Belkin N+ Wireless ADSL Modem Router with Increased Wireless Range & High-speed Internet Connection 300 Mbps (F5D8635uk4A)
Belkin N+ Wireless ADSL Modem Router with Increased Wireless Range & High-speed Internet Connection 300 Mbps (F5D8635uk4A)
- Belkin Nplus Wireless ADSL Modem/Router
• Belkin F5D8635uk4A N+ wireless ADSL modem router• Allows connection of storage devices and provides multiple computers with easy access to files on the storage drive over a secure wireless network
Belkin N Wireless ADSL Modem with Builtin Wireless Router F5D8635UK4A Networks Wireless Routers
Rating: 
(out of 34 reviews)
List Price: £99.99
Price: £51.98
Review by Mr. S. Crook for Belkin N+ Wireless ADSL Modem Router with Increased Wireless Range & High-speed Internet Connection 300 Mbps (F5D8635uk4A)
Rating:
It took about 15 minutes to get connected to the internet, and another 15 to deal with wireless security, so I had no problems with the setup. I got working connections to a laptop (wireless), a desktop, and a Philips NP 2900 (wireless). An older laptop failed, but that was down to the security settings I’d chosen for the router, the laptops internal wireless card simply wasn’t up to it. A 6 year old Buffalo 54g wireless card solved the problem.
There are plenty of options for encrypting wireless traffic and otherwise securing your network. The WEB interface is clean and the help text is actually quite informative, generally explaining *why* you might want to switch an option on or off as well providing instructions on how to do it.
It’s replacing an older (7 years old) Buffalo router, and the Wireless coverage through the house is generally improved, and one or two ‘dead’ spots seem to have disappeared.
I can’t explain why other people have had problems. So far, my experience has been almost entirely positive.
Except when it came to the VPN to the office which just would not work. I got the router to check and *it* told me that there was no firmware update available. So After some titting around with firewalls, ports etc, I actually went to the Belkin (UK) site and looked. Lo and behold a firmware update (1.00.23), fixing a PPTP VPN problem. Applied the update (painless) and VPN works.
I’ve had other problems since I wrote this review:
1. With the VPN. The router gets itself into a state where the VPN connection is dropped when I try and access login pages of my companies internal WEB sites. After trying router restarts including an extended power off, the problem persists. I have to restore from saved configuration information to fix the problem.
2. Sometimes the router gets into a state where the built in http server used for config/maintenance won’t serve up pages, particularly those from the wireless security section. Again, the only way to get around the problem is to restore configuration settings from disc.
So, reduced to 3 stars from 5 because of these problems.
Review by Coffee Drinker for Belkin N+ Wireless ADSL Modem Router with Increased Wireless Range & High-speed Internet Connection 300 Mbps (F5D8635uk4A)
Rating:
I needed a new router in a hurry and the choice at PC World was a bit limited so I bought this with some concern having read the negative reviews on this page. My experience though has been pretty positive. I did have issues frequently losing connection to the web interface during initial setup but a firmware update followed by a reset to defaults fixed that issue. Now up and running the router is working perfectly. Streaming speeds, both movies and music from my Qnap NAS, to my PS3 are fine. Connections are stable, internet accesss speeds topping out at 6.5 Mb/s which beats the 6 Mb/s I used to manage with my Netgear router. All my devices attach fine including home plug networking. Loses a star due to the setup issues but otherwise a good product in my experience.
Review by Nick for Belkin N+ Wireless ADSL Modem Router with Increased Wireless Range & High-speed Internet Connection 300 Mbps (F5D8635uk4A)
Rating:
This N+ Belkin Wireless Router was much better than our old router, with much stronger wireless and we primarily bought this router for its unique feature: Belkin Storage Manager. This let us put 1 USB flash disk or Hard Drive into the rear of the router and made it accessible to all connected PCs, Laptops etc. This worked a treat and was definitely worth buying, it was quick and easy to set up (took us about 20 mins) and the installation CD was really helpful. If you want fast Internet connection, I would recommend buying this as its very practical.
Review by Rich for Belkin N+ Wireless ADSL Modem Router with Increased Wireless Range & High-speed Internet Connection 300 Mbps (F5D8635uk4A)
, all the PC’s in the house connected to router with no problem. Now it came to my non pc devices such as my iPhone 3G and PS3 all the devices saw the router and connected with no problem I don’t get any time out issues at all, the PS3 works fine with the wireless and wired connection. The main reason I bought this router was that it allowed you to connect an external hard drive to it, now all the PC’s in house can see that hard drive making it easier to share files around the house.
Rating:
At first I was sceptical buying this modem router after reading the 3 negative reviews here and other reviews online about connectivity to other devices (PS3 etc…) but I took the gamble and bought the router. The router was easy to set up using the installation CD provided I was up and running within 10min
Review by M. Carr for Belkin N+ Wireless ADSL Modem Router with Increased Wireless Range & High-speed Internet Connection 300 Mbps (F5D8635uk4A)
Rating:
I bought this Belkin as I couldn’t change my NAT settings from “Strict” on my BT HomeHub 1 (the white one) on Xbox Live on Call of Duty, which meant that I kept being kicked out of games.
I chose the Belkin N+ because when I looked at it in the shops it had a sticker saying “For BT Connections”. Reading the back they make out that any old idiot could set it up and this is backed up by the very brief Quick Start guide in the box.
I followed the very simple guidelines, got the box on then plugged in the CD as instructed. That was the end of the ease of setup. I have finally got the thing working after considerable research on the web.
The wireless and wired internet worked relatively painlessly. I had to trawl through the BT HomeHub instructions to find out what settings to put in, but once that was done I was up and running. And the connection speed is very good.
Next test was to turn on the Xbox360 to be greeted with a message that it couldn’t connect to Xbox Live. I looked at the complicated router settings and couldn’t see anything amiss so turned to the web to find thousands of people with the same problem. I have spent several hours trying out the different solutions, none of which worked, until I found this site:
http://www.zath.co.uk/how-to-get-xbox-live-working-with-belkin-n-wireless-router/
Following the instructions there finally got the thing to work. Most people online gave up and had taken the router back to the shops.
I also had problems connecting my NAS drives. The difference between the Belkin N and the Belkin N+ is that you can connect a USB drive to the router and all computers on the network have access to it. However to get access you need to install the Belkin software on each machine that needs access to the drive. Besides that I couldn’t find out how to access the drive. I therefore prefer my NAS drives. These are both connected to my switch but the router could no longer recognise them until I plugged them directly into the router itself. Now I can use the Icy Box but not the Lacie NAS drive. I have no idea why. I have tried many solutions and got nowhere.
On the upside, after following the above instructions in the link and then re-activating uPNP I have managed to get my NAT setting from STRICT to OPEN, which is critical for online gaming. So I am prepared to sacrifice the functionality of one of the NAS drives for better gaming connections and good PC internet speeds.
To conclude the Belkin N+ is much much harder than it should be to set up and use. Xbox Live is not an unusual thing for a router to access. After a night of comprehensive research I largely have it working now but not with the full functionality I want. The Belkin to me is a compromise. It is not bad when you get it running but why does it have to be so difficult?
Pros:
Fast connection speeds
Attractive looking router
Not too bad to get up and running for a PC
Cons:
Insane level of difficulty to set up with Xbox Live
Not intuitive to tune and use
Very little documentation to help you when you get stuck