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Functionalities: VPN Pass-Thru, Firewall, DHCP Server, WAN: 1 x 10/100 Base-T, LAN: 10/100 Base-T, Firewall: Stateful Packet Inspe... |  |
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| Product Reviews from Amazon.com (Rating System 1 to 5) |
| Review | Rating | Last Updated | Barricade Router
Great router did all I wanted and more. Works well with minimal set up. I would reccommend this router to anyone. | 4 | Today | Great little router
Love it! Replaced a Linksys router that was sporadically dropping connection to my cable modem, and the setup was quick and completely painless. Could not be happier with the results either: unlike Linksys I have not had to manually setup port forwarding to get things like file sharing to work. | 5 | Today | A champ!
This router is a champ. I have not had one second of problems with it since I hooked it up. It does exactly what I want it to do--serve as a router/firewall between my computers and the cable modem. It will even e-mail security reports to you, if you want it to. It is amazing to see how many computers are trying to break in every minute. I went with this router because I didn't really need wireless and did not want the extra security hassles that can bring. | 5 | Today | Nice router
I didn't know anything about routers, and I saw this one when searching for a way to get my son's computer hooked up along with mine to use the DSL. It works great. | 5 | Today | Just what the doctor ordered
This router works perfectly. Installation was seamless and since I installed it I have had no problems. I networked two computers together and had no problems with things like sharing printers or the two computers recognizing each other. The installation instructions are very complete and precise. I couldn't be happier with this router. | 5 | Today | DO NOT BUY THIS - SMC NO ONGER PROVIDES TECH SUPPPORT FOR THIS
I have been a loyal SMC customer for years. I LOVE SMC gear, especially their tech free PHONE tech support, even of the accenst can be hard to understand.
On 7/20/06, I bought 3 of these SMC7004VBR. First surprise - the default logon password is not blank! I called SMC tech support who did not have a solution (reset didn't work) and forwarded me to a pay tech support company (in India) which gave me my first call free. He didn't have th answer so I played around with the logon and SMCADMIN worked.
Anyway, its a terrible business practice for a company to sell an item and 2 weeks later stop tech support.
No more SMC for me. | 1 | Today | Price quality ratio is very high but specs on how SPI is implemented are needed
I bought this router in August 2004 and I felt really protected for one year. I got this feeling because of the evidence from the router's log (the logging feature is great; not all routers have it). The log showed lots of rejection of unsollicited connections. This logged information me to verify on my own what many articles have stated over the last 2 years: that remaining connected to the Internet exposes your machines to very frequent break-in attempts every single hour. Because of the router (with SPI feature turned on), the software firewall in my computer did not have to face those incoming challenges. Hence my computer's CPU cycles (and good functioning) remained protected from outside interference. This is extremely important, because the more the CPU is sollicited, the more unstable the machine can become.
It's important to go through the advanced manual mode of installation of this SMC router in order to set the security features where they should be. For instance, the stateful packet inspection (SPI) feature is turned off by default! So I turned it on. This is the singlemost important feature to me. It's the one that has been rejecting all those unsollicited connection attempts mentioned above. Another important feature is the ability to turn off remote access to the router. If you allow remote access, then you better have a very strong password on the router. And SMC should then make sure to add a feature where, after, let's say, 3 attempts to provide the correct password, the router rejects all remote-access attempts for a user-settable duration.
Another feature: the router log can be emailed to you or to anyone you choose. Great feature, except that the number of rejected connections per hour is so large that a new log is restarted very often and you end up getting too many logs e-mailed from the router. So I learned very fast to turn off this feature. There are many other features covered at www.smc.com and in other reviews below (for instance site blocking with time spans, port blocking). The router leaves port 113 unstealthed by default.
