LITTLE ROCK — I have a very interesting product this week, but it’s going to require a bit of explanation.
Bear with me. It’s worth it.
I’m trying out a new device that should make all your wireless devices run faster, because it’s designed to make the wireless signal run faster.
The product is Belkin’s Advance N900 DB wireless router. This is the device that takes the wired signal from the cable modem or DSL modem and broadcasts it as a wireless signal to your computer, smart phone, tablet computer or other devices.
The DB in the title stands for “Dual Band.” It means this router can broadcast on two different bands, the 2.4GHz band and the 5GHz band. In layman’s terms, it can broadcast on a common wireless frequency (2.4GHz) used by items like cordless phones, and it can broadcast on another frequency not used in most households (5GHz). The 2.4GHz band usually is crowded and slower, but it’s a stronger signal and used by almost all wireless devices. The 5GHz signal isn’t as strong or as universal, but it’s a LOT faster. The speeds doubled on the tests I did comparing the two signals. Best of all, with a dual-band router like the N900, you can use the signals simultaneously. They each can get a speed of up to450Mbps (megabits per second, or 1 million characters per second), but the 2.4GHz rarely will get to that because so many wireless signals use it.
But that isn’t all. This router has a third signal built in, a 2.4GHz “Guest” signal. This is set up to allow guests to use a wireless signal in your home or business without using YOUR wireless signal. It’s a way to keep your signal more secure. I love this feature. I also love the fact that you can hide it from the world until you need it.
This router does another thing, for those who are into streaming media and games. These tasks use a huge amount of data and take a huge amount of bandwidth to run properly. With the router’s video mode, it will prioritize large-bandwidth tasks. What’s good about this is you have less of a change of having your streaming video, such as from Netflix, interrupted or stalled out. What’s bad is the other tasks someone else might be doing, like checking e-mail on a smart phone, get the leftover in the signal and slow down considerably. If you don’t stream a lot of media, you can shut this option off.
Let’s get to the setup, because setting up a wireless router can be very complicated or very easy. In this case, the setup for the N900 is both.
The router comes with a CD that includes a setup wizard, which will talk you through setting up your router with the default settings. For the most part, it’s fairly smooth on Windows. It’s on the Mac that it gets a bit more complicated, but we’ll get to that.
One thing I love about this router is that it comes set with complicated passwords, as opposed to other routers I’ve seen that just leave the signal open to the world. Of course, if the password is too complicated, you can change it. The package includes a Web address that gives you direct access to the router. There you can change all kinds of options. Most of them you won’t need to change for home access, but if you do, Belkin does a good job of explaining each option by clicking on the “more info” next to each one.
One thing you can do in this setup is assign new names and passwords to each signal, which is what I did. I also highly recommend adding a password to the router’s direct access, which you can do at this website. Otherwise, there is a page that shows your new super-secret password to the world, and the default “password” to get to it is to just hit return.
If you do change the names of the signals, be warned: This freaked out the Mac’s Lion software.
I had to do a lot of tweaking just to get the 2.4GHz to work, but I kept getting “connection timed out” on the 5GHz signal. Finally, after a few colorful metaphors and some forum surfing, I found the answer. I had to delete the 5GHz option from my network preferences and let the computer find it and add it again. Which I did. And it worked. Two hours of craziness for a 5-second fix. It’s not the fault of the router, though. It turns out it’s a glitch in Lion. One that, I hope, will be fixed soon. I didn’t have this problem with Windows.
So while the router could be complicated or easy to set up, depending on your computer, it was easier and more secure to set up than other routers I’ve used. The guest feature is a great bonus, and the speed on the 5GHz signal, if you can access it, is blazingly fast. It also handles media better than standard routers.
Security and speed. I told you it was worth it.
Melissa L. Jones can be reached via e-mail at mljones72@me.com.
Where it’s @
The Belkin Advance N900 DB wireless dual-band router requires a broadband Internet connection; Windows XP or Mac OS 10.5 or later; 512MB of memory and 600MB on the hard drive. The product retails for $199. More information is available at www.belkin.com.
Business, Pages 19 on 03/26/2012