

This router was so easy to install, it was scary! After years of living in "Linksys hell" with their "b" router, version 2, I decided to take a chance on a new, highly-rated router. Out of the box, I had the Belkin installed and working immediately in 10 minutes or less!! I'm just an average user, but I highly recommend this router to anyone who is thinking of switching to wireless networking in their home. Well worth the money to upgrade.

I loved the Belkin at first but as I got to know it, I found this item wanting greatly. I read about similar bad experiences online -- just google search Belkin pre-N crashes -- with the Belkin Pre-N router and with the Linksys WRT54GX (essentially the same router, both with identical chipsets using the Broadcom BCM4704 processor). I had been having all manner of problems with my Belkin Pre-N for some time. So I finally decided to rate this product negatively. As an aside, I have just ordered a Netgear RangeMax NEXT Wireless Router with Gigabit Ethernet from Amazon to replace it after reviewing a bunch of positive reviews on the new slew of routers based on Airgo's Gen 3 chipsets.

I loved the Belkin at the start. It had amazing range in the two environments I deployed it in. In fact, when I bought it, I took my laptop outside and walked 300 feet into the park adjacent to my house before I lost the signal. It has amazing range and no dead spots unlike the D-Link DI-624M I upgraded from.

But, ultimately, the Belkin has been trouble for various reasons. First, it really never provided the throughput boost I needed. It averaged 1.8MBps (14.4mbps) on the wireless side (with the paired Pre-N card) and about 7MBps (56mbps) on the wired side. PCMag reviewed it saying they got 40mbps paired with the Pre-N card. Then there's the wired side. Nowadays, all decent new computers including my laptop have had gigabit Ethernet as standard for a couple of years now. I don't know why these wireless routers don't provide gigabit wired as standard.

But, my real problem came from the constant crashing. Today for example, I was streaming iTunes to an Airport running Firefox and transfering large files via pcAnywhere on the Network and....boom, crash, dead wireless link. I couldn't get the thing to communicate wirelessly to anything on the network, so I had to go and manually restart. What a pain. This happens multiple times daily and has become a real bore.

So, finally I figured out where the problem lies. It's all on the wireless side. I ran some heavy simultaneous traffic through the router for 5 minutes today (large file transfer via pcAnywhere, Internet usage, iTunes wirelss transfer and streaming video from my server). The router crashed. I couldn't connect to other computers on the network from my laptop, I had zero Internet access, and iTunes stopped streaming. Then I transferred part of the traffic load to the wired ports and tried the same experiment. The router crashed again within 5 minutes. But, this time I checked the computers on the wired side and they worked flawlessly, everything was humming on all cylinders, file transfer, Internet access, you name it.

So, my diagnosis is that the chipsets in these models based on Airgo True Mimo Gen 1 cannot handle heavy wireless traffic. They simply crash the wireless side of the router after a point without affecting their wired routing ability. The DHCP lists are still operable with the IP addresses reserved as before, but there is simply no access to the wireless router clients while the wiredclients remain unaffected.

I've decided to give up after months of this type of unreliability and am going to move to a model based on Gen 3 True Mimo with Gigabit Ethernet. From what I have read they have the same or better range, better wireless throughput than wired fast ethernet (100mbps) and gigabit wired ports. I just hope they can handle the traffic. Only time will tell.

As for the Belkin Pre-N Router, I am extremely disappointed and would rate it 2 stars out of 5. Good range, mderate throughput. But it simply can't handle heavy wireless traffic loads.

Here's the situation, if you need to expand your wireless coverage on a G. network or B. then this router will do the trick. Have been using this for more than a week now and the throughput is amazing, superfast. All my G. signals are pegged!

N. products will not be out for about a year. So if you drop the cash on this bad boy. You'll have some time before that standard comes out. And it will improve your reception of any networks you have up and running now. One computer I had running on G. in another house from the router was low about 50% reception is now running at 100% and never fluctuates.

So instead of buying a range booster. I just bought this bad boy.

I still haven't got it to work with my Linksys network storage drive, but I'll figure that out eventually. (This problem has been fixed). What I had to do was change the IP from 192.168 2.1 to 192.168.1.1 and a storage Link showed up fine!

Overall, I'm very happy with this product I bought this because of the fact that the N will not be out for a year or more so if I invest in this now. It's not like it will be quickly replaced.

Peace out

In this review I am going to talk about my experiences with the Belkin F5D8230-4 Pre-N router and its companion, the Belkin F5D8010 Wireless Pre-N card.

But first, let me talk about my experiences with routers in general.

I have owned a half dozen routers throughout my home computing years. All of them have been Linksys brand simply because I always felt that they were the most reliable router company for the home consumer market. Up until recently, I have never had a single problem with a Linksys router.

In January 2006 I bought the Linksys WRT54GX4 which was touted as their newest most powerful flagship router capable of broadcasting Internet at high speeds throughout a large home. This was important for me since I have a very large house with multiple levels and a deck outside -- all places I would want to access the Internet from via my laptop.

