The Belkin N1 Vision: A Wireless Router Built for Speed as well as Display

If you are like me, you have your wireless router tucked away in a closet, at the top of a shelf or under a desk somewhere. I have one of mine on top of a kitchen hutch because it’s in the center of the house, high up (for better reception) and close to the DSL connection. The other is tucked under my desk. I have placed my wireless routers where they functionally would be better. We don’t think of routers as display pieces, at least I didn’t until Belkin sent me a N1 Vision Wireless router for review.

We all know the saying “Form Follows Function” – essentially that people should worry about how something works before what it looks like. In this case, Belkin, after building a high-speed, functional draft-N router, kept going and wrapped it in a design worthy of front and center placement, not on the top shelf of bookcase somewhere. It looks right at home being at eye-level on a bookcase:

The N1 Vision is a solid entrant in the cluttered wifi router market. It has many of the features required of any wireless router. There are a few notable features which should be called out as they differentiate this router from others in the pack. For one, it has an innovated front panel display that can show a variety of helpful information including connection and bandwidth speeds, what devices are connected, download meters, date and time as well as a handy configuration area where you can set up guest access quickly and easily. Another unique feature is the fact that the user does not need a CD to get the router configured. Belkin calls it the “Plug-and-Play CD-less setup”. Lastly, the distinct upright display allows for easy placement on smaller shelves or thin spaces.

The N1 Vision specification are fairly typical for draft N routers. Below are the specs:

There are quite a few things I liked about this router and a few things that I wished has been done a bit differently. I have gone into these items below:

The Positives

• Modern elegant look -  As you can see in the graphic below, the N1 Vision has a very unique design to it. The combination of shiny acrylic black with metal brushed aluminum metal is modernistic, yet the face is uncluttered and simple to that it can be displayed in just about any environment.
  
• Easy set up wizard – One of the nice things about this router is that you don’t have to have a CD to do the installation. There is a very simple and straight-forward web wizard that walks you through the required setup steps. I have captured a few of these for my setup scenario below:
  
  
  
• Front panel display – This display is extremely useful and helpful, and part of the reason why you would want to put the N1 Vision somewhere accessible.
  
  Items that you can see here are: devices connected to your N1 Vision, download speed, upload speed, connected devices & their speed, usage over past 24 hours & date and time. All are very handy.
• Easy guest access – How many times have you had guests to your home and they wanted to hook up to your wireless network. Instead of giving them your “super secret” password, you can simply set up a guest account with a different SSID and password for them to use. This is done either through the web interface, or even better, you can do it through the screen on the front of the N1 Vision. Simply enable Guest Access and then give the numeric password to your guests. When you are done, turn off that access. The next time you want to turn it on, you can have a new password assigned. Very helpful!
• Multiple protocols – 802.11 b/g/n (draft) – the N1 Vision allows for 802.11 b, g and draft n wireless protocols and can use two channels simultaneously (20/40 MHz). Speeds with the draft N are very good and the range for coverage is great in my tests.
• Gigabit Ethernet (LAN/WAN) – Another nice thing is that the wired ports are gigabit Ethernet for both LAN and WAN. I have my Slingbox, for example, hard wired to the router which means that my speeds within my network should be gigabit speeds. However, I have other switches and routers within the network so I’m not sure if I’m fully optimized for that. Also it depends on if the device connected supports gigabit speeds. But it is a nice option to have should I upgrade my internal network eventually.
• Remote management – It’s always important to have a device that you can manage remotely. The N1 Vision does have this capability. Just be careful on what you are trying to manage. (See “Negatives” below.)
• Time Updates – In order to have your clock display, you need to have the device set to pull in the time automatically from a timeserver on the internet. This is a great feature to have, especially if you use the Clock display on the front.

These are just a few highlights of this wireless router. It definitely does differentiate itself from the pack with the front panel display.

The Negatives

These are relatively minor points of things that I discovered during my few months of testing. These are definitely not deal-breakers but things you might want to know about.

• Periodically locks up – During my testing period, I did encounter some times where the device would lock up or become unresponsive. Do note that I experienced this as well with my other routers so it is not unique to the Belkin. Simply unplug it from power for a few seconds and plug back in. The display shows the status of the device as it boots up, which is definitely a nice feature and convenient to have.
• Finger prints show easily – As with any glossy acrylic device, fingerprints and smudges show up very easily. The picture below shows how this can occur. Do note that the picture was taken with flash so the smudging in the upper right hand area is a bit accentuated. It’s easy enough to just wipe it down with a soft cloth.
  
• Protect Home View – While I do enjoy the remote access, I wish that the details of the home page were not displayed to unauthorized users. Too much information is readily available to a casual browser, especially if you set up a DynDNS URL to point to your router (something that is supported within the N1 Vision & it can update the IP address automatically as well).
• Can’t pull WAN IP address if using PPOE on DSL Modem – As mentioned previously, you can set up DynDNS within the N1 to push any changes in your WAN IP address out. Unfortunately, if you let your modem do the PPOE connection, for example, the N1 Vision pulls in the IP address of the modem and not your outside (WAN) IP address. The only way to get the proper WAN IP address is to set up and run PPOE on the router itself and disable that on your DSL modem. It would have been nice to have the IP address pulled from a site outside and not from the network.
• Duplicate admins not allowed – While this is a good security measure, it does mean that you can be locked out of administering your N1 Vision if you try to access from two distinct locations (different IP addresses). You can set the timeout period within the settings to a short period.
• Running Wizard Remotely – I recommend against running the Setup wizard remotely. I was trying to do some screenshots for this review and was walking through the setup wizard from a different location and when I went to another step, I lost connectivity to the router. It might be because the DSL connection dropped as it was going through the setup or something else but I wanted to pass on the warning.
• Basic Router Features – Below, I discuss DD-WRT which is a great project that has a lot of followers. The N1 Vision does have basic router features common on most wifi routers, however, I would like to see many more features enabled within the browser interface, even a fraction of what is currently available on DD-WRT would be nice.

Summing it all up

I have to commend Belkin. I set out wanting to do a review on a 802.11n-type of router. So I tried an experiment using Twitter. I simply started asking questions about the various brands out there to see if any would respond. I had many enlightening conversations with end-users who provided good insight on different brands, but even after doing laundry lists of brand names in my tweets, only Belkin responded. Linksys, D-Link, Buffalo, Netgear and others never responded, not even a peep, which makes me wonder if they have a well thought out social media strategy (or if they were just ignoring me).

I read a few threads within the DD-WRT forums about some folks trying to get some firmware for the N1 Vision. DD-WRT is essentially an open-source firmware project that is working on providing very robust functionality within certain makes and manufacturers of wireless routers. You can basically turn a $60 router into a $600 high-end router with advanced capabilities. I’m hoping that firmware is developed. It would bring great functionality to this already solid product. Do note, there is a “hidden” configuration page that you can go for other controls and to issue shell commands. Just go to http://[your router’s IP address]/wukongjiuwo.html and see what great things are there. Do it with caution though as you could mess up things.

Note: I am starting to disclose products that I receive from vendors or PR firms for free for review. Belkin kindly offered this device to me for testing for my review purposes.

The Belkin N1 Vision MSRP is $149 and seems to be a popular item on the Belkin Store (it is currently out of stock as of this writing). You can get on Amazon for $115 with free shipping.

HTD says: The Belkin N1 Vision is an elegant entry-level Wireless router that is a Certified 802.11n Draft 2.0 router that looks great anywhere it is placed! You won’t want to tuck this one away in a closet!