Home > Consumer Reviews > Belkin N1 Vision Wireless Router (F5D8232-4)

This router is sexy and cool, no doubt. The LCD makes a nice clock, and you can watch your upload and download speeds. :-)

The fun stops when you deviate slightly from typical home use and try to connect to your office VPN (virtual private network). Though Belkin claims that this device supports VPNs, there is one fatal flaw that prevents it from working well.

Non-geek speak: The router inserts itself into the process that converts names like "www.apple.com" into IP addresses like 17.251.200.32.

Geek speak: The router advertises ITSELF as the DNS resolver instead of what your internet service provider tells it to use. It acts as the middle-man (and caches the results as well) which causes some interesting problems that are annoying and hard to debug when trying to start an IPSEC+ModeConfig+XAUTH connection.

The current version of the firmware (v1000 1.00.15) also corrupts cached DNS entries over time, and subsequently responds with bogus IP addresses for names. Ugh.

Belkin confirms that there is no setting to turn this "feature" off.

Other than that, I really like the box and hate having to shelve it. :-)

Best looking router made, great coverage, fantastic speeds, VPN connection was broken until this weeks Firmware upgrade ver 1.1.15 i think? anyway get the router, then grab that firmware and you will be satisfied. Yeah it runs a little hot as some complain but i dont care i never have to reboot it, and the guest access is sweet. Easy to turn on and off. Had to get used to the interface and choices coming from the WRT54G, but its a good upgrade. Only thing its missing now is a way to do Network storage with the direct connect to a USB drive, but i hear thats not working well on Linksys devices either. So buy this shiny mug, and put it on your desk for all to admire.

Brent

I read many reviews and many said this product has problems and Belkin support sucks, yet I was doubting what they are saying because this router IS expensive, I thought how come Belkin would manufacture such expensive product and be that lousy....?

But... If you dare to connect any wireless device to the router, it will operate for 10 minutes then the whole thing will go down and you need to restart it!
I tried to connect using secured and unsecured wireless connections with ALL types of encryptions possible, same result.
Even through the nice option that it has as which is a "Guest" wireless network: same story.
Yet not all wireless devices connect to this router, my i-mate JAMin can't connect! It detects the network but no way it would connect! My brother has a linksys and the phone smoothly connects with its wireless link.
If someone from outside attempts to connect the router will still hang!)
So I ended up shutting down the wireless option and now it's a non-wireless router!

Yet, every week the router hangs at least once! and I need to unplug and plug it back again to power! soft restart won't work, the whole thing is jammed!

The buttons on the front are not something easy to press, you must have your hand behind the router and press with your thumb really hard, and I mean it! first couple of times I thought the buttons were not working!

The reason it is still on my desk (and that I gave it a second star) is that it's the only router -as far as I know- in the market with built in GIG-Ethernet switch because I need it for my network storage, and the fact that the display in the front is a smart idea, looks cool and very useful. Otherwise, this big expensive black box would have ended in the trash bin....

Now I'm looking for a cheap wireless access point to plug into my network.

This device is not worth to buy, I expect Belkin will launch soon a new product that will cover all the bugs of N1, especially that they did not release a new firmware that fixes these problems, which strongly hints that this is a hardware issue.

OH one more thing, I live in Dubai - United Arab Emirates, which means there is a SERIOUS issue with this product if even the stock that we got here has problems too!!!

Bottom line:
STAY AWAY.

EDIT:
Almost anything that you do with the router setup requires it to restart which is VERY annoying... I have never seen a router that requires restart just to change the port forwarding option!!! I was troublshooting a remote access problem and each time I change the port number or the destination IP Address it restarts to apply the changes, I really got frustrated and wasted much of my time, could've solved it in 15 minutes but took me 40 minutes just waiting for it to boot again and again...

EDIT JULY 7, 2009:
Belkin released a new firmware, it resolved the wireless bug that caused the router to freeze when wireless is enabled.
They also "fixed" the issue that the router has to completely restart if you change any tiny bit of its configuration. Now it just tells you to wait for 10 seconds to apply the new configurations. It is still annoying to wait 10 seconds, but at least you don't lose your internet connection.

However, the face that it took such a reputable company, 6 months, to release a new firmware to "fix" such HUGE problems, will not change my mind that this router is the least of my favourite.

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.

While I like the design of this router, it has proved to be incompatible with my MacBook. The MacBook is losing Internet connectivity several times a day. I have tried to troubleshoot this to no avail. Checkout Belkin's support page for this product. The entire support includes 3 FAQs and 2 troubleshooting tips. That should tell you something.

The router has limited configuration options. I wanted to turn off the "N" and force my Mac to connect at G. But with this router it is all or nothing.

I have applied both firmware updates over the last year, but these have made the problem worse.