SPI, however, is such an important feature that it deserves several comments here. SPI is an umbrella word that often remains poorly explained. The main feature of SPI is that a log of user-initiated connections is kept by a firewall (upscale routers specify the maximum number of IPs that the database can hold; not so here). Armed with this database, the firewall can then reject any incoming connection whose IP is not registered in the database. This means the connection was not sollicited by the user and is probably unfriendly. This interrogation is the primary feature of an SPI firewall and distinguishes it from the so-called "NAT firewall". NAT is network address tranlation. You'll see NAT hyped as a firewall. Any barebone, ordinary Internet router must have NAT since it is necessary to routing. NAT allows the router to present to the world an external IP address (for example, a.b.c.d, each letter representing numbers from 0 to 255). This is the external IP of your network presented for all on the Internet to see. The Internet is often called a wide area network (WAN), hence the router's external address is the WAN address. The router allocates internal "private" IP addresses (typically starting with 192.168.xxx.yyy) to each machine connected to the router in your house/office local area network (LAN). The router hides from the world those private LAN IPs. That's any DSL/cable router's magic: you subscribe for one (WAN) IP address at any time during your subcription from your ISP, and all machines on your LAN can share that single WAN IP while they each have an individual private LAN IP. Therefore, NAT will block hackers who are ONLY looking for WAN IP addresses. This is because, in addition to the WAN address, reaching a computer behind the router also requires the LAN IP address of that computer. Therefore, compared to the simple modem-to-computer configuration often found in homes or small offices, NAT looks like a firewall because it hides your machine. In the former, your WAN IP is your computer's IP and any unsollicited connection will have to be rejected by the software firewall in your computer; in the latter, the unsollicted connection cannot reach your computer and its firewall is resting. However, if the hacker's scanner is programmed to probe beyond the external/public address, trying different private IPs one after the other, it will eventually come up with the private IP of a computer on your LAN. At this point, NAT receives the right pair of information and it will simply allow the unsollicited connection in--no question asked. In practice, the hacker may not even have to scan much in order to score. Popular routers tend to have known rules to assign LAN IPs by default. So the hacker just has to scan the default LAN IPs to score. For instance, 192.168.1.100 will typically find the first computer connected to a well-known brand of routers. You have to expect that any hacker worth his salt knows the default LAN IPs of all popular routers. He can therefore score after only one attempt at providing a pair of WAN-LAN IPs. Conclusion: NAT is just not enough nowadays, especially since hackers scan with scanning programs rather than manually.
So, what first distinguishes SPI from NAT is that SPI asks a question that NAT doesn't: aside from the correct combination of WAN-LAN IPs, SPI wants to know whether the user previously initiated a connection with the hacker's IP? Most likely, the answer is no, and the hacker will be stopped. It seems that this SMC unit performs this very basic SPI function very well (but remember to turn it on in the advanced settings).
Some manufacturers who implement this essential SPI feature seem to feel that it's enough to label their firewalls as SPI capable. Yet SPI can also be more complex. A more sophisticated SPI router may also add to its IP database (of user-initiated connections) the time at which each connection was initiatied. Then the router would allow a certain amount of user-settable time to elapse in order to get a legitimate response from the site to which the user connected. After this time elapses, even that user-contacted site would be rejected if it wants to contact the user. This SMC router, I think, does not ask this 2nd SPI question: several hours after Windows XP Pro contacted a site for automatic updates, that site initiated a contact and was allowed through by the SMC router. My computer's software firewall stopped the connection, labelling it clearly as an SPI block (because, as a fuller implementation of SPI, it tracks connection times). This software firewall had to have its SPI feature turned on manually in advanced mode, too (perhaps because SPI slows throughput a little bit). So I had to take additional measures for this incident not to happen with Windows updates. The simplest of these measures is to stop automatic updating. Other measures are to create additional rules in the software firewall (too complicated for this review) and not all software firewalls are that sophisticated.
