Product Reviews

SMC's EZ-Stream Universal Wireless Broadband Router is the first product we've reviewed to support 802.11g and 802.11a wireless networks. Both standards are rated at 54Mbit/s, so the advantage isn't immediately clear. However, 802.11a uses the reserved 5GHz radio frequency, which makes it less prone to interference and improves the signal quality and transfer rates. Products using 802.11g, on the other hand, suffer from interference from cordless phones, microphones and Bluetooth devices, among others.

The EZ-Stream is extremely difficult to install and the web-based management is a real pain to use. Initially configuration takes you step-by-step through each

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option, but applying each one requires a lengthy save and reboot. We'd have preferred all settings to have been applied in one go.

The problems don't end there. At one point, the DHCP server stopped serving IP addresses to clients connected to its four-port switch. We had to perform yet another reboot to get it working.

Once running, we found the wireless interface unreliable. We suffered intermittent problems: once a wireless card detected the 802.11g and 802.11a networks but refused to connect to either, later both networks were invisible.

When we finally got our client to connect, transfer rates of 17.4Mbit/sec using 802.11a and 15.3Mbit/s using 802.11b were average. Speeds can be increased using a 108Mbit/s mode but, as this uses three wireless channels by channel bonding, it can cause connection problems as interference is more likely.

Our real problem with this product, though, is the price. It's around double what you'd expect to pay for an 802.11g product and with 125Mbit/s 802.11g routers providing faster, reliable networks, all the advantages of 802.11a go out the window.

Unless you absolutely have to have 802.11a, which is unlikely, save yourself some money and go for a much cheaper 802.11g product.