SMC Barricade

As far as networking companies go, SMC has been around longer than most. Traditionally, it's always targeted the SoHo market and offers a comprehensive range of budget-priced hubs, switches, network cards and wireless products. The Barricade range of broadband routers is the latest to join the family and aims to provide not only shared Internet access over a cable or xDSL modem, but brings a dual-speed switch and print server into the equation too.

SMC looks to have covered all the angles, as there are four Barricade products on offer. The four-port model is on review, but there are eight-port and wireless versions as well. At the top of the range is the Storage Server that combines a seven-port switch, print server, WAN (wide area network) port and a 20Gb internal hard disk for shared storage.

The four-port Barricade is a compact slab of plastic, with the Ethernet ports arranged across the front panel. They all support auto-negotiation and full-duplex links, so users can connect at 200Mbits/sec. As the Barricade can act as a DHCP (dynamic host configuration protocol) server it can support up to 253 users, but will obviously need cascading from a larger switch to achieve this. None of the ports can act in MDI/MDI-X mode, so you'll need to use a crossover cable to link the Barricade to another network device. An RJ-45 10BaseT WAN port is located at the rear and can be used to connect a suitable cable or xDSL modem. A standard 25-pin parallel port provides the printer connection, and a nine-pin serial port can be used to add a standard 56K modem or external ISDN TA (terminal adaptor) as a backup link in case the main WAN connection fails.

Initial installation is easy enough as you configure a PC with an IP address in the same range as the Barricade's default address and simply point a Web browser at it. The administration interface is password protected, but users can still view a status screen that shows the current Internet connection in operation, the IP address assigned to the unit and the status of the printer and modem (or ISDN TA if connected). Configuration starts at the primary setup screen where you can assign the unit a new IP address and select the type of WAN connection to be used.

The Barricade supports static and dynamic IP address assignments and also PPP over Ethernet. Should the main WAN link go down, the Dial-Up Network option can be selected and the Barricade will then use the phone number and account details provided. This is a dial-on-demand link, so a connection will be established as soon as a PC attempts to access the Internet. A timer can be used to drop the link after a specified period of inactivity, and the Barricade can be set to automatically re-establish a link if it goes down or the unit's rebooted.

I was unable to test the WAN port as I have a BTopenworld ADSL connection installed, which uses a USB port. However, I did encounter problems as a WaveCom modem wasn't recognised and I had to drop it in favour of an old Pace 56K model that functioned perfectly with the unit. I also tested the serial port link using a Billion ISDN TA, but found that the Barricade doesn't support ML-PPP so only a single B-channel connection was possible. ISDN should only be used as a fall-back option, so if this is your primary means of connecting to the Internet, then the Barricade isn't the ideal choice as it doesn't have many of the features found in standard ISDN routers. The Barricade uses NAT (network address translation) to provide basic firewall protection, which maps the internal network addresses to a single global address. This is presented to the outside world, so your PCs are effectively disguised behind it.