Belkin N1 Vision Wireless Router With Interactive Network Display
By Tony Celeste
The 2007 Holiday Season may well become known as the time when the Wireless N router attained "must-have" status for fans of both wireless home networking and wireless home video. With dozens of name brand Wireless N routers hitting the market, the Belkin N1 Vision Wireless Router has a unique feature that I haven't seen elsewhere: it includes a built-in LCD display that constantly updates network performance metrics.
The LCD display on the Belkin N1 Vision offers a wide array of metrics and information.
The Belkin N1 Vision's LCD display contains seven main monitoring panels:
- Network Status: shows data on internet, modem, wired, and wireless computer connections, and indicates whether wireless security is enabled.
- Broadband Download Speedometer: shows your current Internet download speed.
- Broadband Upload/Download Speedometer: displays both upload and download speeds.
- Connections/Speed: shows the broadband speed of each connected computer.
- 24 Hour Usage: displays total 24-hour bandwidth use for each connected computer.
- Guest Access Status: indicates whether Guest Access is in use. Guest Access allows computers in your home to access the Internet without having access to your computer's files.
- Date/time: can be configured for 12 or 24 hour time display.
In addition to its cool display, the Belkin N1 Vision also features four wired Gigabit Ethernet switch ports. Support for Wireless N means you can transfer data at up to 300 Mbits/sec over your wireless connections, the fastest wireless rates currently available. The Belkin N1 Vision also proffers three antennas and Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) technology, so it's ideal for simultaneous file sharing, online gaming, video conferencing, Internet telephone calls, and high definition video streaming. The Belkin N1 Vision uses WEP, WPA, or WPA2 encryption, and is backward compatible with Wireless b/g standards.
