We've focused a lot of this review on the security
measures you should be enabling when using these 802.11b wireless products from Belkin because a lot of people are laregly
unaware of the issues that wireless networking bring to the table. For
a consumer level Wi-Fi setup the wireless components we tested from Belkin are
first rate - the design and ease of use is for the most part
excellent.
The installation problems we experienced could be easily resolved with a more descriptive section in
the manual (which is otherwise very good). Even with that short stall,
we were able to install the AP, and network cards on a Windows
XP based system and Windows 2000 notebook in a matter of minutes with no
problems.
Belkin have produced
some very good wireless products, and the signal strength and connection quality
brought the internet wirelessly to our test computers without incident.
With WEP enabled your WLAN will be reasonably secured, but since the
passphrase is not dynamically regenerated it is important to change it from time
to time. If you work with sensitive information it may be better for you to play
it safe and stick to hard wired Ethernets.
For home users, or small offices on the other hand, a wireless network makes it
incredibly easy to roll out the network with almost no Cat 5
cabling requirements. Bandwidth is of course limited to a maximum of 11Mbps, but
as far as email and web surfing are concerned this should be more than
adequate.
Despite the inital problems with installation, we were
still impressed enough with the build quality, documentation and ease of use that the three Belkin
wireless components we tested offered. The AP is firmware upgradable which is great
to see as well. I would recommend them to anyone considering adding wireless networking
in their home or small office - just as long as you enable your
WEP!
RSS Newsletter
