The Zyxel comes in relatively modest packaging which, to be honest, is refreshing – a recycled box inside a thin exterior box and a few bags to hold individual pieces of equipment. Inside, there’s the router itself, two screw-on antenna (always good to see, so they can be replaced with more powerful versions, if you wish), a power supply, ethernet cable, ADSL cable, some brief instructions and a CD containing a router setup program and a more detailed manual.

The router itself is a smallish white unit with lights along the front of the top. This includes a handy wi-fi switch for quickly turning wireless off and on. Along the back is the usual 4 ethernet ports, ADSL port, power socket and, again handily, a power button.

As with most routers, set-up and administration is performed via a webpage (or via the supplied software) that you access via a supplied IP address, username and password (make sure you change the default password, though!). For initial ISP configuration, a “Wizard” will automatically configure this for you (although it can be performed manually, if you wish).

The administration menu was familiar to me, as it’s design is the same as the one on my ZyXEL NSA210 NAS drive.

The range of features available are quite considerable and suggests this is a router more for small businesses rather than your average consumer, especially considering the security features on offer. However, if like me, you like the “power options” then this will provide you with everything you might need – WMM, keyword-based website blocking, DDNS, a command-line Telnet interface, a packet-filtering firewall, management via SNMP and support for static routing and VLANs.

A firmware update is available, so I’d recommend upgrading that as soon as you can.

Testing

I set the ZyXEL up next to my current router, a Netgear DG834Gv4, and only had one powered on at a time. In all cases, encryption was turned on, but only WEP.

Signal tests were then performed one storey up and the other side of the house – in this case, my bedroom!

Running an Android wi-fi analyser I could see a definite 5-10db signal improvement from the ZyXEL, compared to the Netgear. Running Network Stumbler on my Netbook, I observed similar improvements (see graphs). For the layman, this is an extra bar on the wi-fi signal meter.

For file performance tests, I transferred 407MB of data (consisting of 118 files and 15 folders) between my Acer Netbook and my daughter’s aged IBM Thinkpad, both running Windows XP SP3. My Netbook was downstairs in the living room, whilst my daughter’s laptop was in her room – opposite ends and storeys of the house, ensuring they were a good distance apart. The router was situated downstairs, about half way between the two machines.

The Netgear performed the transfer in 5 minutes 40 seconds, equating to 1.2 MB/s. The ZyXEL performed the transfer in 5 minutes, 19 seconds, equating to 1.3 MB/s.

So, a definite improvement in signal strength, but little in the way of performance. As N to G band shouldn’t improve the speed itself, this is the result I expected.

Summary of Zyxel P-660HN-F1Z Wireless N 4-Port Router

An excellent router at a good price. Packed full of features, it may be overkill (and a little confusing) for the average consumer, but for a small business or “tech head” such as me it’s ideal.

Even if you haven’t yet upgraded your laptop to N-band, this will still provide a stronger signal strength.

At the time of the review, the best price I found was a little over £64 at eBuyer.

Reviewed by David Artiss on 3rd September 2010.

Gallery

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After writing the original post, I tried my Netbook and found I was having the same problems. However, the same Netbook, connected to my work’s wireless network, would work fine. Conclusion – the problem was with my router or ISP.

Time to dig out the router that O2 sent me and I’d never used…. connected that up and…. Real Player worked!  So, it was my Netgear router.

Over the weekend I’ve been exchanging various emails with Netgear and, after escalation to some more senior engineers, the problem has been resolved. And it was fixed by…. downgrading the routers firmware. I was obviously being a bit too keen and I was on the latest firmware.

Anyway, it’s all now working and I’m happy once more.

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Last night, after having done some research on the ‘net, I decided to try and sort the problem out. First of all I removed the WEP security (yes, WEP) and tried the Wii… still not connecting. So I turned WEP back on, but at the same time turned the wireless off and on again. I then changed the channel to 11¹.

I then tried the Wii again… success. And the SoundBridge came on too.

Ok, so it sounds like there was interference on the channel I was on. Except, according to NetStumbler, nobody was and I was getting a clear frequency before. I think when I got my new router I set it to channel 3, but having looked at my past post on changing channels I think I was on 4. Now that might explain why the problems have only started since I got the new router, but I don’t understand what the channel issue was.

Oh well, NetStumbler shows channel 11 to be coming in loud and incredibly clear and all now appears well. But still, all a bit strange.

1. There are other people nearby on this channel but I know the Wii is supposed to connect quicker on this particular channel

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Today, after my wife accidentely left the Wii on all night, I realised that a lot of the online facilites aren’t working. The two events are unrelated, just simply that after being left on I decided to test it. And I didn’t test all the Wii online functionality when I changed the router recently.

