Home > Consumer Reviews > Belkin Wireless-G Router DSL/Cable Gateway

I bought this product and was simply unable to get it to work. It did not even work wired in (ethernet cable connected from modem to router to computer). I had to return this item to the store.

We bought this router from Best Buy and it worked fine for 5-6 months but then it stopped working suddenly. We asked Belkin for a replacement (as the warranty was still valid). Belkin sent us a "new" router that is a royal pain. It works in spurts and needs to be restarted via a LAN cable from a specific Windows laptop every 6 hours. This is a ridiculous excuse for a router. Do not buy. We should have stuck to D-Link routers, our last router from D-Link was fantastic, it worked for 4 yrs inspite of hundreds of physical falls.

First of all, as proved by many computer experts, the performance Wi-Fi and 802.11x devices are far less reliable than 10/100/1000 Mbps 802.3 Ethernet NICs. If you decided to buy one 802.11b/g/n router in order to get the "wireless" convenience, be prepared to face the inconvenience of some new problems.

I have used several brands and models of wireless routers (including Linksys, Belkin, and Netgear) in the past three years. None of them were perfect and I had to spend some time to figure out how to work around some technical problems. This one is my latest router and I have been using it for five months. I have to say, this one has many functions that I like, it is usable, but the reliability is not good.

I really spent some time to find the firmware upgrade web page from Belkin, as the automatic upgrading function seemed not working. Belkin does not have a direct link from the product page of this model.

The reason that I was trying to upgrade the firmware was that the router didn't support Wi-Fi constantly, and pushing the "reset" button or rebooting the router didn't always help. After the firmware upgrade, it still has some problems, including:

- The web mode to configure the router does not work in many popular browsers such as firefox, if an administrator password is enabled. Every time after I input the password, it will report error. But thank God, I found Opera browser works in my Linux system.

- Sometimes even though I set up the administrator password, I can still configure the router without inputting the password. This is definitely a security hole. The router doesn't support cookies. Instead, it uses IP address to recognize a user, but IP address can be customized easily by anybody who wants to initiate an attack.

- The DHCP for WAN (Internet) does not work well sometimes. When electricity is out for several seconds, it may take a long time to get the DHCP work. To avoid this problem, I use static IP for both WAN (if allowed by ISP) and LAN. Sometimes, however, similar problems are caused by the DSL or cable modem.

Since this router also has functions such as port forwarding and several WPA modes, which is much safer than WEP.

[Added on Nov.11, 2009]. I'm still using this router, and so far I have no plan to replace it as long as it is still working.

The Belkin uses the Broadcom wireless chipset, the same as Linksys, Apple, HP / Compaq, and many others, yet it costs far less. It's also got good parental control features that are free for the first six months. I got one for under $30 with free shipping and no rebate.

i have used dlink, netgear and the linksys but belkin tops them all. its simply PnP. no need to do all of the setup unless you really want to. dlink was good but their customer service was as bad as one can imagine. belkin got lifetime warranty and life time customer support. i had it installed in my basment and i was able to get a "good" or "very good" signal in my bedroom on the second floor.