- The Good: Simple setup; excellent performance; greatly improved coverage and reception over previous generation of WiFi gear.
- The Bad: Dynamic IP address allocation occasionally caused a brief conflict between systems on network; mode to prevent router from broadcasting its presence to other WiFi gear caused compatibility problems with an older 802.11b card.
- The Verdict: Wifi gear like Belkin's 54g line has become so cheap, reliable and easy to set up, it's a no-brainer if you want to install a home network.
- Reviewed on: Cicero (Future Shop) 3.06 GHz Pentium 4 PC with an Intel D845GERG2LK motherboard, 1GB of PC2100 DDR memory, an ATI Radeon 9800 video card with 128MB of video memory, Windows XP Home, a Maxtor 250GB SATA hard drive running at 7,200 RPM, and a KDS Rad-7c LCD panel.
REVIEW:
WiFi gear used to be a pain to work with — install the drivers, set up the hardware carefully to maximize the signal strength, deal with a slew of arcane Windows network settings, wave a dead chicken over a witch's brew pot at midnight while reciting the right incantations, and you just might get a connection that worked. WiFi has come a long, long way in a short time, though, and Belkin's 54g lineup is a prime example.
Belkin's updated WiFi line for Macs, PCs, Linux and Unix clients is based on the 802.11g WiFi networking standard. It works at a maximum throughput of 54 Mbps with other 802.11g equipment on the network, although based on the WiFi transmission protocol's overhead, the distance between nodes and the amount of radio interference in the area you can usually bank on a peak speed in terms of actual data transmission that averages in the low 40-Mbps range in terms of actual data throughput.
The 54g gear is also compatible with 802.11b WiFi equipment — the 11 Mbps hardware that's been around for several years. All the models in the 54g line automatically throttle up to 54 Mbps or down to 11 Mbps depending on the type of WiFi hardware they're linking to.
WIRELESS GATEWAY/ROUTER:
The flagship product in the 54g line is the 802.11g Wireless DSL/Cable Gateway Router, which has a suggested price of $189.99 (U.S.). Besides the 54 Mbps 802.11g radio modem, it also has a four-port high-speed switch, with four wired 10/100Base-T Ethernet ports. This is really handy for expanding your network or adding wired machines, and the four-port design is generous - many competing units only have three ports.
The WiFi radio uses the 2.5 GHz frequency, and has a range of up to 1,800 feet under ideal conditions (with a stress on the "ideal"). I tested it on a home network, and was able to get consistently good coverage upstairs, on the main floor and even in a basement office where other WiFi units have failed to send a reliable signal.
If you have 802.11b clients on the network, though, it will slow things down to 11 Mbps as I mentioned. To keep things running at 54 Mbps speeds, there's a "turbo mode" that basically turns off the 802.11b compatibility. It only allows 802.11g clients to connect, so you get top-speed data throughput.
I also tested the unit with WiFi PCI and PC Cards from two other vendors, and had no problems with reception. Both 802.11b and 802.11g units had equally good reception, and there were no compatibility headaches.
The main issue I had is with a useful security setting that prevents the router's wireless access point from broadcasting its ID — WiFi-equipped computers have to know the router's SSID in advance in order to make a connection. This worked like a charm in conjunction with new Belkin 54g equipment I was testing the network with — a notebook and a desktop card. But with WiFi cards from another vendor, and with one of Belkin's own (albeit older) 802.11b wireless adapters, the computers were unable to connect with the router. With the security feature disabled, though, everything worked like a charm.
Only one other performance issue cropped up during my testing. A couple of times a week, I'd get a message that the router — running DHCP so that it assigned IP addresses dynamically as clients logged on — had detected an IP address conflict between two computers on the network. The message would pop up, then the router would resolve the conflict within a second or so, and the warning would go away. When I switched to another WiFi router the problem didn't crop up, so I'm assuming it was a glitch in the Belkin unit even though I couldn't track down the cause. It didn't have a serious impact on performance, though, and as I said, the problem solved itself within a second or so each time.
Setting up the router is a breeze. You plug an ethernet cable from its WAN port into your high-speed Internet modem (one RJ45 Ethernet cable included). Then you plug a PC's ethernet cable into one of the router's ports, call up the PC's browser, and type in a preset IP address. The address gives you access, through the browser, to the router's setup menu. From there you can feed in your ISP account information, turn on the 64- or 128-bit WEP security, set passwords, activate the various security features (such as MAC addressing, SSID blocking, and so on), and that's it. There's also a built-in NAT and SPI firewall to guard against intruders and port-probes.
You can also update the router's firmware through the browser interface, a simple matter of clicking on a hotlink, downloading a file and running it.
The browser setup system's menu is excellent. It's clearly laid out and has good explanations of each setting to describe what you're tinkering with. My only criticism is that while some of the explanations are clear, they're fairly techie and wouldn't be much help to novice networkers. Simple warnings about what you can and can't tinker with safely would have been helpful. The older Belkin routers also walked you through the setup process, whereas the new browser-based setup utility leaves you to visit each tab and figure out what you need to modify by yourself.
There's also a built-in "Easy Install Wizard" that is designed to automatically detect your Internet settings and set up the Router, but it only works if your broadband modem is already directly connected to the PC where the software is loaded. If you're replacing a wired router, you'll have to input the settings manually or reconfigure everything to use the wizard. The browser-based router setup utility is so easy, though, that most people probably won't need the wizard anyway.
