Good Value Belkin AC1200 and Dlink AC1750 Routers

By Ali H

Both Belkin F9K1113 AC1200 DB and Dlink 850L AC1750 are good value simultaneous dual band routers in its class. Which one suits your business needs best?

Overview

Bunch of models of wireless routers based on the latest wifi technology you can purchase from the shelf of the electronic stores or online stores ranging from wireless ac900 with prices under $100 to the high end wireless ac1900 with the prices above $180.

Are you going to purchase the high end router just for covering couple of computers and couple of Android mobile devices for your small home? You will just waste the money for powerful router while you can find best value router for your small or medium home. Let me take two of routers with best money you can buy to meet your business needs .i.e. Belkin AC1200 and Dlink DIR-865L AC1750 dual band gigabit routers. Each of them is around $130 in online retail such as Amazon.

Belkin wireless AC1200 DB

Comparison

To help you decide which one is the best to meet your need you can read the main spec comparison between the two in the following Belkin ac1200 Vs Dlink ac1750 comparison table.

Wifi technology

Is there any differences regarding the wifi technology between the two routers? Both are engineered based on the latest wifi technology – the wireless ac (draft 802.11ac standard). This is the fastest wifi technology – the future (draft version) of wifi technology you can taste today. Belkin F9K1113 is based on wireless ac1200 delivering the speeds of up to 1200Mbps total bandwidth, while Dlink 865L delivers the speeds of up to 1750Mbps total bandwidth. Each of the routers can run dual band (2.4GHz and 5GHZ) simultaneously.

Dlink DIR-865L Wireless AC1750

The antenna technology applied to each of the routers is nearly the same. Belkin comes with Multibeam while Dlink comes with Smartbeam antenna technology which is designed internally to look neat and elegant, eliminating the clutter of the external antenna rods. Multibeam and Smartbeam technology broadcast the signal in all directions but locks the wifi clients with solid signal.

Gigabit Ethernet ports

High speed Ethernet ports are ideal in connecting to gigabit NIC adapters of the computers for high speed data rate throughout to support demanding high bandwidth applications including large transferring multimedia files, gaming, video and voice applications. Both routers come with 4xGigabit LAN ports and 1x Gigabit WAN port.

USB ports

Sharing the storage space is essential in home or small offices, and sharing the printer is also important in computer networking to make the most use of your devices on the network. A router with two USB ports is advantageous to let you host both storage and printer at the same time, no need to change the device to attach to the port should need to change from printer to storage or vice versa.

Belkin F9K1113 ac1200 DB comes with two USB 2.0 ports to help you host both storage and printer together but Dlink comes with only one USB port. Regarding the storage, both routers supports DLNA media server for seamless connection with other DLNA compliant devices including XBOX, Blu-Ray, smart-TV and more.

Cloud services

Dlink offers cloud services with MyDlink Cloud service which allows you monitor your belongings remotely via your mobile devices while you are away. With Dlink camera and wireless router with MyClink services you can monitor your home or small office remotely, never miss the best moment of your kids while they are growing up.  

Other features are almost the same and to summarize the differences (if any) you can read the following comparison table.

	Dlink 850L AC1750	Belkin F9K1113 AC1200 DB
Wifi technology	Simultaneous dual band – ac1750	Simultaneous dual band – Wireless ac1200
Wifi speeds	2.4GHz – up to 450Mbps 5GHz – up to 1300Mbps	2.4GHz – up to 300Mbps 5GHz – up to 867 Mbps
Antennas technology	Smartbeam – similar as Beamforming technology	Exclusive Multibeam high power internal antenna arrays
Ethernet ports	Gigabit ports: 4xLAN and 1x WAN port	Gigabit ports: 4xLAN and 1x WAN port
USB ports	1x USB 2.0 share storage and printer; DLNA media server; UPnP	2xUSB 2.0 port share storage, printer, MyTonky DLNA server,
Cloud	MyDlink cloud services and more cloud Apps for your mobile devices	N/A
Guest network	Yes	Yes
Security addition	Parental control	Parental control; Internet filter by Norton

Both routers receive good average customer rating in Amazon with averagely 3.8 out of 5 stars. Prices are almost the same at around $130, and could become cheaper by times when more models come to the markets.

You may also like comparison between Asus RT-N66U with Linksys EA4500 and more wireless routers comparison be read from wireless routers the connected lifestyle.

