Routers world – Page 5

Netgear Wireless N Router DGN2000

Netgear was one of the first companies to release a fix Draft-N wireless LAN and has released a range compatible with standard routers. The DGN2000 N Wireless Modem Router is the latest and is a small and compact ADSL + router 802.11n standard.
This router is compact and, like the Linksys WRT610N and 300N Sitecom has been designed for bed. twin antennas protruding from the rear and can be placed to give the best signal.

Four ports on the back is limited to the speed of 10/100 Ethernet, and there is a modem connection. The latter device supports ADSL +, which is the latest current connection, so that gives a reasonable degree of future-proof.

Protected Setup

You will not find a USB connection, but there is a hardware button for switching the wireless router on or off, adding to the green credentials of the router, and you will save energy when not in use. There is also a button WPS (Wi-Fi Protected Setup) which makes it easy to connect all the CM-supported laptops on the network.

The front of the unit has a row of LEDs that turn green to show the unit is on, and which ports are in use. The software installation is to use the Netgear Smart Wizard tools which, fortunately, we have seen something of a revision and was much more reliable than previous versions. As with the other routers here, you can select the bandwidth to optimize heavy use channels such as VoIP or gaming.

Router Configuration was easy and reliable connection speeds. Used in conjunction with the Netgear RangeMax Wireless N USB Adapter WN111, signal intensity was slightly lower than Linksys, but found more than acceptable range, which is ideal for the home.
The N Wireless Modem Router Netgear DGN2000 offer no real surprise, but with its high speed and support for ADSL +, to be able to use it for some time to come.

Netgear N150 Wireless Router review

A perfect upgrade to an aging ADLS router like the TP-Link W8961ND, this Netgear N150 Wireless ADSL2+ Modem Router DGN1000 is firmly aimed at the budget ADSL market, but hopefully without any of the horrible shortcomings the TP-Link suffered from.

Despite its budget credentials, the Netgear N150 Wireless Router provides basic but limited 802.11n Wireless-N networking along with a full ADSL2+ modem and four 100BaseT Ethernet LAN ports.

It’s also relatively well styled, taking the more popular shiny black chassis approach, has a small footprint and a useful array of cool-blue status lights.

As is Netgear’s way, the unit comes with an on/off switch and the usual external power supply. In the box you’ll also find a single ADSL filter plus a network and telephone cable so you can easily get started.

Belkin Play Max ADSL router review

Belkin has obviously tried very hard to make the Play Max an attractive package to beginners. The unit itself is neat – its three-dimensional aerials hidden within the stone-grey case.

It’s a plug-and-play affair in terms of getting hooked up. WPA2 is enabled by default, the relevant security details are written on a label attached to the base, and the unit’s single button activates WPS to facilitate the quickest connections possible.
It runs wireless N and G, and has twin radios to support 5GHz and 2.4GHz connections simultaneously. The power and range, particularly on wireless N, is fantastic.

Giving guests access to your network is also straightforward. A hotspot-style connection technique enables visitors to connect to a ‘guest’ subnet, separate from your primary network, by typing a custom password into a browser landing page.

App attack

If only Belkin had stopped at great connectivity instead of spooning more and more custard onto the router crumble.
In the Play Max, Belkin has weighed down an otherwise fine router with a swathe of iPhone-style apps, most of which are flimsy masks for some pretty mundane, and in some cases poor, features.

The Self Healing app, for example, appears to make the unit reset itself periodically to fix possible errors. Well, great.
BitBoost claims to accelerate traffic based on its type – giving priority to gaming packets, for example – but we couldn’t find any evidence that this was more than standard Quality of Service routing, something that comes as standard on the majority of new routers.

Then there’s Video Max HD: essentially the same thing as BitBoost, but for videos.

It’s not a complete bust; some of its functions are genuinely useful. Compatibility with USB printers and hard drives, for example, is a boon for the networking potential of the Play Max. But actually using that functionality means installing an awkward, dedicated, system-bloating application on your Mac and any other machine you want to connect.

