Belkin Wireless Pre-N Desktop Network Card Network adapter

Wireless networking has been evolving over the last 5 years. From the humble beginnings of 802.11b WiFi that provided bandwidth of 11megabits per second through to the newer 802.11a and 802.11g that upped the performance to 54mbps. With each technology advance, vendors have been keen to get their products to market early - usually before the standards for interoperability have been finalised.

Unsurprisingly, things are no different with the latest wave of improvements. 802.11n is the next advance in wireless networking, using clever tricks with aerials to improve range and speed. Of course 802.11n isn't ratified as a standard yet but this hasn't stopped the major vendors from lining up products that take advantage of it. NetGear and Belkin are the two biggest names that are actively pushing the new Multi-In Multi-Out (MIMO) technology that 802.11n relies on for its improvements. While NetGear have seized the MIMO brand for their new product, Belkin have opted for the more honest "Pre-N" label, indicative of the fact that the product is pre-standard.

So why would I buy a pre-standard networking technology? Well, if you've read my review of the Belkin Pre-N wireless router (shameless plug), you will have some ideas. To summarise, I was having problems with my old Belkin 802.11g router. Range and bandwidth were both at fault and the Pre-N promise of an 800% increase in range and a doubling of throughput was too good to pass over. So I bought a Pre-N router and got a free Pre-N network card with it.

At this point, it's worth stating that you will only get any advantage from the Pre-N technology if both your access point AND your PC are running Belkin's own Pre-N kit. That's not to say that either isn't backwardly compatible, the AP and the card will both support the older 802.11b and 802.11g protocols in the absence of other Pre-N components. Not only that, but older (802.11b and g) devices are supported alongside the Pre-N devices without any performance impact - something that Netgear has difficulty with.

The card under review here is a curious halfway-house of a peripheral that supports both Desktop and laptop PCs. The actual network card is a standard PCMCIA card that can be plugged into the PC-Card slot of a laptop. To make it useful in a PC, Belkin supply a PCMCIA-caddy expansion card that plugs in to a regular PCI slot in your desktop PC. The usual assortment of driver CD, quick start poster and manual are supplied as well. It is available as a laptop-only version, which comes without the PCI-caddy, but for the difference in price (about £10) I opted for the extra flexibility.

The instructions are simplicity itself - the manual is divided into logical sections that cover everything from the high-level overview, through detailed configuration to trouble-shooting. More immediately useful is the quick-start poster (assuming you have the space to unfold it!). On a double-sided A1-sheet of paper it details the 4 steps to installation, complete with pictures & photos. Not just in English but German and French as well.

Installation is a breeze. First off, open up your PC and install the PCMCIA caddy into a spare PCI slot. Boot up and, under Windows XP at least, the card is found and doesn't need any drivers. Next up you insert the supplied driver CD and an installation menu auto-loads, the first option of which is to install the wireless drivers. Click on this and the driver software install begins. After about 2 minutes of installation you are prompted to insert the network card into the PCMCIA caddy, a job that is simplicity itself, the card will only fit one way. Click OK and the install continues and your new hardware is up and running in les than 5 minutes.

Belkin do supply a software client to help in the configuration of your network, you get the choice of whether or not to use it and I prefer to use the Windows built-in client. That said the Belkin client software is extremely good. As the screen-shot below shows, it provides all manner of facts about your wireless connection - if anything it might be a little too complicated, another reason why I prefer to use Windows own wireless settings.

No sooner has the software installation finished and Windows notifies you of all the wireless networks within range. Select the one you want, enter any security parameters (like WEP or WPA keys) and away you go. It really is as simple as that - I can honestly say that I had this card installed and connected to my network in under 10 minutes!

I was initially concerned about the restriction of having the card placed at the back of the PC; mainly because of interference from the PCs power supply and the effect of the large metal case on the strength of the signal. All of these factors had meant that previous wireless cards were of the USB variety and generally with a 1m USB extension cord to allow careful placement of the device away from sources of interference.

I needn't have worried. Interference doesn't seem to have any noticeable impact, neither does the card being at the back of the PC. In use, the connection is rock-solid at 108mbps which is actually faster than the 100mbps switch ports built into the router! Range is excellent, making light work of the stud-wall construction in our house - I can even get signal on a laptop from a good way down the street!

The increased range means it's a good job that it supports all of the latest security protocols for wireless - my preference is for WiFi Protected Access (WPA) as it's more secure than the older Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) standard.

So impressed have I been by the speed and reliability of the Belkin Pre-N setup that I recently bought a second desktop card for another PC in the house, effectively upgrading it from a 100mbps cable to 108mbps wireless!

The hot-plug nature of the PC Card into the desktop caddy means that it's easy to swap out and use it with other devices (like laptops). My only gripe here is that the MiMo technology, which relies on multiple antennae in the network card, makes for a fairly bulky protuberance when used in a laptop. There really aren't any other problems with it.

By way of summary, if you're looking for a flexible and reasonably future-proof way of upgrading your wireless network, or if you're just about to embark on building a wireless network at home then you could do a lot worse than look at the Pre-N kit from Belkin. At £65 for the adapter and the PCI-slot caddy, it's slightly more expensive than "standard" network cards so ONLY buy it if you are going to invest in other Pre-N devices from Belkin. The build quality is excellent, the documentation detailed yet easy to read and the supplied software does the job admirably. I've not had a reason to call Belkin support but their website offers an easy way to search for the latest drivers and firmware updates should you need them. So all things considered, it has to be 5 stars.