The web appears to work. And that’s about it. If I do a connection check, it says it’s working but then can’t do a system upgrade check. The news won’t work, and I can’t get on the Nintendo Channel (I assume the Shop Channel is the same).

On top of that my SoundBridge¹ refuses to communicate with the router too. Again, something I didn’t test when I changed the router.

In the case of the SoundBridge, it may be a port change that needs to happen.

My laptop can connect to the internet fine too – it seems to me that internet traffic (port 80?) works fine. But then again, my PC² has no issues at all. It’s all very confusing I have to admit.

If anyone out there has any ideas, I’m open to them. Once I register my router with Netgear I’ll submit a query to them about this. I also have active posts on Wii, SoundBridge and Netgear forums (but so far the responses haven’t been too useful).

1. this streams music from a NAS hard drive that I have
2. which isn’t connected wirelessly, but if the issue is the firewall on the router, it shouldn’t make a difference

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It was dead. And a new power supply on it didn’t revive it either.

So I bundled it into a bag and took it to a nearby small computer shop. Thankfully they sold a modem with the same type of power supply so tried that on the modem… dead. They tested my power supply… dead. It was plugged into a surge protected socket and everything else is okay, so we can only assume that one of these (the router or the power supply) took the other one out as well.

Not wanting to be without the internet for too long I bought a replacement there and then. I daren’t look at how much cheaper it would have been buying off of the internet. But, hey, it’s quick and hassle free – if it doesn’t work, it’s easy to take back.

Now, the router I DID have was a Netgear DG834GT, which has Super-G, giving better speed and range with compatible receivers. Such a receiver is in my daughters computer. However, Super-G only works if you’re transmitting on a particular channel – I had to change mine recently because of interference from somebody else on the same channel, so I no longer use the Super-G facility. So faced, at the computer shop, with the Super-G and standard version of this router, I plumped for the later.

I now have a Netgear DG834G – version 4, which includes ADSL2 compatibility.

It was set up REALLY easily – my router name and password is set the same but I’ve put a stronger password on the admin panel. All of this meant that everything wireless around the house burst into life without me having to change anything on them.

Naturally, something went wrong. I took the opportunity, as I was just setting it up, to flash the router firmware to the latest level. It was going through as a strip adapter that I was using (shoddy bit of kit) shorted and tripped the power off. Potentially, the router was knackered already. However, it looks like it had gone through by the time the power went off as the firmware level is correct and it’s all working fine.

One thing I did learn from this…. make a note of my ADSL username and password. I hadn’t and it was buried deep in my Gmails. Thankfully I could use my phone to access and search my mail account. But, now, it’s noted.

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Unfortunately, it appears to be making companies sloppy. Beta is one thing, but a lot of this software is more alpha quality. In fact, in some cases I’d argue it’s not even that – it’s blatantly not been tested at all before being released.

The latest of these is Apples Safari 3.0.4. Promising lots of improvements, many, many XP users are finding it constantly crashed when being launched. The Apple forums have a “workaround” which many are finding doesn’t work. And I’m one of them.

In fact, I decided to re-install 3.0.3 and found that too crashed. This time, however, the workaround worked and I’m happily working with that version for the time being.

Let’s see how long it takes Apple to fix the issue….

And here’s another. Netgear released a firmware update for a range of its wireless routers on the 3rd November. It worked in so-far as that it stopped most wireless connections from working. So, well tested, eh?

The Netgear forums were a hive of activity, with lots of users having problems. The workaround, as with the Apple issue, was to roll back to a previous release.

Except that today – 16 days later – the same broken firmware is still on their website for download.

Maybe they don’t read their own forums and don’t know about it? Except I reported it a week ago to their technical team and they advised me it “had been passed to the appropriate department”. Hmmm.

And that’s not even masquerading as a beta release!

What’s going on here?

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Except I spent many frustrated hours yesterday wondering why the wireless connectivity on my daughers laptop wasn’t working. Then I tried my work laptop and that didn’t work either.

Both are on WEP security (insecure I know, but I also have a Nintendo DS on the network and that doesn’t use WPA). I found that switching to WPA temporarily worked (as did turning off encryption). Eventually I rolled back to the previous version of the routers firmware and it worked again.

Having read about other people having this issue on various Netgear forums, it would seem to be a problem impacting Super-G and G wireless – hence why the Nintendo DS continued to work even with the new firmware installed.

Meantime, Netgear continue to have the firmware download available on their site. I can only assume they don’t read their own forums, so I’ll be submitted a fault report to them. Hopefully they’ll then pull the link.

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