Belkin 54G Wireless Router, USB adapter & mini optical mouse - £34.99

andybk

forgot to add , very easy set-up now runs three computers no problem , also used by my daughter for the wireless link for her nintendo ds and my sons psp all thebest andy

sandybrag

bad-head-day wrote:

I have this router following a post in grabit about 6 months ago & I have got so fed up with it disconnecting that just last week I finally unplugged it.

At the time of purchase there was advice on here saying don't bother with these routers they randomly disconnect & I thought "I'll be alright, I probably know better" but how wrong I was.

It got to the point where it would only stay connected for a few minutes! I would remove the power & reinsert it to get an extra few minutes connection out of it. That was (somehow[?!]) ok while browsing but the final straw came when I was playing couter-strike source & having a field day when it disconnected on me.

Please don't buy this router without heeding this caveat: it is very likely that you will have trouble with it. No amount of techy knowledge will help you, it is a hardware/design problem.

A link to google "belkin F5D7230 disconnects": http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=belkin+F5D7230+disconnects&btnG=Search&meta=

p.s. the router doesn't look like the photo on pcworlds site (just like the time I bought mine from them). It has one antenna & is about 13cmx13cm square, not rectangular.

Yes, I bought it as well the last time was on here. For me I have problems trying to connect to the router. I use my laptop with it say once a week, and usually i have to reboot the router before it will let my lappy connect. I agree there do seem to be some problems with this.

Its cheap and cheerful at this price, but be preapred for these problems.

scoobies

I thought I would get this response - Oh Belkin are not very good - oh yes they are.... blah blah blah.

I'll leave it up to you bargain hunters!!! - I normally purchase Linksys kit but this was too good a price to not give it a try.

p.s. the router doesn't look like the photo on pcworlds site (just like the time I bought mine from them). It has one antenna & is about 13cmx13cm square, not rectangular

Wrong - the wrouter looks exactly as shown on the website - it is rectangular and does have two antenna's. I know about the router you are referring to as I bought that one for my dad. In fact I was expecting this router to look like that but the one I got is substantially bigger.:D

In terms of diconnecting... The first thing I have done is flash the firmware and and i have no problems in three days (not a big test). So far I have used it every night for browsing, left it on overnight downloading and used my laptop a few times for a few hours over VPN. So far this has been just as reliable as my old Linksys.

One final note for the adventurous techies - apparently you "could" flash the firmware to make it run as the F5D7231-4 model and run it at 125mb! - I can't be bothered (the USB adapter will only run at 54G) See here

bad-head-day

scoobies wrote:

I thought I would get this response - Oh Belkin are not very good - oh yes they are.... blah blah blah.

I'll leave it up to you bargain hunters!!! - I normally purchase Linksys kit but this was too good a price to not give it a try.



Wrong - the wrouter looks exactly as shown on the website - it is rectangular and does have two antenna's. I know about the router you are referring to as I bought that one for my dad. In fact I was expecting this router to look like that but the one I got is substantially bigger.:D

In terms of diconnecting... The first thing I have done is flash the firmware and and i have no problems in three days (not a big test). So far I have used it every night for browsing, left it on overnight downloading and used my laptop a few times for a few hours over VPN. So far this has been just as reliable as my old Linksys.

One final note for the adventurous techies - apparently you "could" flash the firmware to make it run as the F5D7231-4 model and run it at 125mb! - I can't be bothered (the USB adapter will only run at 54G) See here

Look, I hate negative responses too but don't take it to heart. I do have this model, the exact model & they used the same photo when I bought mine. I also have the latest firmware & also an optimistic outlook on things (especially when people warn against them - I like a challenge). It just doesn't work properly, and will need to be exchanged. It is a common fault.

The package is a very good deal if everything works well. I paid about £30 for the router alone.

welshblob

I've had the older version of this for 2 years now and it works ok. I did have disconnection problems initially but I think that was more to do with something in the neighbourhood interferring with it and changing the channel normally helped. Also heavy bittorrent use can lock it up after a while but generally it copes ok. I think the 1 \ 2 antenna thing is due to slightly different revisions being around yet still having the same part number.
Rob

wonderfullife_2

Hi
I have a Belkin 7633, (modem & router) and I've found it to be excellent, much better than my WAG Linkys, very stable and no disconnections whatsoever. And the best thing with this router, is that you can tweak the SNR to give a higher sync rate, although I don't know if you can do it with this one.


And who else gives a lifetime warranty.

scoobies

bad-head-day wrote:

Look, I hate negative responses too but don't take it to heart. I do have this model, the exact model & they used the same photo when I bought mine. I also have the latest firmware & also an optimistic outlook on things (especially when people warn against them - I like a challenge). It just doesn't work properly, and will need to be exchanged. It is a common fault.

The package is a very good deal if everything works well. I paid about £30 for the router alone.

Thanks mate - I just knew there would be negative responses but I thought it was worthwhile everyone knowing about the deal. To be honest I knew Belkin can be a little bit hit and miss with networking kit but then again so can Linksys and Netgear on occasion (from experience) - I just thought this was a good deal if all worked well.

Fortunately mine has been solid so far - but you never know

I don't know what the difference is between the small square versions of this router and the large rectangular version like I recieved. Maybe someone else knows?????

On the plus point nobody has mentioned if this works on ADSL! You MSE's are getting wiser!

All the best
Scoobies

scoobies

Dealseek wrote:

Scoobies - have you got this? - just want to check whether it looks like the one they show on the web because i thought it had only one antenna

Hi Dealseek,

As mentioned previously mine is the large rectangular router with twin antennas (Jesus - is is even bigger than my ancient Linksys:rotfl: )

Regards.....

thor

sandybrag wrote:

Yes, I bought it as well the last time was on here. For me I have problems trying to connect to the router. I use my laptop with it say once a week, and usually i have to reboot the router before it will let my lappy connect. I agree there do seem to be some problems with this.

Its cheap and cheerful at this price, but be preapred for these problems.

Hmm..I have these exact same problems with my laptop not being able to connect for more than 5 minutes before having to reboot the router. The only difference being that it was a netgear router. Once I swapped it for a belkin router and set it up, I have had a stable connection ever since.
Just as people have used their bad experiences to prejudice them against belkins, I will always choose belkin over netgear. And they have 24/7 technical support so if you do get into difficulties there will always be help available. I botched up the networking on my XP machine and they had no qualms in getting it sorted even though the belkin router was not at fault and this was despite calling them early hours of the morning. Ok the support was from India but they left no stone unturned when doing their job and succesfully resolved the error.
Unsurprisingly therefore I have got to say that this is a good deal.