Belkin F5D6231-4 wifi router problems

We have various problems with the F5D6231-4 wifi router including,

- Port forwarding (so-called "virtual servers") does not work
- It always broadcasts the SSID, even when configured not to
- MAC address filtering does not work

We've contacted Belkin, waited for a firmware update, all in vain.
Others have reported the same problems with the device.

Is all Belkin stuff this dreadful? It's barely of merchantable quality.
Does anyone know of a way to get around any of the above issues, or are
we just stuck with them? I also had pretty bad firmware on one of my
SMC devices - does any AP vendor actually bother with any QA testing?

-- Mark