Belkin N1 Wireless Router

Comment: I bought this router about a year ago. It was a complete disaster. After several hours over several days dealing with well-meaning but underinformed tech support people in India the problem was escalated to an American English speaker who deemed my unit defective and offered an exchange. I had no use for an exchange by then as I was forced to buy a router that worked (Apple Airport Extreme). No refund was offered. I accepted the exchange thinking I would sell it on Craigslist. No one on Craigslist wanted the new unit, even at half price, smart people. Needing a router with more reach at another location a year later, I hooked up the new Belkin N1. Before configuring it I checked for updates using the Safari browser. No updates were available so I set it up. It failed again. Any change of the SSID or the channel caused the router to stop broadcasting. After 45 minutes on the phone with Musharraf in tech support we discovered that Safari does not see Belkin updates. Musharraf was very helpful but had to put me on hold three times to figure out the problem. After using Firefox to find and install the update, the Belkin seemed to work fine, sort of fine. It had about the same range as my Airport Express despite claims for greater reach. That evening I discovered that about 90% of the radio stations I listen to online were no longer available. The next morning my email was no longer connecting. I switched back to the Airport Express and the problems evaporated. I still need more reach than the Airport Express has. I will set up another Airport Extreme/Airport Express WDS network like I have in my other house. The Airport options are not without problems but they work most of the time. A word to readers of these reviews: People who spend money on things like to think they have made a good choice. These types of reviews are always skewed toward the positive. Read the negative reviews and decide for yourself if the reviewers know what they are talking about.

Comment: Router runs fine when in unsecured mode. When security is activated, it works for a short period of time then shuts down all wireless connectivity. Belkin refuses to provide fix or replacement.

Comment: This router caused frequent disconnects with the PSN, even when I bought a long Ethernet cord and wired it in directly. I tried various settings found online to clear this issue up, some of which were not available in the router configuration page. Nothing worked. I switched back to the router that came with my internet service, and all of the issues cleared up. Will not buy a Belkin again if it is beat out by a none-name brand router.

Comment: I'm an unfortunate owner of this junk. Just as others write, it constantly drops connection. Reseting it, will not change anything. The orange "problem" light blinks constantly. There's no reset button on this thing and "restart router" option in its GUI doesn't change anything either. How this thing got three stars is beyond my understanding.

Belkin is one of these companies that provide software updates ONLY till the time it sells the products. You buy and that's it. So, do not count on Belkin to provide any fixes. Check their website an see for yourself when did they provide the latest update for routers in this series.
This thing is such a piece of garbage and Belkin's policy of not providing any updates for their products convinced me that I have to tell everybody - DO NOT BUY ANYTHING FORM THIS COMPANY. I'm just tired of buying stuff that never performs as it ought to, and the companies that ignore consumers the second they get our money.
And this is an advertisement they deserve.
After so many years of usage I finally decided to send this thing back to Belkin for replacement. And guess what; they sent as a replacement an older model than I send to them, and in addition to that it had a broken antenna.
NEVER, NEVER AGAIN ANYTHING FROM BELKIN

Comment: ...Or not. This is a cheesy hack in a glossy package. Unreliable, drops wireless connections requiring reset, range is a joke and quite frankly I forgot where I last left it. Probably in a lake.
Wait, now that I think about it I returned it :)

The external lights are so bright you'll think they designed the router to deprive you of sleep and whatever focus you had to begin with. And you would guess that for a $100 router they would include some cool firmware features, right? Maybe a detachable antenna? A somewhat disguised way of loading customized firmware? A brightness knob for the d*mn LEDs? A real router? HAHAHAHA!!

Belkin is hopping the bandwagon and pushing the seal of flashy electronics suited for the average customer. By the average customer, I mean the average ho-hum who spends less than a minute researching before they buy something. The usual dimwit who throws down 100 bones cause it looks purdy on the outside.

Honestly I want to cry when I come across a cool-looking gadget only to find that its yesterday's technology masqueraded in a prettier package with an uglier pricetag. Draft N from what I've seen so far is a joke. I'm sure the final N technology has some cool tricks in store, but until its FINALIZED anything labeled "N" should be considered "'N'ot worth it cause the spec is bound to change".

I bought this router and got burned.