-- Conclusions
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When comparing quality routers you have to expect
that results are similar and that's exactly what happens when you
look at the transfer times between the Netgear and the Nexland
products. Unfortunately, I don't have the network cards nor the
internet connection to fully push the SOHO to its capabilities,
although you can see the advantages that full duplex would provide
over a LAN and the max bi-directional bandwidth of 8mb offer over
the current standards. For people lucky enough to have access to a
SDSL connection, this is the home router for you. If you're the
person in charge of the IT in a small office, features such as
connecting as many as 253 machines through cascading hubs and being
able to setup up a server's IP as a mail server or a web server are
a great benefit.
There are a few features that I haven't
written about that deserve some attention, such as the ability to
block access to the internet, to mail servers, to ftp servers or you
can just block UDP and TCP ports. Ability to use a dynamic DNS,
which means that people outside of your network can connect to your
computers using domain names. For example if you setup a virtual web
server, people will be able access the web server by using your URL
(www.webserver.com).
After spending a
few weeks with the Nexland ISB SOHO, I must admit I'm quite
impressed with the quality. No time during the test period was there
an outage or any issues with the SOHO. It is very easy to install
and configure and with the well-written instructions, anyone should
be able to have the ISB SOHO up and running in a matter of minutes.
My only criticism of the ISB SOHO is that the activity lights are on
the top and the port activity lights are on the back. This makes it
difficult if you stack components to see what the ISB SOHO is doing.
Thanks to Mike Boudet from Nexland
for providing us an ISB (Internet Sharing Box) SOHO. It's nice to
see a smaller firm providing a quality product with an extensive
feature set.
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Pros: - Easy to use menu driven
configuration
- Very easy to setup
- Exposed Server
(DMZ)
- Full Duplex option for increased bandwidth
- Server
support for mail, web, ftp, etc...
Cons:
- Ethernet port activity lights on the back of the unit
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