In Brief

Forget all the nonsense about the Belkin Pre-N Router being "non-standard." When it runs faster than everything else, including with regular 802.11b and g clients, and offers triple the range, who cares if the high-speed mode isn't Wi-Fi certified? Certainly not us. It was the first home-oriented router to cover our entire house and yard, with no dead spots. It even gave speedy performance and reliable connections at the farthest reaches, rather than dropping down to snail's pace, as with normal Wi-Fi routers. While it's pricey, and you'll also need to buy new $99 adapter cards to get the top performance and range, it's worth every penny in terms of user experience. The faster speeds and 802.11e support (which prioritizes voice and media streams) also allow for new applications like VoIP and video streaming.

In Depth

While we generally prefer standards-based equipment, after using the Belkin Pre-N Router for less than a week, we're ready to throw that requirement out the window. Try it, and you'll never want to go back. The speed and range are simply scintillating. When used with the matching Pre-N adapter card, we got 96Mbps throughput in the farthest reaches of our house (4 bars out of 5 on the signal strength meter), and had to go out in the garden to even begin to tax its capabilities. Even when used with a standard 802.11b client card, we got better range and performance than before, although nothing like with the Pre-N card. The screens below show signal strength and throughput for two simultaneous connections to the Belkin, the first using the built-in 802.11b Centrino chip in our Dell laptop, and the second using the Belkin Pre-N card. Both were located in the room farthest from the base station, where we had not previously been able to connect with the 802.11b card.

The great performance is achieved thanks to an Airgo MIMO (multiple input, multiple output) intelligent antenna chipset. The three antennae on top of the attractive square base station transmit separate streams of data simultaneously, which are then processed together by the client card. The intelligent antenna technology is also much more resistant to interference than current Wi-Fi routers, reducing dropouts considerably. This technology is the underpinning of the forthcoming 802.11n standard (hence the Pre-N monicker). The standard is not ratified yet, however, so future 802.11n certified products may not work with the Belkin Pre-N line. But 802.11n certified gear won't be here for over a year. We see no reason not to go with the Belkin now, given its backward compatibility with 802.11b/g equipment.

Features-wise, the Belkin offers complete routing support, including an SPI NAT firewall, MAC address filtering and virtual server support. It also has support for WPA encryption (although not the Radius servers used in many enterprise environments). It also did not have WDS (wireless distribution system) or wireless repeater support, which means the only way to expand the network coverage is via a second access point with an Ethernet wire running to it. However, the Pre-N Router's range is so good all by itself, we didn't miss this feature.

There's also an optional parental control feature supplied by Cerberian, which which filters all Web traffic for objectionable content in categories ranging from adult and violent material, to smoking and gambling. It's flexible and full-featured, although you have pay by the month after the six-month trial is up.

Since you'll want to buy at least one Pre-N adapter card to get the most out of the router, it's worth mentioning that the card comes with an excellent client utility that lets you manage all your network connections. We wish more client cards came with this type of software, which works together with the built-in Windows Zero-Config utility, rather than substituting for it. Mac users will bemoan the lack of drivers for this card, although Belkin says it is working on a solution.

Overall, the Belkin Wireless Pre-N Router is impossible to resist. Once you experience its range and performance, you'll be hooked. But even if it didn't have those things, its excellent features, great setup utilities (a PRINTED manual!!!), and performance boost for 802.11b/g equipment make it our top choice among current Wi-Fi routers.