Product Reviews

Give a single user their own Internet account and connection and, although they might moan about connection speeds, they'll feel like they're in control of their destiny. Put the whole enterprise onto a broadband line with capacious local servers and give staff permanent access to the Web and they'll be even happier. But in between those extremes it can be hard to find a cost-effective means of Internet access that is popular with its users.

These two products from Vicomsoft aim to help small and medium-sized businesses bridge that gap. They do this by allowing several users on a network to access the Internet over a single intermittent connection, be it dial-up, ISDN or cable. You can also use them on permanently open connections, such as ADSL, although this could prove technically challenging over some systems.

The difference between them is in the number of users they support. SurfDoubler is suitable for small groups and Internet Gateway is better for larger networks. Unlike Apple's AirPort base station and networked modems, these products don't put users in contention for a single-user connection. Instead, they turn the Net-connected Mac into a multihoming Internet server, routing multiple connections over its external links.

Multihoming

To achieve this, SurfDoubler and Internet Gateway have to overcome a limitation in Mac OS 7.x and above, to enable the single Mac server to access its local network and the Internet at the same time - known as multihoming.

Other products, such as IPNetRouter and Mac OS X, already do this but Vicomsoft offers much more. Now that your server can talk to local computers and the outside world, the next step is to detect attempts to access the Internet from clients, so that the server can automatically connect on demand rather than through each Remote Access control panel.

If your gateway server is already configured to access the Internet by the desired connection, installation is normally very simple using the Auto Setup menu command. This sets the outward connection and networking settings according to your existing preferences.

Finally, the server opens your Web browser and tests the configuration through Vicomsoft's site, and then you're up and running. At least, you are if your local network is uncomplicated. Add an AirPort base station, which itself is a DHCP server with its own dial-up Internet connection, and some

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Macs running OS X and you may well suffer that sinking feeling of inexorable inadequacy.

The documentation describes how to configure Mac (MacTCP and Open Transport) and PC (Windows 95/98, NT and 2000) clients, there is surprisingly no mention of OS X and precious little information on Unix/Linux. Given the prefatory caution to the troubleshooting chapter, 'TCP/IP networks are notoriously difficult to set up and operate', this is disappointing.

Parental controls

Although both products work fine with other Firewall software such as Norton Personal Firewall, Vicomsoft has wisely built competent protection features into them, when Network Address Translation (NAT) is enabled. CyberNOT content filtering and protection is an optional extra useful for those in education. This works using a dictionary of forbidden IP addresses, URLs and newsgroups, updated through Vicomsoft's Web site.

Internet access can also be restricted by IP address and by time/day of the week, features normally found in specialist products such as Intego's Internet Security Barrier (see Reviews, 27 July 2001, p27).

Connection teaming is another remarkable strength. This allows you to combine two modem dial-up lines to work as a single connection at proportionately higher transfer speeds. However, it requires you to be able to connect to your ISP over the two lines simultaneously, something not normally permitted with plain dial-up accounts and thus untested in this review.

In addition to those facilities common to both packages, Internet Gateway is geared towards the larger local network, with its RapidCache Web cache to make browsing more efficient. Just as with your ISP's Web proxy server, RapidCache keeps local copies of recently accessed Web pages to save them being repeatedly downloaded. This improves browser responsiveness and spares bandwidth of your Internet connection, particularly when combined with local caching of DNS lookups.

Home comforts

Remote access allows users to dial in from home or elsewhere and then access your local network and Internet facilities. A fallback option allows you to switch your Web connection automatically if the primary connection fails. However, there is no mail server on offer so you'll need to buy the likes of Eudora Internet Mail Server (EIMS) if you want to save each user from having to go online to collect their mail from your ISP's mail server.

Whichever program you opt for, additions to the System Folder are impressively minimal: three small extensions, one of which is responsible for adding a menubar control for the server, if you like that sort of thing. This robust design reflects the maturity of these products, and makes them an excellent solution for small and medium-sized businesses.

NEEDS: Power Mac, Mac OS 7.6.1 to 9.x, 20Mb RAM, 30Mb hard disk, local network

PRICE: £99 (£116.33 inc VAT) (10 users), RapidCache server £86 (£101.05 inc VAT), unlimited user edition £399 (£468.83 inc VAT)