Draft N devices have been on the market for quite some time. Most vendors and user are quite confident that changes will be so little when the ratification actually occurs next year that even more draft N devices have appeared. While this does cut down the price of upgrading to Wireless-N from Wireless-G, the jump and costs incurred are still quite high, making many users still hesitant. Belkin hopes to change that with the N150 wireless router, a bridging device between Wireless-G and Wireless-N.
Wireless-G offers speed of 54Mbps while Wireless-N offers speed of 300Mbps. Belkin’s N150 offers speed up to 150Mbps provided you have the appropriate N150 USB adaptor. The N150 manages this boost in speed by cutting down on the number of antennas for the N150, giving it only one external antenna and a single stream channel. This mean that while the N150 is based on the Wireless-N standard, since it only offers a single stream channel it isn’t ratified or even compatible with Wireless-N devices most of which are based on MIMO or dual antenna technology. For this reason, the N150 only supports IEEE 802.11g and 802.11b wireless device.
The N150 looks even smaller than a Wireless-G router. Standing upright, it retains the same look and feel of other Belkin routers, complete with all the curved edges and status LED’s laid out from top to bottom. The N150 has a single button in front for WPS one-touch connections and offers four RJ-45 Ethernet ports on the back and a single WLAN port for Internet connectivity. It requires an external power supply and the stand is not detachable.
The N150 does not offer the full 1000 feet range it’s suppose to nor does it achieve the top speed of 150Mbps when used with normal Wireless-N and Wireless-G devices. Speeds tend to vary with a top speed of 72Mbps within a 2 meter radius of the device. Within this range, transfer speeds fluctuate a lot with network utilization rather low and the data connection quite stable. Moving out of this range to about 10 meters and past a couple of obstructions, sees the fluctuation remain but network utilization increases with steady 100& percentages achieved, no doubt thanks to the slower speeds of around 58Mbps and below. At 20 meters, we got faster speeds but even more fluctuation, sometimes to the point of disconnecting making this range a bit unstable at least in terms of connectivity. Transfer times were top notch though with even the most unstable of ranges achieving a transfer time below 7 minutes for 1GB worth of data.
Setup was relatively easy thanks to the good Belkin wizard although it may be a bit inflexible when asking for your Internet connection information. At usual, the wizard can be bypassed and setup done manually through the browser based menu. The N150 retains all the security options of a standard wireless router and does increase wireless-G performance, making it suitable for a small office environment.
Belkin N150 Enhanced Wireless Router Specifications :
Model : F6D4230-4 v1
Draft-N 2.0 : No
Antenna : One
Wireless Capability : IEEE 802.11g, 802.11b
Max Speed : 150Mbps
Range : 1000 feet
Vertical Option : Yes, Stand included
USB2.0 : No
Wireless Security Option : Wi-Fi Protected Setup, 256-bit WEP (64-128 bit), WPA-PSK (TKIP), WPA2-PSK (AES) with WPS Push button
Router Package : Power adapter, network cable, manual + wizard software CD
Popularity: 15% [?]
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