This is, frankly, a little ludicrous. We’ve used plenty of routers that work perfectly well with external drives and printers without having to resort to dedicated software. That list includes the Play Max’s cousin, the Belkin N+, which makes this decision even more baffling when you think about it.

Then there’s the stuff that makes perfect sense but has been executed horribly. Take the Torrent Genie app. This basically amounts to on-board compatibility with the Vuze Offline Downloader, a shred of code that enables you to continue torrent downloads while your client machines are offline.

Again, this is spoiled by unnecessary software; Vuze proper has an awful ad-laden interface, one so poor that we dropped it as a torrent tool of choice some time ago. If you want to use the Play Max take, you have no such choice.
So here’s the plan: instead of buying a Play Max router, buy its little brother, the Belkin Surf. It’s less than half the price, doesn’t include any of the tiresome, unnecessary features, and does the job of routing internet traffic around your network just as well. As for this offering, consign it to the ‘marred by software’ heap.

What is a router?

Is a router still a router even if forwarding packets is just one of its many jobs?

View slideshow on the Evolution of Routing

More and more applications, such as firewalls, VPN concentration, voice gateways and video monitoring, are being piled onto routers. Cisco’s Integrated Services Router (ISR), for example, even boasts an optional application server blade for running scores of Linux and open source packages.

“A customer came to us inquiring about all the services on a router but they did not need the routing capabilities,” says Inbar Lasser-Raab, senior director of network systems at Cisco. “It’s becoming a hosting platform for any service linked or tied into the routing capability.”

About a fifth of Cisco‘s annual $35 billion to $40 billion in revenue is attributable to sales of enterprise and service provider routers. And the worldwide router market in 2008 was just less than $13 billion, according to Dell’Oro Group.

But those numbers might become harder to track as the definition of a router changes.

“Whether you call a particular platform or chassis a router depends on what the thing is primarily used for,” says Jeff Doyle, president of consultancy Jeff Doyle and Associates and a Network World blogger. “Media gateways, firewalls, GGSNs, etc. They might all have router functions in them, but they are generally called by whatever their primary role in the network is.”

In many respects routing has become a more general purpose utility on a hardware platform not exclusively optimized for routing. The routing aspect becomes back-of-mind as the capabilities of the device’s other applications and services are of more immediate need.

“As the hardware has evolved…it’s similar to the hardware that’s used for servers,” says Eric Wolford, senior vice president, marketing and business development at Riverbed, which makes WAN optimizers. “The software becomes a bigger and more important part of deciding what it is. Routing is the software logic that does the connecting of the dots. Routing can be done on a variety of hardware platforms.”

Vyatta, for example, runs Linux-based routing code on x86 hardware. It also runs several other open source network applications on the standard hardware, including firewall, VPN concentration, virtualization, address management, traffic management and intrusion prevention that scales from the branch office to the service provider edge.

“In the old days, vendors developed a new box around a new function; we’re now seeing a move to bring all of these functions together,” says Dave Roberts, vice president of strategy and marketing at Vyatta. “It doesn’t make sense every place in the network to plop down three different boxes, or four or five and daisy chain them altogether. It makes sense to still have all these functions but as pieces of a larger system that plays in different places in the network — more of a general purpose device that supports a lot of functionality.”

Vyatta customer New Mexico Courts says the more features that are added to a router, the more the software component of routing is distinguished from the hardware. Time was when router hardware – specialized ASICs and packet processors – was intrinsic to the function itself.

“I gave up on what my traditional concept of a router was some time ago,” says Sam Noble, senior network systems administrator for New Mexico Courts. “It’s an obvious location to add additional services. But it does change the focus of the device. What it highlights is how much of a router is software, not as much a hardware platform as we tend to traditionally think of it.”

Some, however, still feel that if that general purpose device routes, it should be called a router despite the number of additional tasks it performs that push routing to the background. As long as it is forwarding packets based on Layer 3 source and destination information – despite whatever else it does – it’s still a router, says Cisco Certified Design Expert Mike Morris, a communications engineering manager at a $3 billion high-tech company and a Network World blogger.

