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El Salvador, San Salvador
1 Level
741 Review
49 Karma

Review on πŸ“Ά Belkin ME1004-R High-Performance Wireless Cable/DSL Router by Roman Palmer

Revainrating 2 out of 5

Terrible signal strength - buy another router!

I read a lot of reviews on this site and took a chance with this inexpensive router. I found the installation a bit frustrating and not that easy, and some reviews make it sound like it. I ended up calling tech support for help setting it up. Technical support was helpful. So I successfully connected the router to my desktop computer and was able to connect wirelessly to my laptop, but I was only able to stay on the wireless connection when I was about 10-12 feet from the router. I didn't have any nearby sources of interference like a cordless phone and had mostly line of sight from my router to my laptop, but I was still only able to get a "very low" signal strength (or one out of five bars) at 10-12 feet. . Every time I tried to move the laptop to the coffee table about 25-30 feet from the router, I would lose my wireless connection. And again it was mostly line of sight with no sources of interference. I've called tech support a few times trying to diagnose poor signal strength. They have guided me through various procedures such as: Such as changing the channel on the router or resetting the router, updating the firmware and doing a factory reset. None of these things improved performance. Finally, during my last conversation with them, after trying all these things, they said that the problem was that I needed to update the driver for my wireless adapter and that the problem wasn't with the router. I'm pretty sure my wireless adapter is fine. Works well on other wireless networks. And when I tried to connect to this router at home and clicked "Show available wireless networks" I was able to see a couple of my neighbors' networks with a stronger signal than my own! Also, in a conversation with tech support, I asked two different support reps what the maximum distance from the router was that I could work wirelessly. One told me 30 feet. Another told me 8 meters. Had I known this, I probably would have bought a more expensive router with better reviews. Next time I will probably buy a router from another manufacturer.

Pros
  • Great for me
Cons
  • Hard to remember but it was