Today, about a week after I filed the tech support request — hmm, maybe the company and Verizon share customer values — I received a response.  The firmware upgrade “increases [...]]]>

Last week, I sent an email into Belkin technical support asking for more information on the firmware upgrade for the Gigabit powerline adapter (F5D4076).

Today, about a week after I filed the tech support request — hmm, maybe the company and Verizon share customer values — I received a response.  The firmware upgrade “increases the bandwidth.” End of story.

In real world terms, this is water under the bridge, I installed the beta-labeled firmware a couple of days after sending the email to Belkin tech support, but haven’t had a chance to retest the adapters to see what the difference might be. *sigh*

My current dilemma is to either A) Go buy another two pack of Belkin adapters and run all my devices as such or B) Trash them, and go back to the Netgear 85 Mbps wall-plugged bridges.

The Belkin devices do perform better than the Netgear bridges, but the Netgear devices 1) Have four 10/100 Ethernet ports and 2) Brighter/more visible LEDs for device operation.  The F5D4076 has its status lights behind black tint plastic — looks good, but the uncovered LEDs on the Netgear are much easier to read at a glance.

Does the Belkin Gigabit powerline adapter perform faster/better than the Cisco 200 Mbps AV powerline ? Dunno. Anyone want to swap a couple of NetGear 85 Mbps bridges for a pair?

I have been encouraged by my more recent speed tests with the Belkin gigabit powerline network adapter, but the company is still playing catchup in terms of its support issues, me thinks.

On July 1, Belkin posted a “beta” firmware upgrade for the F5D4076 … but doesn’t tell you what the [...]]]>

Hello! Belkin! Hello!

I have been encouraged by my more recent speed tests with the Belkin gigabit powerline network adapter, but the company is still playing catchup in terms of its support issues, me thinks.

On July 1, Belkin posted a “beta” firmware upgrade for the F5D4076 … but doesn’t tell you what the firmware is supposed to fix/improve on the Gigabit adapter. No documentation or release notes, just an .exe to download and run.  And the Mac and Linux crowd will be ticked because you need a Windows box to run the firmware upgrader… but they should be used to that by now.

Running the package installs the Belkin “upgrader” with three little icons; one starts the flash for the firm ware, one is a blue “I” giving the version — a most reassuring v0.6.0, and and an exit icon.  I’d like to know more before I flash it in.

FYI, the CD shipped with the device only provides a user’s manual. As I noted before, the NetGear guys provided a software client to access its 85 Mbps Powerline bridges to give you an idea about actual speed connections without having to stare at the blinky lights on the outside of the box.

ANOTHER improvement both Belkin and NetGear could provide is a speed utility to test throughput between devices both from device to network and peer-to-peer between devices.  Doubly so for Belkin, since they’re bragging Gigabit speeds under some optimum configuration setup I have yet to witness.