By Ali H

Comparison Asus N66U Vs Linksys EA4500

By Ali Hariono

Overview

How do you like two of most popular wireless n900 routers currently in the market – Asus RT-N66U Vs Linksys EA-4500? Deciding to purchase which one is better between the two products is sometimes difficult and confusing. Each of the product has its own pros and cons. But one thing to remember is that you cannot find the best product since each year or less new products are introduced into the market with better technology and features which improve the previous products.

Asus RT-N66U front view

Asus Vs Linksys

To understand which of the two products is better, at least better to meet your need, you need to understand the features of each product. One feature might be fit to your need and the other might not fit your business need even though the feature is the excellent feature.

Wi-Fi speed

Both routers are powered by the 4^th generation of wifi technology (802.11n) with three spatial data streams where each of the stream delivers the speed of up to 150Mbps. With three spatial data streams, your router can deliver the high speeds of up to 450Mbps.

Asus RT-N66U rear panel

Both Asus RT-N66U and Linksys EA4500 are packed with the N900 wireless technology, meaning they can deliver the speeds of up to 450Mbos each of 2.4CHz and 5GHz bands. If you run the router with both bands are enabled your network can deliver the aggregate bandwidth of up to 900Mbps totally. You can connect all of the wifi devices that operate in either 2.4GHz or 5GHz band.

Why dual band is matter? With dual band support you can use the 5GHz band for delivering the cleaner band ideal for streaming video and voice since it is less interference than 2.4GHz band. You need a smooth video streaming and lag free gaming using 5GHz band. 2.4GHZ band is prone to signal interference from other sources of signal attenuator that uses 2.4GHz band such as garage opener, microwave oven, cordless phone and more.  

Linksys EA4500 

There are many users are still confused in buying the dual band routers. They have a dual band router and complain to the store that their computer cannot detect the 5GHz band which they expect to get a better signal receiver. What the obvious problem is that their computers do not support dual band. To get the full benefit of dual band (particularly 5GHz band) feature is that your router and wifi devices must support dual band.

Asus RT-N66U and Linksys EA4500 N900 routers are designed for multimedia which is optimized for delivering video streaming and gaming.

Customer ratings

Initial release of the RT-N66U was very disappointed; too many bugs with the firmware, but the updated firmware then fixed the issue and boost the performance to the top. And you know this router is now always in the top five best seller product in router category in Amazon. This router receives best performance review with average ratings of 4.5 out of 5 stars, an excellent achievement. The total number of users that gave 1 star rating is around 10% of those who gave 5 star rating.

Compare with Linksys EA4500 which only receives 3.5 out of 5 stars average ratings. And you know that those who gave 1 star rating are around half of those who gave 5 star ratings, too bad for product from a well known networking vendor.

Operation modes

The other feature that you can find useful with Asus RT-N66U is that you can configure it to operate in wireless access point mode (WAP). Well this is not very important feature I think. Should you already have an existing wired network in place, then you need a wireless access point to provide wifi access to mobile devices. There are many high performance WAP products out there that are designed specifically for WAP and even have more operation modes including WDS, wifi client, or range extender such as Linksys WAP610N with dual band support too. This is a standard WAP device you can use for your homes. However for production environment such as in offices you may consider high performance industrial or business class wireless access point such as Cisco Aironet 1140 series or SonicWall SonicPoint.

Asus RT-N66U is ideal for your small office network with Windows server 2012 Essentials platform on your single server, your first server for your business.   

Asus RT-N66U main features

·         Wireless N900 dual band with three external antennas

·         4xGigabit LAN and 1xGigabit WAN ports

·        Two USB 2.0 ports to allow you share storage and printer at the same time

·         DLNA media server

·         PPTP VPN support

·         IPv6 ready

·         Wireless router or AP operation modes

·         ASUSWRT for Easy Setup, Signal Monitoring, and Network Application Control

Linksys EA4500 main features

·         Wireless N900 router with 3x3 MIMO internal antennas

·         4xGigabit LAN and 1xGigabit WAN ports

·         1x USB 2.0 port for either shared storage or printer

·         DLNA media server

·         IPv6 ready

·         Cisco Connect software - Quick three step setup, plus parental controls, instant guest access and easy network management

There are still couples of high performance wireless N900 routers you may consider such as Netgear WNDR4500 N900 with two USB ports and also TP-link TL-WDR4900 with two USB ports too.

Want to know high speed routers from Linksys and Netgear? Check here Linksys EA6900 Vs Netgear R7000 wireless ac1900 routers.

For all-in-one ADSL device for your small home you may consider Actiontec GT724WGR or GT784WN Wireless DSL Modems.

Ali Hariono