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Thursday, 30 November 2000 - Things seem a little slow coming off Comdex and we're still
waiting for the following review units to come in:
Linksys WAP11 Wireless Access Point
MultiTech RF500S RouteFinder
SonicWALL Tele2
Maxgate UGate 3200P
Netopia R910
SMC Wireless Barricade
Still no word on D-Link eval units for either the
DI-704 router or their 11Mbps wireless line.
But looks like we'll be plenty busy anyway!
- Products we do have in, and are in process for review
are:
- Corrected from earlier post
1.89D firmware has been posted by SMC and
AMIT (but not Asante) for the FriendlyNET
and Barricade routers. Go
here for more info.
- A few readers have tipped us to Merilus'
Firecard which is a PCI card that uses a Transmeta Crusoe chip
that installs into your PC. It provides firewalling, routing, bandwidth
management, virtual private networking, redundant failover, intrusion
detection and more. Comes in a SOHO and Enterprise
flavors listing at $575 and $1195
respectively. They won't be shipping until late Q1,2001 according
to Merilus, but we'll see if we can get one to put through its paces
sometime in January.
- New and updated Linksys utilities
Linksys has made their logviewer application
available on their FTP site. It receives the SNMP TRAP messages
that the routers use for logging. Go
here for more info. Another logging tool we previously
mentioned is Router Rooter. It's a little more
complicated to setup, but it's been updated with new features and available
from here and a link on our Tools
page. Finally, IP
Poster, which automatically checks the WAN IP address of your
Linksys Router and posts it to the site of your choice using FTP, has
been updated to support Win95/98/NT and 2000.
Wednesday, 29 November 2000 - The Forums are off to a good start, so drop by and contribute!
- As we were weeding through the back email, we came across an announcement
from SonicWALL. From November 7 through December 31,
2000 they're offering a trade-in program where you can trade up to a
new SonicWALL SOHO2, TELE2 or XPRS2. Go
here for the details.
- Speaking of bargains, the SMC 4 port Barricade router
is selling for $99 at a number
of on-line retailers and also at CompUSA (with rebate coupons).
Unfortunately, Asante hasn't matched the price on their FriendlyNET.
Tuesday, 28 November 2000 - We're back and working on updating the wireless
and router charts
with all the new products that are hitting the streets. By the
way, we're going to be revamping both these charts to be more customizable
and sortable, so if you have any ideas on what you'd like to see, let
us know!
- While updating the wirelesschart, we found that the SMC EZ Connect 2Mbps products
have been discontinued, so we've removed them. SMC is focusing
on their 11Mbps
wireless line.
- By popular demand, we've added Discussion Forums
to PracticallyNetworked. You can access the forums via the new
Forums
Nav bar link at the top of each page. Now you can swap product
information, ask questions, and otherwise make yourself heard!
We've started off with four topic areas: Alternative Networking;
Hardware Routers; Internet Sharing;
and Linksys Routers, and we'll add more as we see how
the discussions go.
We're also looking for Forum moderator volunteers,
so if you're interested, drop
us a note.
Wednesday, 22 November 2000 - Those of you who've been waiting to connect your 10Mbps HomePNA
network to your Ethernet LAN or broadband modem need wait no more.
The NETGEAR PE102 Ethernet to PhoneLine bridge has
landed! Click on over
to the review and see how we liked it.
- We'll be taking a few days off over the Thanksgiving holiday, so
please excuse the delay in answering any feedback or questions you send
in.
Tuesday, 21 November 2000 - The Comdex report
is complete, and even updated with some new info from yesterday's edition.
Monday, 20 November 2000 - The first installment of the Comdex
report is up, with news of new products from SMC,
Linksys, Buffalo Tech and more!
- The Linksys WAP11 Access point is still not available
and won't be until after Thanksgiving. We'll test it as soon as
it comes in.
- NETGEAR has launched a new, nicer looking Web site.
Unfortunately, it's a lot harder to find things in their Support area.
Never fear! We've updated our NETGEAR/ZyXEL
help page, so use it to find what you need!
Monday, 13 November 2000 - Managed to fit one more review in before heading off to the
show. Farallon's entry into the low cost broadband
router fray is the familiar looking NetLINE Broadband Gateway.
See how it measures up!
New stuff from
NETGEAR NETGEAR
has announced that their PE102 10Mb Phoneline to Ethernet bridge
is finally available. Although the list price is $230,
Pricegrabber
lists a lowest price of about $145, but shows that
no one has units in stock yet.
NETGEAR's also stepping into the 11Mbps wireless arena, using technology
from Sharewave.
There are basically two products, a WA301 PCI adapter
and WE102 Ethernet to Wireless bridge, that will be
available in various bundles. List prices are $240 for
the PCI card and $360 for a bridge and one PCI card
bundle. Availability isn't until "Jan 2001".
