Soldato
Ok, the product in question is http://overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=NW-080-BE which I've picked up due to being on This Week Only, and satisfying several of my "new router" criteria that I've had for a while.
I invested a while ago in a gigabit switch since routers with inbuilt GbE were still very expensive, something which I'm happy to say has been addressed with this offering, my first Belkin piece of kit. Transfer speeds are good too, so it's not just a claim.
Setup, as you'd expect from a router these days, was an absolute doddle. Not only that, but I've been able to drop my SNR from 6db to 3db with this router compared to my old Thompson 585, with a subsequent line speed boost from 14mb to 17mb. Very happy! Zero dropouts or freezes in the last 24 hours either since I set it up.
Getting that SNR was a bit of a faff - for some reason you have to access a hidden developer page on the router and run a command to get the stats up. Quite why this is the case I don't know, but at least it's easy to address (pun not intended!).
The much vaunted display on the unit, as expected, is a bit of a gimmick really. The two items which I thought might be handy/interesting aren't actually what I thought they would be - speed is just your download speed at that moment, rather than line speed, and download usage is only for the last 24 hours, rather than being able to set it up a rolling 30 day window (hint hint Belkin).
Wireless signal strength is excellent - in other rooms where I would struggle around the 1/5 strength mark on my laptop I now get 5/5, with odd drops to 4/5. Bearing in mind that this is still using G rather than N due to the age of my laptop, it's nice to see that the earlier standards are still represented with a high quality.
The web administration interface is one of the better I've used from various offerings, being simple, clean, and responsive. One oddity is that Belkin don't let you reserve IP addresses from the DHCP pool for specific machines - you either lease for all machines on a Forever basis, or go without. I like keeping my machines IPs fixed for easy tweaking, and on a home network I can't see this ever being an issue, but it took me a while to realise that the page I was searching for wasn't there, and I needed to sort this via leases.
Anyways, this was meant to be a quick one paragraph article which has grown ever so slightly, so I'll leave it here! In short though, this is a cracking piece of kit, both as a switch, and as a router, and I would happily recommend it based on the last 24 hours use, especially at this price. Enjoy!
The Good
- 4 Gigabit ports and Wireless N for under £60!
- Excellent signal strength on Wireless G
- Easy setup
- Responsive web admin, not laggy at all
The Bad
- No line stats by default - you have to access a hidden developer page to see things like SNR etc
- The display is a bit of a gimmick really, best used as a clock.
- No per-device address reservation - all or nothing
The Ugly
- There's no ugly, it's pretty, can't you see?!
I invested a while ago in a gigabit switch since routers with inbuilt GbE were still very expensive, something which I'm happy to say has been addressed with this offering, my first Belkin piece of kit. Transfer speeds are good too, so it's not just a claim.
Setup, as you'd expect from a router these days, was an absolute doddle. Not only that, but I've been able to drop my SNR from 6db to 3db with this router compared to my old Thompson 585, with a subsequent line speed boost from 14mb to 17mb. Very happy! Zero dropouts or freezes in the last 24 hours either since I set it up.
Getting that SNR was a bit of a faff - for some reason you have to access a hidden developer page on the router and run a command to get the stats up. Quite why this is the case I don't know, but at least it's easy to address (pun not intended!).
The much vaunted display on the unit, as expected, is a bit of a gimmick really. The two items which I thought might be handy/interesting aren't actually what I thought they would be - speed is just your download speed at that moment, rather than line speed, and download usage is only for the last 24 hours, rather than being able to set it up a rolling 30 day window (hint hint Belkin).
Wireless signal strength is excellent - in other rooms where I would struggle around the 1/5 strength mark on my laptop I now get 5/5, with odd drops to 4/5. Bearing in mind that this is still using G rather than N due to the age of my laptop, it's nice to see that the earlier standards are still represented with a high quality.
The web administration interface is one of the better I've used from various offerings, being simple, clean, and responsive. One oddity is that Belkin don't let you reserve IP addresses from the DHCP pool for specific machines - you either lease for all machines on a Forever basis, or go without. I like keeping my machines IPs fixed for easy tweaking, and on a home network I can't see this ever being an issue, but it took me a while to realise that the page I was searching for wasn't there, and I needed to sort this via leases.
Anyways, this was meant to be a quick one paragraph article which has grown ever so slightly, so I'll leave it here! In short though, this is a cracking piece of kit, both as a switch, and as a router, and I would happily recommend it based on the last 24 hours use, especially at this price. Enjoy!
The Good
- 4 Gigabit ports and Wireless N for under £60!
- Excellent signal strength on Wireless G
- Easy setup
- Responsive web admin, not laggy at all
The Bad
- No line stats by default - you have to access a hidden developer page to see things like SNR etc
- The display is a bit of a gimmick really, best used as a clock.
- No per-device address reservation - all or nothing
The Ugly
- There's no ugly, it's pretty, can't you see?!