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Belkin 54g Wireless APBelkin has a well-founded reputation for selling quality networking products at commodity-level prices. Given that background it wasn?t at all surprising to find that the 54g Wireless Network Access Point was almost embarrassingly cheap, beaten only by the MSI product in this respect. The Belkin is a very capable solution and, unlike the MSI offering, widely available from online and catalogue vendors, many offering additional levels of support.
There?s not much to worry about when it comes to deployment of the Belkin access point, which features a very simple browser interface. This makes it easy to configure the various options, all of which worked smoothly, all helping ensure the Belkin 54g performed very well in all our tests. So well in fact that we couldn?t come up with an adequate reason for choosing a more expensive solution, either in terms of throughput or basic security options.
On the downside the Belkin 54g lacks some of the bells and whistles of more expensive solutions, but you have to pay a lot more to get anything better. Essential security features such as Wep (Wired Equivalent Privacy) encryption, MAC address filtering and support for the latest WPA (Wifi Protected Access) are all there if you look in the right places.
Physical size could be an issue as the casing is quite large, although it?s lightweight and has holes for wall/ceiling mounting. There?s no Power over Ethernet (PoE) support, but there rarely is in this price bracket and few small businesses have the necessary PoE switches anyway. Likewise, although Belkin quotes 32 as the maximum number of users, at this price, you can simply install more as user numbers rise.
A lifetime warranty is another bonus you get with the Belkin access point, which makes building an effective wireless Lan easy and affordable.
Contact: Belkin 00 800 223 55 460
www.belkin.co.uk
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