Wireless News

Updated - Belkin will start shipping two draft 802.11ac routers by the end of this month.

The company is departing from the playbook of other early draft 11ac market entrants by leading off with two products using Broadcom's BCM4352 two-stream draft 11ac chipset instead of the BCM4360 three-stream draft 11ac used in the Buffalo and NETGEAR products.

Belkin's announcement specs the AC1000 DB Wi-Fi Dual Band AC+ Gigabit Router (F9K1112) at 996 950 Mbps* maximum total link rate (300 Mbps on 2.4 GHz + 665 650 Mbps* on 5 GHz), while the top-end AC1200 DB Wi-Fi Dual-Band AC+ Gigabit Router (F9K1113) comes in at 1166 Mbps maximum total link rate (300 Mbps on 2.4 GHz + 867 Mbps on 5 GHz).

Belkin AC1000/AC1200

867 Mbps is the normal top link rate for dual-stream draft 802.11ac, so it's a puzzle where the AC1000's 665 Mbps comes from.

Both routers are simultaneous dual band with all Gigabit ports (one WAN, four switched LAN) and two USB 2.0 ports for file sharing and media serving via a DLNA-compliant server. Other features include IPv6 support, Parental Controls powered by Norton and "IntelliStream" QoS.

The AC1000 and AC1200 are slated to start shipping at the end of June at MSRPs expected street prices* of $139.99 and $159.99, respectively.

* 6/27/2012 Belkin corrections of errors in original press release.