The Linksys WRT54GX4 actually worked rather well for the first three months UNTIL I purchased a duo-core IBM Thinkpad laptop and started experiencing all sorts of problems. After a week of research I discovered that the Intel 3945ABG network card that is installed on most Duo-Core laptops has a compatability problem with certain Linksys routers. So, if your laptop is having such problems connecting to a Linksys router -- you now know the deal.

I had to find a new router. It had to be powerful and it had to be easy to configure. Someone on one of the Internet forums I frequent suggested purchasing a Belkin Pre-N router. That person claimed that it did a great job broadcasting an Internet signal throughout his large home.

I went to my local retailer and bought the Belkin F5D8230-4 Pre-N router.

Now I must say at this point that the first one I bought was defective right out of the box. The wireless function would not work. Belkin customer support suggested I return it for another. Fortunately, the replacement worked perfectly! Please don't let this experience deter your purchase decision as I feel the end result is worth the fact that sometimes these things happen.

Let me also say that despite many negative comments I have read on the Internet, Belkin support was very obtainable over the phone, though the guy I spoke to didn't seem very knowledgeable about the product as he had to refer to his manual to address the initial problems I was having before determining I had a defective unit.

Right out of the box, I was sort of surprised at the look of the router. Unlike the clunky Linksys I was replacing, the Belkin looked more like an elaborate paperweight. The design was more sleek and low-key than what I had seen in previous routers.

One of the most amazing aspects of this router outside of its performance is the ease of installation. For most people including myself, router installation and configuration is one of the most cumbersome tasks you don't want to deal with. Well folks, I am here to tell you that Belkin has made the process an absolute no-brainer. You simply pop in the supplied CD and via a on-screen walk-through process, my router was working in under 5 minutes. This was far easier to install than any Linksys router I have previously used. Kudos to Belkin!

So let's talk about performance...

The Belkin F5D8230-4 router performed just as I expected. It provided ample coverage throughout my home -- no more or less than the Linksys router I had replaced. I was somewhat dissatisfied with the loss of signal in the farthest reaches of my home and on the outside deck, and I needed something that would boost signal strength. Enter the F5D8010 Wireless Pre-N card.

Within days I ordered the Wireless Pre-N card hoping that it would increase overall coverage in my home as the manufacturer had promised. Upon arrival, I installed the software and then the card into the cardbus slot of my PC.

Now this is important: many have recommended that you do not install the software that comes on the installation CD but rather download it off of Belkin's website as it is more current. I took that advice to heart and had the software and card installed within minutes.

Well, the Belkin F5D8010 Wireless Pre-N card did EXACTLY what it promised to do. My signal strength almost doubled. My WiFi strength meter went from 2 bars to 4 (out of 5). Surfing speed dramatically increased. It was almost as if my laptop was hardwired to the cable itself.

I was now able to use my laptop in areas that I could not before. As expensive as this combination of router and card was (about $200), it was worth every penny to get this sort of coverage with absolutely no dropouts or disconnects.

I would highly, highly recommend the combination of Belkin Pre-N router and PC card if you are looking for amazingly powerful coverage for a large living area.

This product was easy to initially install and get working. I never had a range problem with my older SMC router, but it eventually just stopped working, so decided to give the Belkin a try because of the good press reviews. Mistake!

I experimented with both the 64 and 128 bit encyption. Even when the client is just a few feet away from the router, the wireless connection goes up and down. I have had the same experience with a few different client PCs and 2 different Belkin routers in 2 different locations, DSL and cable internet connections - not that it should matter. The clients had various wireless adapters including a Belkin adapter. Same issue in every case. No encryption no problem, turn on encryption and you get a flaky connection.

The other very annoying thing is you can change the router options and apply them on the fly but the router software does not indicate you need to reboot. The changes sometimes do take effect, but unless you reboot the router, the wireless connection is flaky even if disable encryption.

I described my problems to Belkin tech support and their first suggestion was to lower or drop the encryption. What does that tell you?

If encryption is a requirement for you, I would suggest checking the competition.

This Belkin router is not the drop in wireless router that the marketing folks glamorize, but it does offer great coverage.

Items of note:
1) Probably the single most important thing to know before you go to buy this router is that ICMP must be enabled on your ISP's network or you won't be able to use this device as a router.

ICMP communications are used for many tasks. One is to "ping" another machine and see if it is responding. Sadly, many hackers use ICMP communications to find out information about a network and then use that information to launch attacks. Belkin routers ping your specified DNS server to find out if it is reachable. If the ping fails, the router assumes it is not connected to the internet and refuses to work as a router. (After you configure it the settings stay for 30 seconds until a timeout waiting for the ping response fails and then it clears out all the settings and says it is disconnected.)

The problem is that many ISP's are disabling ICMP communications on their networks to reduce hack attacks. If your provider has done this (or plans to in the future) you can't use this device as a router (only as an over priced WAP.) If you are seriously considering this device a) ping your DNS server and see if you get a response (if you don't know how to ping you are probably in over your head with this router and should consider using a Linksys) if you do get a response, b) contact your ISP and see what plans if any they may have for disabling ICMP communications as this will determine the lifespan of your router.