“It’s still a router, but the definition of ‘router’ is changing,” Morris says. “We think of routers at Layer 3 moving packets in and out of interfaces after altering the data slightly. A lot of the extra features added to routers these days do the very same thing, but at different layers: [session border controllers] operate at Layer 5, application acceleration is Layer 4 and Layer 7, firewall can be at many layers. But all still deal with moving data in one interface and moving it out another after altering the data in some fashion.”

Juniper agrees. It recently enhanced its service provider routers to enable network operators to perform application-layer, real-time MPEG video stream quality monitoring to improve performance and scale.

This capability or any other layered on top of the company’s M- or MX-series platforms, does not make them any less of a router though, according to Juniper.

“Maybe the capabilities of a router have evolved and enhanced over time but I still consider the core functions, the heart of a router, to be unchanged,” says Rami Rahim, vice president of product management for Juniper’s Edge and Aggregation business unit. “As long as the introduction of these advanced services like MPEG-level video monitoring don’t compromise our ability to also scale the router in its more traditional Layer 3 routing function, then I think it’s still a router. It’s just a router that’s vastly enhanced with advanced services. Our customers buy routers; whether they add functionality or not doesn’t make it any less of a router.”

The key, Rahim says, is the “architectural integrity” of the platform that the routing and advanced services functionality runs on. To Juniper, this means separating the packet processing of a router cleanly and distinctly into forwarding, control and services planes.

Without this separation, “innovation” on one plane — such as MPEG video monitoring on the services or control plane — could compromise performance of another plane, like forwarding, he says.

Still, anything that manipulates packets beyond Layer 3 should be called something else – like a gateway, according to Paul Congdon, CTO at HP ProCurve.

“A router is Layer 3, a switch/bridge is Layer 2, and a gateway anything above that,” Congdon says. “Gateway is probably the more accurate term these days, when you look at all the levels of forwarding that takes place.”

HP ProCurve recently unveiled a server blade for its 8200 and 5400 switches that enables users to begin integrating and consolidating switching and application processing. The ProCurve ONE module runs software applications from Microsoft (security and network access), McAfee (Web security, filtering and intrusion-prevention system), Avaya (unified communications), F5 Networks (application delivery control and load balancing), Riverbed (WAN optimization), and others.

The ProCurve ONE module is intended to open the switch forwarding plane to more network-centric application awareness, Congdon says. HP has no plans to rename its switches gateways, however.

Carrier Qwest is responding to the federal Networx RFP for “service enabling devices” with routers. It’s not a term Qwest disagrees with, and the routers they’re providing are not much more sophisticated than the DSL modem in Product Management Vice President Eric Bozich’s home.

“The DSL modem probably has the same kind of routing intelligence that devices you pay thousands of dollars for have,” Bozich says. “So things have progressed significantly in terms of what’s the right terminology. I think service enabling devices is more accurate because it’s really what these things do.”

Bozich says “there’s no magic anymore” to routing — the functionality of being a traffic cop and moving packets from one interface to another and making those kinds of decisions at wire speed. But it’s still essential if not sexy anymore – a DSL modem with 100 features on it still has to route.

“On a DSL modem, I can create ACLs, it’s got wireless connectivity, got firewall capabilities… the device goes way beyond packets in/packet out,” Bozich says. “But if it didn’t do the packets in/packets out, it wouldn’t be a very useful modem.”

So where is all of this heading? Cisco’s Lasser-Raab believes the trend of hosting more and more applications on a router will change the complexion of the device – but not the name.

“We already have the ISR name; but it’s an integrated services platform,” she says. “A router is still the device that sits between the WAN and the business network, the LAN. I do associate that with routing more than anything.”

Optimize your router for VoIP and Video

We are in a difficult phase, and at the age of the network, multimedia streaming mature. Broadband and cellular providers have only recently made a huge public appetite for streaming video, VoIP, and the combination of both.

Most home and small office routers that there are up to it, unless they are completely new, however, can not be optimally configured. Fortunately, you can take steps to improve the quality of rich media on the net.

