Belkin Router: F5D7230-4

TL;DR – In short, avoid this router!!!

Preamble

I was suffering network dropping issues, and decided to see whether my Belkin F5D7230-4 router required a firmware update.

Update attempt

Irritatingly, the router can not download, or check for, a firmware update, if it is being used as an access point, and has no direct access to the WAN, i.e. no ADSL/phone cable going straight into the back of it. So you have to download the firmware manually:

1. Updating your Belkin router’s firmware
2. Finding the model, version, and serial number of your Belkin device
3. Find your product
4. Product Support

There are three main issues with Belkin’s support:

1. The firmware download pages have no dates, so you can not tell which is the latest (chronologically) update;
2. There is a  version 9 AND a version A of the firmware. It is not clear (from Belkin’s god awful website) if A comes after 9 (as it does in hexadecimal) or it is a pre-release build. See the page for yourself and scroll down to the downloads section. ;
3. The firmware offered on the Version 9  download page, is v. 9.00.04, however, I already have 9.01.10 installed!

Whilst trying to google for more info on Belkin’s versioning system, I stumbled across this article, which is really rather disparaging!

Conclusion

Regardless of all of the above, after deciding to give it a go anyway and trying to upload the version A update, it seems to reject it (with the firmware upload page reporting Incorrect firmware image), so I guess I’ll stick with what I have, which is v9.01.10.