|
22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Fast, effective, but a bit bulky, 20 Aug 2003
As you'd expect for a second-generation piece of equipment, this access point does what it says it will do very effectively. Take it out of the box, plug it in and turn it on and it should work just fine.Why only four stars? First, it's quite big, and although you can stand it on its end or bolt it to a wall it's really quite bulky. I've seen smaller laptops! Secondly, the software upgrade process wasn't quite as straightforward as it should have been. As supplied the access point doesn't support the latest 802.11g specification for high-speed wireless networking, as it was released before the spec. was made official. (It works fine as it is with other Belkin kit, and probably works fine with other Broadcom cards, but I don't know how well it would work with 802.11g gear from other vendors.) Upgrading the software means that you'll need to temporarily reconfigure your PC to the 192 sub-net (not particularly well explained in the docs.) and use a hard-wired Ethernet connection to download new software to it. Here's where it went a little odd; the access point needed a couple of resets before it sprang back into life. With that done the new software worked fine. Both 802.11g and older, slower 802.11b cards connected without problems. A good range, too. Good stuff: the Web-based configuration interface works just fine, including setting up security using WEP and also WPA with or without a Radius server. You can restrict access to specific Ethernet cards, set up bridging to other wireless access points (and restrict these too), and also disable 802.11b access if you know that you'll only be using 802.11g. More good stuff: blinking lights to indicate LAN traffic and also wireless traffic. Handy, if only to check that everything's as it should be.
|
