Belkin High-Speed Mode Wireless G Router

Keeping Out the Joneses

While the first thing you should do to protect your wireless network is add encryption and a system password, it can help both security and performance to also enable MAC address filtering, a technique that identifies specific computers by their unique MAC IDs, and either allows or denies them access. It's not fool-proof, since MAC addresses can be "cloned," but it is a good second line of defense, and also prevents accidental association of older B clients that may degrade the performance of your network

You can also check the list of computers associated with your router at any time, by clicking on "DHCP Client List" in the browser-based setup utility.

Covering the Dead Spots

If you've installed your router and still have some dead or low-signal spots in the far reaches of your house, it's time to consider a range extender. Belkin offers both Wi-Fi bridges and access points that work with the router in "repeater" mode, which means that they take the signal from your main base station, and rebroadcast it, pushing the boundaries of your wireless net. Using this method, you'll need to set parameters like SSID, channel and encryption mode to be identical in the your base station, and all bridged access points. This will enable seamless roaming of clients around the house.

Wireless distribution is a great feature, but note that Belkin does not currently support it in High-Speed mode, so you'll lose the speed boost when operating in this manner. This may be supported with future bridges and access points.

Web Watchdog

The Belkin comes with a 6-month optional free trial of Cerberian parental control software, which costs about $20/year after that. Cerberian is managed software, in that it maintains a list of prohibited sites and servers in various categories, such as adult, illegal drugs, weapons, and gambling, and dynamically filters the content of anything not already in its database. The active filtering adds a slight latency to Web surfing, but it is not really noticeable. Parents can add or delete categories from the blocking list. Others include chat/IM, auction, and dating sites.

Once turned on, the controls are active for all computers on the network. There is no way to exempt particular machines, although parents can type a password to override the controls for an hour at a time, effective when they first click to a banned page. Of course, the effectiveness of the controls depends on keeping both the override and router administration passwords completely secret from the kids, something that may be difficult to do.

You can optionally have email messages sent to yourself whenever the system has been overridden, or when a client has tried to access an objectionable site. Cerberian also has a reporting feature that requires an upgrade of the software and a one-time fee of $10.