New N Router

[Linux3]

I drove my self crazy looking to upgrade my 'G' router to 'N'.
Linksys... Reviews for the WRS310N have not been good but I like the idea of third party firmware and what can be done with it.
Netgear....Good reviews for the WNR2000 but I had problems with Netgear back in the late 90's and I hold a grudge.
D-Link.... See Netgear.

I bought a Belkin N+. Why? I have a Belkin G router and it's been rock solid. The fact that they are cheaper than dirt has nothing to do with it.
Brought my new toy home and setup was real easy as it's almost the same as my 'G' router.
It works, it's fast. The router is one floor down and in the far south end of my house. When sitting on my couch on the main floor on the north end of my house with the G I would get around a 45 ~ 50% connection. Really, my house isn't all that big but walls and floors and stuff.
The new N is very fast, the connection is solid. I'm happy. How fast? How solid?

I do this stuff for a job so I'm not doing spec's here. Trust me, it's way faster and after 3 days, rock solid. Want a cheap and reliable N series router? Don't need much special but security and speed? Look at the Belkin N+.

Oh, it also has a usb port. I plugged my WD 'My Book' 1 gig into it and everybody, who can connect and I tested this, can see the external drive.
The drive fs is ext3 and it's connected as a NAS.

[Pierre!]

Nuther NetGear grudge holder here...

And I love the WRN2000 router! It's awesome for the price...

I will check out the Belkin however... it would be nice to have a NAS hanging off a router!!!

Thanks for the review...

Merry Christmass!

[cgwahl]

Think I'm going to go with the Belkin. While I have had good luck with my Netgear router for the last 6 years which I actually fried a little by accidentally plugging in a printer power cable to it (still kicking), it's been good.

But time to upgrade and my main gripe with the Linksys is no external antennae. It's probably superfluous, but I just like having an antennae. Not to mention I've been hearing more and more about their quality not being what it once was.


Linux, any idea (or have you tried) if you can plug a USB hub into the USB port and plug more than one HD to it?

[Linux3]

Linux, any idea (or have you tried) if you can plug a USB hub into the USB port and plug more than one HD to it?
I have not tried that.
I don't have a usb hub so I can't give it a quick test. Sorry.

[JimmyN]

I've had a Belkin N+ router for 5 or 6 months now. You can use a USB hub and access more than 1 drive.
I currently use a powered hub with 2 drives plugged into it. One drive has movies, one drive has music, so I can access them from anywhere in the house. I've also tried a USB card reader, but didn't have any luck with that.

You can install the included Belkin 'Storage Manager' software on your PC and as soon as you plug in the drive it will map it to your system. Each PC that has Storage Manager installed will map drives automatically as they are connected to the router. The first will be Drive Z, plug another into the hub and it will be mapped to Drive Y, etc.

If the drive has more than one partition it will map each separately. The drive with the music files is actually partitioned into two drives. So when I plug it in drives 'X' and 'Y' are added. I have plugged 4 drives into the hub to see if it would work, and all were accessible. The Storage Manager software wouldn't map the card reader though, nor could I figure out a way to do it manually. But I didn't spend a lot of time on it, it wasn't that important.

You don't have to install the Storage Manager software. You can map the drives manually by using the the router address + volume label.
So in my case mapping "192.168.0.1/movie" will access the movie drive, and "192.168.0.1/music" will access the music drive.

I can also access the files with a web browser, and get a directory listing, by using "\\192.168.0.1/movie", or "\\192.168.0.1/music" as the address.

[aircarver]

Is there a version with gigabit eithernet ports too, for those of us with wired and wireless networks ?.....

[Dandapani]

ABC!!!! (anything but Cisco as in Linksys!) I'm using Netgear in G.

[JimmyN]

The Belkin N+ provides the typical four ports for wired connections, and it's 10/100/1000 ethernet. The two PC's in my home office have 1 gig NIC adapters in them, plugged right into the router, so the speed is pretty impressive when moving files back and forth.

But of course the gigabyte speed is only with wired connections. I have a matching Belkin N+ wireless adapter in the PC in the den, which also feeds the TV, so we can watch movies off the network drive. I have about 80 DVD's on that drive to chose from. So my "N" speed on wireless to that PC is as good as a wired 100mb connection, maybe better, with a very strong 100% signal.

Belkin advertises 300mbs over "N+", but that's apparently only when it can use a 40mhz channel width. If there is a lot of air traffic from cordless phones and neighbors routers in the 2~4ghz range then it will drop back to 20mhz channel widths and speed drops to 150mbs. Still not bad for a wireless connection.

I also have another PC, plus two notebooks, that have "G" adapters, so they only get standard "G" speed. But the signal to them is much stronger than with the Netgear "G" router I was using before.

The Belkin N+ has two radios and is a multiple in-multiple out (MIMO) router. "N" connections use both radios, a "G" adapter connecting to it will only use one of the radios.

But of course it won't increase your internet access speed for downloads. You could have a 50gig network running, but you'll still be limited to the speed your ISP provides coming into the modem. I think the fastest available is about 12mbs, if you want to pay extra for it. Most are in the 1~3mbs range. So for internet access speeds your ISP is the limiting factor.