Rating: 
Summary: A newer model is out!
Review: Ignore the star-rating above. This is just a note to those who are thinking of buying the Belkin brand. They have released a newer model F5D6231-4 to replace this model F5D6230-3.
Rating: 
Summary: Installation is flat easy
Review: Installed the Belkin Wireless Router to my main computer using a cable as I already had a NIC card and purchased the Belkin Wireless USB Adapter and the Belkin Wireless Notebook card as my plans are to network 3 computers together. Having used a non-wireless Linksys router before and having problems with it, I was a little leery but let me tell you, the installation was a snap, it picked my internet connection up without even having to go into the router's setup. I believe this was in part because my cable provider uses a dynamic address and the router ships with dynamic as the default. If your ISP used a static or PPPoE, you would have to go into setup. Installed the the USB adapter on another desktop and the internet was right there and ready to go. Installed the Notebook card in the laptop and again the internet was ready to go. I have not tried to network them together yet as sharing the internet access was my primary concern at this time and granted, it's only been two days since I installed the components but I am very impressed with the installation and the performance so far.
Rating: 
Summary: Inconsistant service
Review: My dad purchased was convinced by an instore Belkin rep to buy this router. He installed this router with ease. He has NO networking experience, so I give them credit for ease of installation. However, the router yields inconsistant service. As other reviewers have noted, our router has to be rebooted every 3 days or so because it slows almost to a griding hault. We have 1 computer hardwired to it, and 2 that are wireless. We use a Belkin reciever on one remote unit and a linksys on another. Both work the same quality. Watching a graph of my download speeds shows how the router slows about once a minute for 5-10 seconds. This is unbearable to play games or surf the net. It does the same on both wireless computers. About 5-10 seconds out of every minute it slows to a griding hault.The web setup of the router is nice too. However, the "Demilitarized zone" does not seem to work. Even turning off all the nice security settings (NAT, DMZ, DHCP, and encryption), I still couldn't host an online game on the internet. Using any sort of encryption slows the wireles connection to an unbearable speed. Without any encryption enabled- I benchmarked my speed (wireless to wired on the router) to be 400kbps, and (wireless to wireless) to be 300kbps. The router is rated at 11000 kbps. That's only 3%. However, this never kept me from DL'ing files at 200 kbps accasionally. I wonder if my router is defective. I have updated the firmware and little has changed. I would recommend you go with another brank- Linksys. Pros:
-Very easy to set up- my 50 yr old dad did it.
-Somewhat cheap costing Cons:
-Had to unplug every 3 days / too slow
-Would slow 5-10 seconds out of every minute
-DMZ didn't work
-Very slow transfer speeds between computers
Rating:
Summary: Inconsistant service
Review: My dad purchased was convinced by an instore Belkin rep to buy this router. He installed this router with ease. He has NO networking experience, so I give them credit for ease of installation. However, the router yields inconsistant service. As other reviewers have noted, our router has to be rebooted every 3 days or so because it slows almost to a griding hault. We have 1 computer hardwired to it, and 2 that are wireless. We use a Belkin reciever on one remote unit and a linksys on another. Both work the same quality. Watching a graph of my download speeds shows how the router slows about once a minute for 5-10 seconds. This is unbearable to play games or surf the net. It does the same on both wireless computers. About 5-10 seconds out of every minute it slows to a griding hault. The web setup of the router is nice too. However, the "Demilitarized zone" does not seem to work. Even turning off all the nice security settings (NAT, DMZ, DHCP, and encryption), I still couldn't host an online game on the internet. Using any sort of encryption slows the wireles connection to an unbearable speed. Without any encryption enabled- I benchmarked my speed (wireless to wired on the router) to be 400kbps, and (wireless to wireless) to be 300kbps. The router is rated at 11000 kbps. That's only 3%. However, this never kept me from DL'ing files at 200 kbps accasionally. I wonder if my router is defective. I have updated the firmware and little has changed. I would recommend you go with another brank- Linksys. Pros:
-Very easy to set up- my 50 yr old dad did it.
