SmallNetBuilder

Internal details

Figure 3 is a shot of the Vision's main board, which is an Atheros XSPAN-based design. It uses an Atheros AR7141 processor, with 16 MB of RAM, 8 MB of flash and Vitesse 7385 gigabit switch. Those of you looking for a draft 11n router that supports Jumbo Frames will be happy to know that the Vision does—up to 9K. Belkin doesn't officially support this feature, however, although they told me that they would "by the end of the year".

Figure 3: Inside view

Figure 4 shows the companion N1 Wireless Notebook Card (F5D8011 V3000) board. As I described in this article, there have actually been three versions of this card. The Version 3000 card shown below uses Ralink's RT2800-series chipset that includes an RT2860 Baseband / MAC and RT2820 2.4 GHz transceiver.

Figure 4: N1 Wireless Notebook Card board

It's interesting to note that this chipset supports both 2T2R (2 Transmit, 2 Receive) and 2T3R modes, but not the 3T3R mode used by the Atheros XSPAN radio in the Vision router.

Also worthy of note is that the V3000 version is the only version that is Wi-Fi 802.11n Draft 2.0 certified. The V3000 has just started to ship, so you might have a hard time finding it. Fortunately, the version number can be found on the serial # label on the outside of the product box.