Belkin N1 Vision DHCP Crapness - A Warning

I have a Belkin N1 Vision - of the 4 routers I have its most stable for ADSL2+.

However, it has one fundamental flaw - its DHCP implementation so I thought I would share with you. Perhaps someone has a solution?

Firstly, you cannot reserve static IP addresses (well you can using a hack, but a maximum of 2 it would seem, due to the limit to the commands you can send to the router).

You can set the DHCP lease time to "infinite" which effectively sets a ease of a few years, HOWEVER, when the router resets, whether that is automatically or a manual power cycle - all the leases are lost - This has the effect that new devices trying to connect to the network are allocated IP addresses in use and causes major LAN problems which need to be manual fixed, either resetting NICs or running IPconfig. What a [censored] system...

And no surprise as all router manufacturers seem to be the same these days - they stopped supporting the router in terms of firmware updates about 6 months after the release date - very poor support.

If anyone has more than 1 or 2 computers on their network I would recommend you do not purchase this router!!!!

Interestingly, reading this thread: http://www.dd-wrt.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=33382 , the N1 has a built-in back-door that you can use to get shell access whilst bypassing authentication (!!).

Anyway, looks like people gave up and never managed to get any custom firmwares on, plus they are apparently prone to randomly dying.

I think they are basically lemons (along with most Belkin gear in my experience...). Getting yourself something better seems to be your only solution, unfortunately.

Edited by deleted (Sun 20-Feb-11 18:03:22)