The hardware is very well designed. It's about twice the size of the Belkin 802.11b wireless routers, but much of the extra size is airspace. This is a good thing, because the boards are suspended in the chassis rather than being sandwiched tight inside a plastic case the way they were on older Belkin units. The ventilation is much-improved, and the 54g gateway routers run noticeably cooler than their predecessors. There's a full status display, with LEDs showing which ports are active, which are transmitting, whether there are any network faults, and so on. The 54g wireless router also comes with a bracket so that it can sit flat on the desk, or up on its side to save space.
The router is covered by a lifetime warranty and free 24-hour tech support. It also comes with a six-month trial of a parental Internet content-filtering service to make sure kids can't access smut when they're supposed to be doing research for their homework.
The content filter offer has caused Belkin some grief, though. The problem was that Belkin's setup has a window that offers the six-month trial of the parental control software. If the user closed the option box without answering yes or no, a glitch caused the offer to keep popping up. As a result, every eight hours, a random computer on the network would get a add for a trial version of parental control software instead of the Web page the person had meant to go to. I didn't have this problem because I answered "no" to the original offer, and Belkin has shipped a patch to fix the problem for anyone who just closed the window during setup.ACCESS POINT:
Belkin also offers an 802.11g Wireless Network Access Point for $174.99 (U.S.). It looks almost identical to the company's wireless gateway/router, except that it only has one ethernet port and has no built-in firewall.
The access point can be used to add a wireless network through an existing wired gateway/router. Plug it into an open ethernet port on the router (cable included), run the browser-based configuration utility by typing the preset IP address into any computer on the network, and you suddenly have 11/54 Mbps wireless ability on your existing network.
You can also plug the access point into an ethernet port on a wireless gateway router (such as Belkin's 54g unit) to create a second WiFi network in the same area. This is handy if, say, you want to stream audio and video content through the home. You can load all this bandwidth-intensive traffic onto one wireless network, and run a second network for Internet access and file/printer sharing among PCs in the home or small office. Setup was a snap — it took me less than two minutes to add a second WiFi network this way.
Belkin's access point has one more trick up its sleeve, too, but it only works with other Belkin 54g products. You can use the access point to bridge a wireless connection. This basically turns the access point into a repeater — it receives a wireless signal, then sends it on again. You'd do this to boost the signal in area of a building were the WiFi signal is too weak using a single gateway/router alone. You program the access point as a repeater, then place it as far from the router as you can and still get a reliable signal. The access point will then repeat the signal, extending the range of your network.
The access point has the same "turbo mode" as the gateway/router, locking out 802.11b gear to speed up the network segment if you so choose.
CLIENT ADAPTERS:
Rounding out the 54g line are Belkin's 802.11g Wireless Desktop Network Card and Notebook PC Card. Both sell for a suggested price of $99.99 (U.S.).
Both are compatible with 802.11b and 802.11g gear, and feature the 802.11g-only "turbo mode" as well. Like the router and access point, the 802.11g wireless cards also offer 64- and 128-bit encryption.
Again, setup here is easy. Install the hardware - slip the PC Card into a PC Card slot, or install the PCI Card in an open slot in your desktop — then load the drivers. There's a wizard that walks you through all the necessary settings to connect to a WiFi access point, set up security, activate the turbo mode, and so on.The notebook card looks like any standard PC Card — install the drivers, plug it in and you're off to the races. The antennae is built in, so there's nothing to break off in transit. The reception was good — noticeably better than competing 802.11g hardware I've tried, in fact, and it blows away the performance of Belkin's older 802.11b gear. In a basement room where 802.11b cards had trouble getting any signal at all, the Belkin 54g PC Card was able to pull in and maintain an average signal strength of about 60 per cent.
The desktop network card is a PCI circuit board with an aerial that sticks out from a PCI card opening at the back of a computer. The PCI card's aerial's reception is even better than the PC Card's, likely because it's more substantial. Still, that aerial has to stick straight up, and it can block things like USB, sound and video ports in cards located above it. You can twist it to one side to avoid these ports, but the aerial works best when it's exactly vertical.
A better bet is to add Belkin's $24.99 (U.S.) add-on Desktop Antenna. It's an aerial on a flat base, on the end of a five-foot cord. The PCI card's aerial simply unscrews, and you screw the Desktop Antenna's cable into the empty socket. It works with Belkin's desktop cards (the router and access point aerials don't unscrew), and should work with other vendors' products that use a standard screw-in aerial (an SMA reverse male connector). It's also compatible with both 802.11b and 802.11g signals.
The cable gives you much more flexibility in terms of antenna placement than just relying on a PC Card's protruding antenna. You can move it around to improve the signal, get it up above the PC where reception might be stronger, and so on. It also lets you move the omni-directional aerial away from the PC and all its electrical components to minimize any interference with the WiFi signal.
In my tests, with a little experimentation in terms of placement, the Desktop Antenna usually gained me a minimum of about 15 per cent in terms of signal strength and reliability, and in a couple of instances this increased my actual throughput (WiFi throughput slows down as the signal degrades — the better the signal, the faster the throughput).
Overall, there's very little to pick on with Belkin's 54g line. The gear is easy to set up, it performs well, and the reception is excellent. If you're considering a wireless network for your home or small office, or an upgrade to faster WiFi technology, it's never been easier than this.