-Somewhat cheap costing Cons:
-Had to unplug every 3 days / too slow
-Would slow 5-10 seconds out of every minute
-DMZ didn't work
-Very slow transfer speeds between computers
Rating: 
Summary: Clean and simple
Review: The router has performed very well during a month of continuous use with Belkin and other wireless adapters and with a standard ethernet card--there is a 10/100Base-T switch. Setup was quick and free of problems. We have two minor complaints:
1. After a cable modem service interruption, the router may require a reset to restore Internet access to the network. A reset may be accomplished, usually, via a web interface on a connected computer, so it's a small matter. (To be fair, we don't know how often our cable modem goes offline. For every time we have to reset the router, there may be 100 times when the router brings us back up transparently. Or not.) 2. Indoor range is far less than that claimed by the manufacturer. This seems to be true, obviously, for every wireless system. We mention this for completeness. We are happy with the router and would be surprised to find a unit in the same price range that performs better.
Rating:
Summary: Great After Reset
Review: The router itself has excellent features: 3 port 10/100 switch, Wireless Access Point, Port Forewarding, DMZ, etc... I did notice that my ping times were slightly higher when using this as opposed to my single port Linksys Router. Download speeds were the same however. Wireless range is excellent, with perfect connectivity from the downstairs corner room to upstairs on the otherside of the house. I would give this router a 5 if it weren't for a few very pesky problems that make your connection seem more modem-like.
1) There is no connect or disconnect button for PPPoE...you have to start the router and wait on the average about 7 minutes before starting up your computer.
2) The original firmware after being connected for a while would cause "half" the internet to not work...hard to explain...but some sites would work while others just would not. This was fixed by upgrading the firmware but a new problem arose.
3) With the new firmware...instead of half the internet not-working after being connected for some time...the connection would lag when establishing connections to servers...another hard thing to explain but when I would browse to a site it would hang for a while before connecting..after connection was made speeds were normal but occured for everything and made it impossible to game online without a router reset and was very annoying for instant messaging.
4) The router seems to have trouble with DHCP and doesn't assign IP Addresses sometimes...causing system restarts and so forth...with the Linksys I would get the Windows Network Logon dialog everytime but with the Belkin it only came up occasionally
On the whole, the router is decent, with lots of features but some pesky problems. I completely reccomend a Linksys solution over this as so far Linksys has been flawless for me. On a side note, no matter what router you buy, make sure you do not buy a Wireless USB Adapter if you use WinXP or Win2K; they inherently control this connection and it becomes very unstable because of bad Microsoft code. Instead get the PCI card or the adapter + PCMCIA card.
**UPDATE**
Belkin has released yet another firmware upgrade that actually fixes the DHCP problem. The only problem with the router now is that after some times it hangs before connecting(as I stated above in problem #3).
Rating:
Summary: Reliability Less Than Acceptable
Review: The setup was easy enough, but the reliability of the wireless signal to my laptops was not acceptable. Speed drops dramatically for unknown reason and I had to reboot the router at least once a week because speed was so slow. After turning off and back on, speed was back to normal.
Rating:
Summary: Reliability Less Than Acceptable
Review: The setup was easy enough, but the reliability of the wireless signal to my laptops was not acceptable. Speed drops dramatically for unknown reason and I had to reboot the router at least once a week because speed was so slow. After turning off and back on, speed was back to normal.
Rating: 
Summary: Repeatedly Hangs
Review: This router has good functionality and ease of use, but reliability is more important for me and this router hangs about once a day, so I'm giving it 1 star. You need to unplug the power cord and plug it back in every time to get it to work again. The range is a bit disappointing, too. About 30ft indoors. On the plus side, 128bit WEP and ability to limit access by MAC address are nice, and it's very easy to set up. Reading around some forums makes me think that the hanging problem is not universal, so if you're lucky enough to get one that works, it's not a bad router if you don't need long range wireless. For me, I'm returning it for a refund.
Rating:
Summary: Repeatedly Hangs
Review: This router has good functionality and ease of use, but reliability is more important for me and this router hangs about once a day, so I'm giving it 1 star. You need to unplug the power cord and plug it back in every time to get it to work again. The range is a bit disappointing, too. About 30ft indoors. On the plus side, 128bit WEP and ability to limit access by MAC address are nice, and it's very easy to set up. Reading around some forums makes me think that the hanging problem is not universal, so if you're lucky enough to get one that works, it's not a bad router if you don't need long range wireless. For me, I'm returning it for a refund.
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