At the end of this article you will find the specifications set for six of the high-end routers more popular. If your model does not permit adjustments described in the next page, may be time to run to the store.

Routers to handle traffic between multiple devices. If you are not getting the kind of performance you expect from an application or device as an IP phone (VoIP), may have to manage this traffic to ensure that there is not enough bandwidth for the desired application.

Quality of service and ports: Contemporary routers manage the bandwidth through a technique called quality of service. If you’re lucky, you can set quality of service through the router’s software, simply by selecting a category (eg, voice, applications or games) and assign a priority (such as higher or normal). This method is by far the least painful, but not always available.

If this method is not an option, usually you can set the QoS priority for devices for media access address code – a string of hexadecimal numbers only for the device – as well as by name network (such as “My Phone” or “MainPC”), or IP address (eg 192.168.1.100).

A MAC address is better, because the IP addresses assigned by the router’s DHCP server may change. The router may or may not be smart enough to monitor a device with an IP address has changed. A device name is also constant – assuming you do not change it yourself. To use an IP address must be static, ie fixed and established in the device, or reserved, as provided in the router.

QoS Routers by analyzing data through packet sniffing and noting that Transmission Control Protocol / User Datagram Protocol ports of the data travels through. Then prioritize the types of traffic that you specify.

What is a port? You can think of a port as something like an extension number on a landline system. Similar to the way a call to reach a main telephone number, the data arrives at your router via the address of your broadband IP connection. And just a phone call is forwarded to an extension assigned to someone in the company, data is sent to the port assigned to a particular protocol or application. You can find a complete list of official port numbers in the house of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority. Alternatively, see the documentation for the device or application.

Many applications to dynamically allocate ports as needed. For these you may want to use a sniffer network traffic, such as Network Monitor Free Microsoft 3.4.

Port forwarding: If the router does not support true QoS, you may need to use port forwarding, which sends all traffic traveling through a port or ports to a specific device. This technique reduces the delay in the router and the target device can handle the process. Note that a redirected port then becomes unavailable for other devices. In general, you specify the port number, protocol (TCP, UDP, or both) and then the IP address, MAC address or device name

DMZ: Another form of network traffic directly to your device is put in the DMZ. No, does not include North Korea – that it simply moves the device behind the firewall and outside, where you can receive all traffic without interference from the router. This agreement usually provides broadband device its IP address – with all the vulnerability that entails. This vulnerability is why each router has its own firewall. The DMZ is usually reserved for a server or PC you’ll use for games or web sites that serve, and should be considered a last resort for a VoIP phone or a PC to work.

Simultaneous dual-band wireless: Wireless ad hoc concurrent enables QoS by dividing traffic between two networks. For example, you could name your wireless network from 2.4 GHz “Webdata” and 5GHz wireless network “PhoneVideo.” Users to connect to the network Webdata for surfing or general network tasks, and PhoneVideo for Skype or watch high-definition video.

WME, WMM: Wireless Extensions multimedia multimedia and Wi-Fi are two names for the same service 802.11e wireless QoS. By all means, allow WME or WMM if the router is compatible. The adjustment will help with streaming applications such as voice and video, if the target device supports wireless. You can see an option for recognition, which triggers the forwarding of data errors, for streaming applications in real time, this will not help.

WISH: Wireless Intelligent Stream Handling is similar to WMM in force. Is less frequent but has specific optimizations for Windows Media Center and Windows Media Center Extender. Definitely the choice for streaming is between WMC and Xbox or a WMC extender.

VoIP is the most difficult to implement for vendors to provide settings for it is bidirectional, which means that traffic moves in both directions, and no serious deficiencies can be tolerated the conversation to be successful. On the other hand, is not particularly bandwidth-intensive in terms of today, and can survive a relatively large amount of data loss. That’s why using UDP (which provides no guaranteed delivery) rather than TCP (which provides error checking.)

Some VoIP phones, such as Vonage, use a router that sits between your broadband modem and your own router. There is nothing really wrong with this configuration, and ensure the best call quality possible, but experienced users generally place the phone behind their own router and change to enable better performance of other applications.

