Home > Consumer Reviews > Belkin F5D5230-4 Cable/DSL Gateway 4 Port Router

... Right outta the box it I was up and running in less than five minutes after having set up my network and cable modem. I have a desktop and laptop hooked to the router...

The router though lets me transfer data between the two networked computers at blazing speeds. 700 megs in about 5 minutes. This is mainly due to a 300 P2 laptop hooked to a Belkin network card in a PCMCIA slot which is not as fast as my PCI based desktop NIC. The laptop's HD has sub-standard read and write speeds. Setup with the router was easy and considering I knew nothing about networking beforehand it was a plus.

All in all this router is in the economy price range and it works well providing your ISP is up to speed. I've never been disconnected from the cable except during Hurricane Lili...and that was for about 12 hours because of power lines down.

With Time Warner Road Runner service being the only broadband service available in the Houma, La. area I signed on with the early bird service which quickly turned into a beta test for them. The first two weeks were blazing speed. 1.8 to 2 megs a sec transfer rate, all the time, any time. This is with firewall and NAT enabled on the router. I used all the default settings and no firmware update. Right outta the box it I was up and running in less than five minutes after having set up my network and cable modem. I have a desktop and laptop hooked to the router. I've been losing bandwidth ever since and after many phone calls discovered it's not the router's fault. Time Warner-Houma only set up 2 T-1 lines and expected to feed a town of 90,000 on that. They signed on 300 customers and the two T-1's are woefully inadequate. Now they've stopped signing on additional users till they figure it out. There's plans for a T-3 line and as to how many I do not know. All I know as for now as long as I call and complain they cut my bill in half and that's what I was paying for dial up. The on average 600 k a sec bandwidth is better that the 3 or 4 K I got with dial up.

Check with your cable or DSL provider before blaming the router. It will move some serious data when connected properly on the cable company's end. I've learned through many phone calls that none of the workers in Houma even have a clue as to what they are dealing with. Like I mentioned earlier they are new to this and it's still in beta testing here.

The router though lets me transfer data between the two networked computers at blazing speeds. 700 megs in about 5 minutes. This is mainly due to a 300 P2 laptop hooked to a Belkin network card in a PCMCIA slot which is not as fast as my PCI based desktop NIC. The laptop's HD has sub-standard read and write speeds. Setup with the router was easy and considering I knew nothing about networking beforehand it was a plus.

All in all this router is in the economy price range and it works well providing your ISP is up to speed. I've never been disconnected from the cable except during Hurricane Lili two weeks ago and that was for about 12 hours because of power lines down.

it is very easy to setup and very fast and almost as good as linksys and d-link, great for the price. although do have some difficulties with having the voice chatting enabled

EZ to use, sets up in seconds. Best Router I've used to date, The firmware is so simple.

I received this Belkin 4-Port Cable/DSL Router as a gift for Christmas, which is why I gave it two stars--it was free! If I had paid for this, it would have been given less.

The documentation is very inadequate. While you're navigating through the web-based setup, it often refers you to the user manual for detailed help...unfortunately the help in the manual is exactly the same as the web-based setup screens. Belkin needs some major improvement in this area.

The biggest problem I have with this hunk of junk is that it keeps getting disconnected from my cable modem. I currently use a Toshiba PCX1100U cable modem. Before hooking up this router, I had always achieved very high speeds without ever experiencing a single problem. Once I hooked this router up, the problems started. If you're browsing webpages, and ONLY webpages, you should be okay. But it seems that as soon as you start to download a file of decent size, it disconnects you from the cable modem. Naturally, Belkin's website and technical support also leave something to be desired.

So, in a nutshell, save your money and go look for another brand of cable router such as a D-Link or Linksys. I've heard great things about the D-Link!