Media for belkin pre-n report

belkin pre-n report

I have the pre-n router, the card for my laptop, and a card for a desktop.

First, the speed and reach are great. Both are excellent. The speed seems the same as my old wired network.

Having two machines using the router doesn't seem to degrade performance noticeably.

The router software has been easy to use. Overall packaging and documentation is good. I needs a status screen in AP mode. It doesn't say what's going on in AP mode.

This is my first real experience with consumer grade gear of this type. I find the reliance on using the web browser for the initial configuation a big hurdle. It should have a USB port, serial line, or LCD, or something so i don't have to mess with IP addresses on my machine to talk with it.

I use it in AP mode because i have router. I found it a bit confusing about how this should be done. It would be nice to have dipswitch or something to select a mode.

For some reason after talking with the box for a while i could no longer talk to it to get a dhcp address. The request kept timing out. Resetting seemed not to work but i wouldn't know because there is no way to tell if it is reset. I exchanged it at comp usa for another one with no problem. This one worked. I suspect the other one just got wedged somehow. A better class of machine would allow me to see what is going on inside.

The first person in tech support was great. The other two didn't know anything and were just following a script.

I don't like how far the pre-n card sticks out of the laptop. That may be nornal, i just don't know.

I use AES and this just worked on the XP side and on the router. That was nice. I changed the SSID and turned of broadcast, so i feel like i've done what can be done.

The biggest problem i have is with the laptop card. To kill my network access all i have to do is copy a deep directory tree from one machine to another. The kind of thing you do when you are moving to a new machine :-) If i just pop the card out and back in everything is ok. I hope updates in the future will solve this problem. It's not deal killer for me, but i don't like it.

I have rebooted the router once when the network connection was down. I am not sure of the problem.

As after a lot of research it seems every product had a lot of bad comments about them, i am not sure what would be a better choice. I hope the quality will improve over time because it doesn't seem to be a fundamental hardware issue. Personally i would pay a little more for a consumer class product that was easier to use. Not everything has to come out of box of cracker jacks.