Belkin ADSL Modem with Built-In Wireless Router F5D7630

I’d been happily using a Belkin 802.11g WAP / router / switch for just under a year when this morning it decided that it was nearly out of warranty, and blew up. Not literally, but all it could manage was flashing a rather hypnotic pattern with its LEDs, and nothing in the way of 802.11g.

So it was off to PC World with a credit card, the alternative being three or four days with a 40-foot Cat 5 lead string across the apartment, and how long would it have been before that got tripped over? £89 later, I was the proud owner of a Belkin ADSL Modem with Built-In Wireless Router, which is almost as snappy a product name as F5D7630. Belkin really do need to sort their product nomenclature out - I mean, stop well short of calling them the Hokey Cokey 2000 series, but you really can do better than the ADSLMWBIWR. The thinking behind a combined modem/router/WAP box was that it means I can finally retire the rather elderly Windoze box which does pretty much nothing except run a USB ADSL modem.

And I have to report that it’s working rather well. Installation took all of two minutes - it’s a web-based interface that pops up on 192.168.2.1, so once you’ve picked up a DHCP address you’re away and configuring. Plusnet connected first time, the WEP configuration was painless and there’s a reasonably decent firewall built in, which has the option of poking ports through, as well as a DMZ option (which I must admit surprised me - I wasn’t expecting anything quite as sophisticated in a box that cost less than £100). Coverage seems more than adequate, extending a good 100 feet or so into the park (don’t get any ideas, I’ve got WEP and MAC filtering enabled), and it talks quite happily to an Airport Extreme-fitted Powerbook and a no-name clone 802.11g PC card.

About all I can say in criticism is that’s it’s not particularly pretty - I doubt there was a designer involved, and if there was they certainly didn’t serve their time at Apple; and it runs a bit warm.

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