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There's more as the Vision supports two wireless SSID's - a feature you'll be hard pushed to find in other consumer products. The second SSID facilitates guest Internet access where clients are routed through to the WAN port and are not allowed to access the LAN. This can be set up from the web interface or with a few button presses on the router where it'll automatically generate a WPA key for that SSID only. We tested this using a Windows XP SP2 notebook equipped with a Belkin N1 Wireless Notebook Card (pictured, but not included) and found that we could, indeed, only access LAN systems by logging into the primary SSID. Wireless security for this extends to WEP or WPA/WPA2 encryption, SSID masking and a MAC address filter where you can allow or deny access to listed clients. Note that the wireless client icon on the router doesn't come on if only guest users are logged in.

WPS (Wi-Fi Protected Setup) is also on the menu and the router supports both PIN and PBS (Push Button Setup) methods with compliant client systems. Wireless performance isn't particularly inspiring with a 690MB video file copied from the notebook to a 3.2GHz Pentium D PC on the LAN at an average of 50Mbps with WPA encryption. An increase in range also had an adverse affect. With the notebook on the floor below the router we saw a drop in signal strength of around fifty per cent with the same copy returning only 32Mbps. If you feel the need for more wireless speed then check out Netgear's Gigabit equipped RangeMax WNR854T.

Belkin is a bit light in the features department although most home users will be satisfied. The SPI firewall can be partnered by up to twenty virtual server entries for routing certain inbound traffic to specific internal IP addresses, and a DMZ allows one system to sidestep the firewall for full exposure to the Internet. The client IP filter feature could be useful as it enables you to designate ranges of IP addresses on the LAN and restrict access to the Internet or particular services permanently or to a basic schedule. You don't get any web filtering features but to be honest those found on most competing routers aren't up to much anyway. It's always worth making sure the latest firmware is loaded and the router can check Belkin's web site to see if any new versions are available.

Verdict

The N1 Vision represents reasonable value as its price tag is in the same ball park as competing Gigabit equipped 802.11n routers such as D-Link's DIR-655. The N1 isn't as well featured and wireless performance is pedestrian at best, but if you want the best looking broadband router on the planet then look no further than this.

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