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Cayman Wireless Router
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Author: Tim Higgins Review Date: 9/1/2001
Wireless Features
The 11W uses a Proxim Harmony 8430 802.11b PC card radio that supports 40 bit WEP encryption only. (The FCCID on the Proxim card shows that it's an XI-300 sourced from Z-Com.) The radio is plugged into a PC card connector mounted inside the chassis enclosure, with the patch type antenna sticking out of a slot in the rear of the box. The antenna module is removable and connected via two miniature MMCX style connectors, so with the proper "pigtail" cables, it's possible to attach other antennas.
Wireless settings include the basics. You can set the Channel number (default is 7) and ESSID. You can also set four 40 bit WEP keys (using Hexadecimal format only), and choose Open System or Shared Key Authentication (see this page). You also get to choose whether to ignore unencrypted data.
On the minus side, Cayman has not includedMAC address based Access/Association Controls, a notable omission.
The W11's Monitor features will let you see wired and wireless DHCP clients (both MAC and IP addresses), and traffic statistics.
Routing Performance
I ran the Qcheck suite to test routing performance, with the following results:
Firmware/Driver Version:
GatorSurf 5.6.2 Build R1 / Firmware 2.6
Test Description
Qcheck Transfer Rate (Mbps)
[1Mbyte data size]
Qcheck Response Time (msec) [10 iterations 100byte data size]
Comments: The radio portion doesn't match the performance of the router side. Signal was marginal during the Condition 4 test, with fluctuating SNR readings. Throughput (Transfer Rate) takes about a 60% WEP-enabled hit with 40 bit WEP enabled.
The graph below (click for a full-sized view) shows TCP throughput over an approximately two minute period (details of the test are here).
Comments: You can see the Condition 4 performance degradation with WEP disabled. You can also see significant variation even with the lower WEP enabled speed.
Summary
Cayman sells a lot of product to BSPs and "enterprise" customers, but would like to develop more of a presence in the "residential" market. Unfortunately, I don't think the 2E-H-W11 is the product that will do it.
Although it's a fast router with a number of unique features, it lacks some of the basics such as port filtering, security "event" logging, and triggered port maps. Those shortcomings might not be so bad, but the wireless side of the product simply isn't up to par with competitive offerings.
For $500 you can do a whole lot better, and so can Cayman.