There's no info on NETGEAR's Web site right now, so here's the press
release if you want more info.
Sunday, 11 November 2000
Linksys intros over 20
new products at Comdex Here's the
info that we promised yesterday. Please
don't ask us when these products will be available, because we don't
know... yet. We'll probably know more after this coming week.
Saturday, 11 November 2000 - We put the new 7 port SMC Barricade
to the test, so check out the
review and see how it did!
- Our 2Wire
Home Portal 100 came in and we started to check it out.
But so far, no joy, maybe because of our test setup. We'll be
seeing the 2Wire folks out at Comdex next week, so we hope to have better
luck when we get back.
- Speaking of Comdex, Linksys
is going to be introducing a slew of new stuff! Check back tomorrow
when we can tell you about it.
Thursday, 9 November 2000
Got your WANIP? - Our friends over at TZO.com
will be shortly releasing MyWanIP.It's a Windows app (runs on all flavors) that will quickly
give you the WAN IP address of the computer that it's running on.
It's 100% freeware, freely distributable, and works with ALL routers
and ANY internet connection. For the latest info, you can check
their Web site or come on back here for the download when they
release it.
New Tools page - You might notice that the Nav bar at the top of each
page has changed. "Links" has been
replaced by "Tools". This new section brings
the many networking tools that are scattered around the site into one
handy spot. Let us know
what you think!
New arrivals - We're finally starting to get new stuff in and will
need to crack down on reviews after we return from Comdex next week.
Reviews coming "soon" are:
Tuesday, 7 November 2000
Scott cries "Uncle"! - Guess there were enough of you who contacted Scott Kidby
to request his Linksys router log capture service.
PLEASE stop sending him mail. He'll have something
available in a week or so, maybe sooner.
New Linksys stuff - A helpful reader pointed out that Linksys has posted
a couple of new products on their site:
HPB200 - 10M Phoneline to Ethernet bridge.
BEFSRU31 - a three port version of the BEFSR41
router that also has a USB port on the LAN side (wonder what they're
thinkin' on this one?!)
And for those of you who keep asking for a review of the new wireless
stuff, the latest word is "after Thanksgiving" for our WAP11
unit (and you can't buy 'em yet either anyway...)
Sonicwall picks
up the pace - You may have noticed some different looking boxes in
the latest Sonicwall print ads. Well today Sonicwall spilled the
beans. They've rolled out the "2" series
of their SOHO,Telecommuter, and XPRS
security appliances. These new products are basically
the Sonicwalls that many of you know and love, but with peppy new innards
that remove the old versions' main weakness - slower speed than many
of their less expensive competitors. The new "2s" have
10/100 WAN and LAN ports, drop the 4 port hub, and sell for the same
price as the older units. Check
out the press release here. Our eval unit will be on its
way shortly, so that we can see what it does to our testbed!
Monday, 6 November 2000
Linksys log capture service,
anyone? - Scott Kidby has developed an NT service
that will run on any NT or Win2000
system. This service will capture logs from a Linksys
router (Linksys only) parse them into data (router ip, log
time, source ip, destination ip, source port, destination port) and
store the data into an OLEDB compliant database (i.e. Access, SQL Server
7, SQL Server 2000). It also does reverse DNS lookups asynchronously
to allow logging to occur at full speed. Scott's wondering if
there's enough interest in this for him to put the effort into packaging
it up nicely for distribution. NOTE that it does not run
on Win95, 98 or ME.
Thursday, 2 November 2000 - Looking for a browser-based alternative to the "logviewer.exe"
client for the Linksys routers? If you have IE5
or above and the VisualBasic6 runtime modules, you
might want to give Router
Rooter a try.
Wednesday, 1 November 2000 - Yes, we're still here. Sorry for not updating the site
in a few days, but we've been attending to a number of housekeeping
items. We'll be back to work on new reviews, soon!
- Speaking of new stuff, Vicomsoft's new version 6.7
of their Internet
Gateway includes a number of nifty new features:
- Remote control application -- Users can log in,
with options for only allowing logged in users to access the 'net,
open, close connections etc..
- NetBIOS browsing -- Supports multiple connected
networks for network neighborhood browsing, like a bridge
- DHCP server enhancements -- the DHCP server can
'learn' what clients it is currently serving, then restrict its serving
just to these computers. This is ideal for users who have a cable
modem connection, but only have a single ethernet interface on their
server. (iMac etc.) No more worries about serving DHCP onto the cable/ADSL
networks.
- PPP server -- if you've been looking for a way
to dial into your broadband connection in order to avoid signing up
for a dialup ISP account, this is just the ticket.
