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Belkin F5D6231-4 Wireless Cable/DSL Router

Belkin F5D6231-4 Wireless Cable/DSL Router

List Price: $80.99
Your Price: $64.99
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Works OK -- but security is crappy at best.
Review: 1. Blocking SSID broadcast is flaky. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.
2. MAC address blocking DOES NOT WORK. You can block a known MAC address, but the whole point is to be able block the unknown ones.
Tried to make this clear to the Belkin tech support drones for about 30 minutes, all in vain. Heavy accents, poor communication skills and utter incompetence. If you can read the manual, you are already far more qualified than those guys. I am not kidding -- I had to read to those guys aloud from the manual before they actually stopped talking nonsence about what MAC filtering is.
No use anyway.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Functional, needs more security
Review: Absolutely no problem setting up and using in built up area. No problem with interference from 2.4GHz phone or microwave operated near client's 802.11b card. Setup was a breeze, 5 min. as advertised, 15 min. total to setup and configure both router and a Netgear card. Security drawback: needs implemented blocking of unknown MAC addresses. Also, turning off broadcast of SSID does not work. This device might is OK if you are not worried about security. For example, in a single family dwelling surrounded by a lot of space (c. 200 feet radius). Not bad for the money.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: good value
Review: After 25 years in the information technology industry, I've come to respect Belkin. Anything they do, they do well.

This unit is sound and easy to set up.

It is only 80211b, so it's 11Mbps, but even a cable modem only intermittently gets above 1Mbps, so for almost everone, it's plenty. Plus the peripheral cards for the devices you want to use with it are less than the newer 80211g.

It does currently only support WEP, and Belkin, the last time I asked them, do not have plans to add WPA functionality to this unit, which would provide stronger encryption.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: MAC Address Filtering does not work even after new firmware
Review: Belkin just released 1.10 firmware for this router without any release notes. I called them up and asked what was changed in 1.10.
I was told that MAC filtering was fixed. Unfortunately, even after updating the firmware, MAC filtering still does not work. I have called them at least 4 times and have escalated but still no response from them.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Great Product
Review: Earlier had a DLink DI-614+ wireless router. The router and the wireless card worked great. However, the concurrent VPN connections were very very intermittent. I got fed up and finally gave up on this Dlink Router. Bought this new Belkin wireless router and the wireless card which had a great rebate going.

As advertised, the installation was a breeze. Just followed the instructions and I was online both using the wired and wireless connections. They have very good installation procedure. I guess everyone could do it..

I didn't encounter the VPN problem that I encountered with DLINK DI-614+. I didn't do any setup with this Belkin Router, yet the multiple concurrent VPN connections went thru' without any hitch. This was great after spending too much time with the DLINK router.

Great product for a Great Price.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: don't expect advertised speed
Review: first off, this is 802.11b so don't expect to play LAN games over wireless, use the wired ports for those applications that require high transfer speed.

wireless speed and connectivity varies greatly from home to home for whatever reasons, that's why you will always hear different things from different reviewers, suffice to say your neighbor can't mooch off your 802.11b.

$5 after rebate, at that kind of price, I am willing to buy this which would be cheaper than wired routers with the flexibility of wireless.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Mine turned out to be cheap and unreliable
Review: I bought one of these because it was cheap and came with a big rebate, and now it's driving me crazy. It locks up at least twice a day, forcing me to get out a paper clip and push the reset switch.

Other people on the Internet also report problems.

NOT recommended.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Belkin is just not god for a Router..IT is a WASTE
Review: I bought this and have exchanged it twice in a span of a week.The router has problems in accessing yahoomail and hotmail and the helpdesk would bnever help me through it.I tried it in my friend's place and it had the problem there as well.The helpdesk ppl would never ever understand this problem and also they haven't put anythign regarding this on their website.I would never ever advise anyone buying this router even though it is cheap.I found out how belkin loses its customer base.. "IT LOSES ONE CUSTOMER AT A TIME".I am gonna return this router today ...

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Major compatibility problems
Review: I bought two of these routers. I have a D-link DWL-650 laptop 802.11b card, which is one of the most widely used cards on the market. THE ROUTERS DO NOT WORK WITH THESE CARDS. I can establish a connection, and see that the router is there and broadcasting signal, but I cannot get an IP address wirelessly. If I plug in via a wired connection, I immediately get an IP, so I know DHCP is on. I also know my DWL-650 card works b/c I tried it on two other router brands (Linksys and Netgear) with no problem at all. Bottom line: This router is a piece of junk. Save your money and buy something that works.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: No real complaints so far
Review: I got this because it was one of the cheaper wireless routers, and so far am happy with it. I set it up by hand instead of the wizard that they included with the package. I had the wired portion working just fine in under 5 minutes.

The wireless was a slightly different situation. I use Mozilla Firebird as my main browser, and when it comes to some of the buttons when setting up the WEP keys, the 'Generate' keys do not work. This could be Mozilla, but I haven't had any such problems on websites. Once that was set up, getting encryption turned on and working was easy under IE. My Belkin wireless card only supports 64-bit WEP, which is fine for me, and I haven't had the router start to broadcast the SSID at all yet as others have stated.

I get pretty good range (100' through 3 walls, and about 200' through a single wall) so no complaints there. The web interface is the best I've used yet, especially after digging through the interfaces on Linksys or D-Link routers.

I give this a 4 because of it not working 100% with Mozilla-based browsers, so I'd hate to see people try and use every feature of this router if they run nothing but Linux (which if you're running Linux, why buy a router? ;) )


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