In almost every measure besides performance, where it unfortunately hangs around the rear of the bunch, the Belkin N1 is the star of this review. It is head and shoulders above the rest of the products in design and usability, with Apple-like attention to detail in the packaging, manuals, interface, and help files. It also has top-notch features, a lifetime warranty, and excellent support.

On opening the Belkin box, the first thing you see is a large card completely illustrating all the physical connection possibilities and detailing the order in which they should be made. Cables are numbered to match the card. The setup CD worked flawlessly, detecting the DSL modem settings correctly and automatically connecting to the Internet. It then directed users to the Web utility to set up wireless encryption.

The N1’s 103-page PDF manual was the longest and most comprehensive in the bunch. Every setting option was clearly explained, along with its implications.

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The Asus 240 MIMO is based on the same Airgo Gen3 chip set as the Netgear RangeMax 240 (with which it shared top performance honors), but otherwise it’s quite different. Some of its features are better, such as a three-year warranty, support for authentication by a Radius server (an important feature for many enterprise customers), and a tool for wireless encryption setup. In other respects the Asus suffers by comparison.

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Continue from Part 1.

Vendors are aggressively addressing draft-n performance problems, bugs, and compatibility issues with frequent firmware updates. But we’d rather vendors didn’t use paying customers to do their alpha and beta testing. You shouldn’t have to install multiple firmware updates to see promised performance on a brand new product.

Faced with a choice between work-in-progress draft-n products on one hand and products that perform better but use proprietary technology that can never be upgraded to 802.11n on the other, this is a good choice for consumer.

QOS helps ensure smooth streaming media and VoIP calls by prioritizing multimedia packets on the network. All but the Netgear lines had this feature and Netgear planned to add it via firmware updates. (Note that QoS support must be present in both your router and your adapters to work.)

UPnP enables automatic peer-to-peer connectivity of networked computers, hard drives, game consoles, streaming media players, and even kitchen appliances, so that they can recognize one another and share data intelligently. We were pleased to see that all the tested routers had this capability.

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New wireless networking equipment promises big speed and coverage improvements. But man tests show that the new products have drawbacks and that older ones are still the best performers.

“twelve times the speed!” “Four times the range!” “Faster than wired!” Like barkers at a carnival, home-network equipment vendors are touting the revolutionary performance of the latest and greatest Wi-Fi standard, 802.11n. And yes, its promise is great: 802.11n networks should enable superior range and data speeds of up to 270 megabits per second (and eventually 600 mbps). Although (as with previous Wi-Fi standards) real-world performance won’t be nearly as fast, 802.11n products should deliver more than enough throughput and range to support high-quality video streaming and Voice-over-IP phone service, graphics-intensive online games, and other bandwidth-hogging goodies throughout a typical home. We can hardly wait to buy the gear. Problem is, that’s not what the vendors are selling.

Instead of products based on a final standard which should appear by early 2008 and will be Wi-Fi Alliance certified for interoperability what we have now is a flood of “draft” 802.11n products based on a preliminary and incomplete version of the standard. These products might be but are not guaranteed to be firmware upgradable to the final spec.

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Leading networking hardware company, Linksys announced they had brought in Wireless-N (draft-N) products around the third quarters in this year. These will provide consumers with four times the range and 12 time the speed of Wireless-G and they’re targeting ar media-centric homes and businesses.

“With the growing use of VoIP, high definition video, online gaming and other application, users require network bandwidth that Wireless-G could no longer support.” said principal analyst, Mike Wolf. Linksys have three products namely a broadband router, a notebook adapter and PCI adapter.

PLUS highway users travelling in Perak can now drop by at any rest and service areas (R&R) to access the Internet. PLUS is an expressway operator in Malaysia.

In supporting Perak;s K-State status in year 2010, all PLUS rest and service areas (R&R) on North-South Expressway in Perak are offering free wireless broadband Internet service to highway users. This service is offered through the TM Net.

With this new facility, the public can now surf the web or check email through laptops, mobile phones and Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) at hotspots offered at all PLUS rest and service areas in Perak for free 24 hours a day.

The service is also provided at Sungai Perak and Gunung Semanggol Rest & Services Areas in Perak as well as the Sungai Buloh Overhead Bridge Restaurant. The service will be extended to all R&Rs along the PLUS expressway before end of this year 2006.

The existing 6500 households in the 2670 acre Bandar Tasik Puteri in Rawang (a township in Selangor, Malaysia) can subscribe to Jaring wireless broadband service following the memorandum-of-understanding reached between Jaring, the developer Asia Pacific Land Berhad and Wi-Fi service provider BTP Wireless Sdn Bhd in May.

Formed by five of the township’s residents, BTP will installed over 200 Wi-Fi access point serving homes, schools and public area in the township, while Jaring provides the trunk connection to the Internet backbone.

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