A third feature related to SPI is that the router should have a fast enough processor to handle fast attacks without getting knocked out. Should it approach K.O. status, it should know how to freeze traffic, alert you, and still autorize valid traffic. This implies sophisticated logic that has to be imbedded in the router's chips. Besides the IP and time information attached to a packet, the content of the packet may be inspected for different criteria. The more questions asked, the more sophisticated a filter the router becomes... and the more expensive it will be. But I expect that, once the public demands those features, mass marketing will lower prices, and differences of hundreds of dollars today would then become differences in the tens.
A few weeks ago, I discovered that the SMC's SPI feature was cracked by a different game. In 24 hours, 5 several Chinese IPs got through the SMC. Only the computer's firewall caught them, categorizing them as SPI blocks. I don't know how these Chinese guys did it. But, in fairness, the SMC log also showed hundreds of other attempts by Chinese IPs which it managed to reject in that same 24-hour period.
These last incidents again proved to me that both a great hardware firewall and a great software firewall are needed to protect from the Internet. And you, the user, have to know how to set these firewalls to make them that effective. You should also have other intrusion prevention systems/software (IPS), at least because the 2 firewall layers can crack one day.
This is where my comments on the SMC Web site come in. I hope that SMC will offer a detailed description of its SPI features (its competitors that I know of do not provide this sort of details either). Secondly, the firmware upgrades don't provide any detail about which problems they solve. I'm not going to risk getting into potential upgrading bugs for a new firmware that I don't know anything about. Maybe the new firmware adds improvements I don't need, such as an improved DMZ or VPN. Finally, technical support (as most other tech supports elsewhere) does not impress me. Granted it's a tiny bit better than average, but I sense that these people don't have a solid grasp of the technology.
Conclusion. This is a great router for the price. I will perhaps stay with SMC but it will have to make clearly *SPELLED OUT* improvements in the SPI area, because I now know that its SPI feature can be cracked (and so may those of other routers of its class or a higher class). The router is 5 stars for its price. One star is taken off because both the manual and the Web site lack details o | 4 | Today | EZ as Pie
I got this router afte I had read both the good and bad reviews. It seemed to have more positives and be easier to set up than others I was looking at.
It was certainly easy. As promised, 3-click installation. It got my second computer, which wasn't configured for internet connection at all, on the net in next to no time.
I'm glad I read about the firewall defaulting to "Off". Although I do have a software firewall, I figure more protection is a good thing. I too got confused over the directions. But once I got to the website, I relized I only needed to get to advanced configuration, set the firewall, save the setting and I was done.
After re-booting, the connection is as reliable and fast as ever. I have no need for parental controls or blocking websites, so maybe that is what has caused some of the complaints.
For me, it was easy, quick and painless. | 5 | Today | Poor Router
I tried to like this router. It has some good parental control features which let me set specific time limits for web browsing for each of my kids computers. Up to 12 rules can be set. It connects PROMPTLY with my cable modem and resets quickly. It works well with my VPN connection to work.
HOWEVER, it is completely unusable. With the firewall activated (who wouldn't want it activated?) and with a set of 8 timing and URL rules, this router completely slows to a crawl and locks. Routinely. Repeatedly. Several times a day. I have reset the router, installed and reinstalled the latest firmware, reset factory defaults, you name it. Tech support is polite but unhelpful. Two different units have the same problems. I suppose that those of you who have had success with this router have not turned on all the options. If you only have one computer in your house and don't set up any parental control rules, this router may work for you. Don't forget to turn on the firewall (off by default) and only buy it from a place with a good return policy. Better yet, buy a D-Link, like the 604, or a Netgear, like the 614. | 1 | Today | Exceptional customer support
The functioning of this small item has been flawless. I quickly became confused trying to set it up and called customer support. They answered on the second or third ring. It was a guy in a small town in India. He was very patient and talked me through a number of steps. Finally, after asking what number appeared on my screen, I told him and he said, "It's working" and hung up. It has worked perfectly ever since. | 5 | Today |
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