Pros & Cons
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- Looks cool.
- Very informative front-mount LCD display.
- Easy Web-based configuration.
- Guest SSID for home network protection.
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- 2.4-GHz operation-only, resulting in slow throughput even in optimal Wi-Fi conditions.
- Expensive for a single-radio router.
Belkin Vision N1 Specs
| 802.11x/Band(s): | Yes |
| Access Control Lists Based on MAC Addresses: | Yes |
| Antennas: External: | Yes |
| Antennas: Internal: | No |
| Antennas: Optional Range-extending: | Yes |
| Antennas: Wall-mountable: | No |
| Chipset: | Atheros |
| Device Type: | Router |
| Kerberos Authentication: | No |
| NAT: | Yes |
| Networking Options: | 802.11n |
| Parental Controls: | No |
| Price per Wireless PC Card: | $99 |
| RADIUS: | No |
| Setup: | Web |
| Stateful Packet Inspection: | Yes |
| WPA Security: | Yes |
It seems as if the tech industry is infected with a gloss-over-function disease. Vista looks better than it works; Leopard, too. And the makers of all three of the 802.11n routers I tested in this mini-roundup poured a good deal of effort into outward aesthetics. Unfortunately, in the case of the Belkin N1 Vision, more resources were spent on looks than on making the device competitive. Belkin needs to work on the N1 Vision's performance.
In the form department, I've got to hand it to the designers: They succeeded. The N1 Vision could just as easily be a high-design clock radio, with its huge and (somewhat) configurable LCD display. In fact, since it's already got a clock feature, all Belkin needs to add is some audio and a little Internet smarts and the box could wake you up to Web radio.
Belkin has put a lot of work into the display, and it's worth a look. If you're familiar with this family of routers, you'll recognize the Vision as an evolution of the N1, which had a series of icons on its front display that simply lit up or blinked according to whether the device had wireless, LAN, or Internet connectivity, and so forth. The Vision has those same icons but also allows you to drill down for more detailed information using the front-mounted navigation buttons.
The display produces a variety of screens that show basic summary info and current network health, details of the current security level, a TCP/IP summary, a guest-access monitor, and even a usage summary reporting which connections have been accessed, and for how long, over the last 24 hours. You can't do much fixing via these screens, but being able to get the basics gives you a highly efficient diagnostic tool that lets you know what to do right away when something goes wrong. For more information and the ability to act on it, you use Belkin's impressive Web-based configuration utility.—
Strong Management
In fact, the Web-based management tool is the Vision's other strength. Most router vendors (except Apple) use a Web-based config approach, but Belkin put a good deal of thought into user-friendliness, and the effort shows. A wizard-like process takes you through setup but offers additional information via embedded More Info links. These provide fast, context-sensitive explanations to folks who might be new to networking. That's good for a home-oriented router.
Basic setup follows the same steps as with the other units I evaluated. The first set of config options get the N1 Vision talking to your network and the Internet. After that, users can adjust LAN settings (NAT, DHCP, DNS, and so on), firewall settings (application and traffic filters), and wireless security. And as with both the other routers in this review (the
The Vision also supports a feature I've not seen in any other home-oriented device: guest access. This allows a home networker to set up limited network rights for visiting users—typically, it lets them connect to the Internet and little else, other than a printer, perhaps. Guests will see a different SSID when they scan for wireless networks (so "Gary's Network" might be the name of your home network, while "Gary's Guests" would give visitors guest access). One nice touch: You can have the Vision display the guest-access password on its LCD. Nifty. Guest access provides a security advantage, since guests can't see anything else on your home network—for example, the home file server with your work files and those unfortunate pictures from your prenuptial party.—
Performance Anxiety
I tested performance by establishing an IxChariot endpoint on a Gateway M275 laptop that was running throughput scripts using a Belkin N1 PC Card. The laptop linked wirelessly to the router, which was connected (in the case of the Vision), via one of the wired Gigabit Ethernet ports in back of it to an HP desktop running Windows XP Pro. As is usually the case with router testing, the router's firewall caused some intermittent iXChariot problems, but I was able to get enough data for throughput measurements. I verified the results with a Lenovo ThinkPad notebook that had a Belkin N1 PC Card and was running the AirMagnet Laptop Analyzer wireless analysis tool.
With throughput testing, things got ugly. True, for wireless performance measurements, the conditions in the PC Mag Labs are less than ideal: 17 access points either in the immediate area or on the floor above, all running at 2.4 GHz. I'd expect that to restrict throughput somewhat—but not, as in the case of the Vision, strangle it and make the hardware burst into tears. After gasping at 2 megabits per second for a few minutes, the router froze up solid—including the LCD display that was supposed to tell me what was going wrong. No packets in, no packets out.
In a somewhat more friendly setting (four distant access points visible), the Vision managed better but was still slow and did the ice-block freezing routine three times in 2 hours. Not so good. A call to Belkin brought help in the form of a link to a firmware update, easily applied via the Web-based management utility. Happy days! No more Mr. Freeze, and some better overall throughput numbers. But still, the Vision was no vision of performance.
The N1 is at a disadvantage on performance tests because it's restricted to the 2.4-GHz spectrum, and that's not the best playing field for draft-n wireless. To provide optimal numbers, Belkin asked me to test the router at its "20+40-MHz" setting, but even that didn't enable the product to stand out from the pack. Running simultaneous up and down traffic streams resulted in a best-case average of 76 Mbps. That's well below the 85 Mbps average of the Apple and Linksys routers I was reviewing at the same time.
Adding older WEP-style wireless security devastated throughput—in this case, by around 65 percent. But as with the Linksys and Apple routers, using WPA2 and AES encryption caused almost no performance hit. Throughput remained at 76 Mbps even with secure connections. WEP isn't the type of security we recommend, but the reality is that many people still use it.
Part of the Vision's lower throughput undoubtedly comes from the crowded nature of the 2.4 GHz spectrum and the router's bad reaction to that environment. But even after we updated the router's firmware and placed it inside a relatively clean test environment (the nearest competing 2.4-GHz wireless router was 150 feet away), the Vision still turned in performance numbers more than 10 percent lower than the Linksys and Apple routers I tested at the same time.
Had Belkin added a second radio capable of operating in the 5-GHz spectrum like the one in the Linksys WRT600N, draft-n users might have been able to operate at higher speeds in that spectrum, while 802.11b/g users would remain at 2.4 GHz. Considering the Vision's price, I actually expected a second radio, but 5-GHz operation isn't part of Belkin's current plan for home users—more's the pity, given the Vision's poor reaction to 802.11b/g devices running at the same time as an N1 PC Card.
As soon as we added our Lenovo and Gateway notebooks each running at 802.11g, the Vision's performance started to cough. All three connections remained functional, but the N1 PC Card's throughput dropped, hitting only from 27 to 32 Mbps, while the 802.11g card's throughput sank below 8 Mbps. True, in a home environment, the Internet connection won't be much faster than 3 Mbps anyway, so for surfing, this won't be much of a problem. But for home network functions like Vonage voice over an 802.11b/g Wi-Fi phone, or the kids' LAN-party gaming, or wireless streaming with a Windows XP Media Center machine, you can bet the slower throughput will be a drag.
Overall, I liked the N1 Vision's looks and the information supplied on its LCD screen. But considering both the speed and price of the other two contenders in this roundup, looks just aren't enough anymore. Belkin's going to have to man-up the N1 Vision if it expects to compete long-term in the home market.
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