2) All of the installation software and documentation assumes that you have 1 computer connected to one modem. If you are buying this router as an upgrade or to otherwise replace an existing router, I would suggest that you first regress and reconfigure to connect to the internet without your existing router, before begining the install. Customer service was not sure what would happen setting wise if you had a router in place when you ran the install software and thus can't tell you much debug wise.

3) Customer support is about as bad as it gets. I spent 5 hours one Friday night trying to get this system installed. Then after going through the basics again with the customer support person she finally told me that she would have to escalate the call and someone would call me back within the hour. That was 1am Saturday. She verified that I would still be available in 1 hour so I hung in there... I kept doing other stuff and even caught a late night movie, but no call so I went to bed at 4am. On Tuesday, at 4:30pm I finally got a call from the escallation team. BTW, the escallation team is only available business hours M-F, so you might have to take off from work to debug an issue if you plan to use this device at home. For those accustomed to the Linksys support site, you find almost nothing at Belkin.


Long story short: The wireless portion of the router works great, though I can't compare it to any other wireless router as I was wired before. I've had to keep my old Linksys router in place at the modem and just piggy back this Belkin router onto it as nothing more than a wireless access point because of the ICMP issues. One can only hope they will come out with a firmware upgrade, but the escallation folks said nothing was planned.

If I had to do it over again... I think hard about a Linksys again.

I have a whole mountain of wireless routers, access points, and so on. Always either disappointing or annoying - or both
Now I have the claimed range and peformance. My Belkin does not drop the entire network to 802.11b speeds if a single 11b (like a print server or old laptop) is present.
I highly recommend this item, I've tried the competition & this is better. Its great for extending the reach of your network and/or keeping your .11g speeds in a mixed wireless environment

I don't know why others say they have problems, but this card worked right out of the box, with the included software with no problems at all.

With the associated F5D8230-4 Pre-N router, it connects at 108 Mbps, which is faster than the ethernet cards in most computers. In other words, it's faster than running a cable. I tested it with the laptop by copying a few files and timing them. I can't tell the difference between using the Belkin wireless components with the laptop at the far end of the house, or bringing the laptop to the router and using a cable for the connection. The network performance monitor built-into XP shows the same speed.

My other laptop connects to at its fastest speed, 11 Mbps, and when it does, it doesn't slow down the first laptop connected at 108 Mbps, both laptops perform at their maximum.

The signal strength is hard to measure because the little guages in XP may not be linear, but where I would get one or two bars before, I now get every bar lit most of the time. The signal strength seems better and I can use the laptops around to corners where they didn't work before, and even on the back porch.

I'm using WPA-PSK with a long password with no problem. I was previously using a Linksys with only WEP and it was cracked. Using a network monitor, I found someone could crack any password within a few hours and they were using my connection to download illegal music or video, I'm not sure which. With WPA there has been no outside access to this network even with the much stronger signal it has. So yes, WPA-PSK does indeed work, and the earlier review stating that it doesn't is inaccurate if my components are typical. He must have had a defective one.

My old Linksys router and WAP were versions 1, and they were nothing but headaches to upgrade and maintain. The software interface for the card and the html interface for the router make them very easy to manage. All in all, I'm extremely happy with this system.

I bought this to replace my D-Link 624 due to it cutting out and degraded performance over time (probably due to the increase of other wireless networks in my apartment complex).

The good: This blows away my old router in speed. No dropouts, just solid performance. Installation was pretty easy...

...until I got to setting up my VNC, Web, & FTP servers...

The bad: The firewall stinks. You have very limited configuration options. Port forwarding also doesn't work correctly. If you want to host a website, FTP server, VPN, VNC, etc on your network to view or access from the outside world... This router will not work for you. Read the other negative reviews about this. There are workarounds, another reviewer on here used his old router (with the wireless disabled) to handle WAN traffic, and this one to handle the wireless. Ugh!

Advanced power users BEWARE!!! Regular users will never know and this will be a great product for them. CNET editors rated this #1 which is why I bought it. Unfortunatly I've lost some confidence in their editor picks.

I am very pleased with this router. Installation had a hickup, but it was my fault, I tried to install another device on the router during the quick setup which confused it. I was able to quickly resolve it after reading the manual. Yes, sometimes you have to read the manual...

I have 2 notebooks with 102.11b adapters, and 2 desktops with 102.11g adapters on my network. I was looking for a WAP that would increase my signal strength, and was not looking for faster speed.

Having had good success with previous Linksys routers, I bought the new WRT54GX2. I had a horrible time with the Linksys device. The setup was straight forward, but I experienced a 4X slower speed with the 102.11b adapters, and a 2X slower speed with the 102.11g adapers. I spent hours with Linksys support to no avail.

So I decided to do some research and the reviews were overwhelmingly in favor of this Belkin router/wap. So I decided to try it. It actually works as advertised. I am seeing a better than 20% signal strength improvement with the b/g adapters. The speed has actually improved. And the signal strength is as good as the new Linksys. I have no problems with PPTP and VPN connections, even though I have read other reviews complaining of issues. I have actually never experienced any drop outs either. Playing internet games on a WAP is always a problem, and my son connects directly to the router because of these issues.

The bottom line is it works. No more, no less.