If the router is older or has no QoS settings, you may need to forward multiple ports or port ranges in the VoIP phone. If your router does not support port forwarding, get a new router. Many VoIP devices use port 5060-61 (SIPS), but things can change from there, according to the current transmission protocol. Details must be included in the guide.

Optimization for high-definition video

Although transmission of HD video or any multimedia bandwidth-intensive, you can have it protected in the end, which can compensate for deficiencies in the provision. This process of buffering or prefetching the data, which is why often you see a significant delay between the time when access to a video and when it starts playing.

That said, the pads are dried, and set your router can ensure trouble-free viewing. Unfortunately, only a few routers have all the video features specifically targeted. Enable WMM to help with wireless video. If you see a video input on the QoS section of your router, put it in the highest position. If WMM is not available, the use of QoS to increase the bandwidth for both devices source and destination if you encounter problems. Some newer routers have their own streaming video improvements, they can.

Next page: How to optimize six popular small office routers, and when the update

Brand by Brand

The following summarizes the discussions of how to adjust small-office/home-office six of the last high-end routers. All functions (and configured) as described in the previous page. It is very likely that the firmware on older models and less expensive is similar if not identical.

Beside each name is the default router IP address, username and password. If the item is expressed in quotation marks, type the characters in the middle. All the settings here in the router’s firmware via a Web interface, which can be accessed by navigating to the IP address of the router.

2-wire 2701HGV-B (AT & T) by default IP address: 192.168.1.254Default username: password NoneDefault: Printed at the bottom of the modem

Unfortunately, the 2Wire home broadband modem / routers that are common to many of AT & T DSL and U-verse installations did not have the general configuration of quality of service at the time of writing. However, you can forward ports to devices. Under firewall, Firewall settings, you will find a list of applications whose traffic may refer to a single computer, and you can place one computer outside the firewall in the DMZ. To prioritize traffic by protocol, have to put the 2Wire in bridge mode, where it acts strictly as a modem, router and let someone else handle the quality of service.

VoIP settings are limited to AT & T phones provided, so you need to forward ports to optimize traffic to your IP phone.

N600 HDDefault Belkin IP Address: 192.168.1.1Default username and password: None

Quality of service, located on game features, is easy to use, with the general settings of voice, online gaming, video and general traffic. Port forwarding, also known as virtual servers, is available under the title of Firewall. In the drop-down a long list of applications that saves you having to search for specific port numbers.

A DMZ is in the Firewall heading, and the N600 offers wireless HD simultaneously, too. WMM is enabled by default in Wireless Channel and SSID for both 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz networks.

Buffalo Nfiniti WZR-HP-G300NHDefault IP Address: 192.168.11.1Username and password: Located on the first access

Although the Nfiniti has a very granular approach to quality of service (which is accessed from the homepage of the router in NAT / QoS), is a real technical challenge in appearance. You will see a dropdown list of priority services applications is rather long but hard to read due to relief and accents. Fortunately, help is informative.

It offers no entry for VoIP, so you have to configure the bandwidth for the IP phone MAC priority box. You can do the same for any device on the network. You will find a DMZ and port forwarding on other pages under the same NAT / QoS game.

The G300NH is the single-band wireless technology, but WMM is not implemented. MovieEngine Buffalo is in place to prioritize multimedia traffic, however.

E3000 Linksys Wireless-N performance RouterDefault IP address: 192.168.1.1Default username: password BlankDefault: “admin”

For the Linksys router, service quality is in Applications and Gaming, then quality of service, but is not enabled by default. WMM is enabled by default and while the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz channels, which operate at the same time.

For VoIP, Internet enabled Priority, select Voice Device Category drop-down menu, type a name for the device (this is for identification only, not the real device name), and enter your MAC address. The default priority should be high, but if not, stating that.

You will not find a specific optimization for video, but may increase the bandwidth to any device and a range of applications – including Windows Media Player, iTunes, etc. Port forwarding is also under applications and games, but will not receive any help with ports for specific applications, only the basic protocols such as HTTP, SNMP, POP3, etc.

D-Link DIR-655 Xtreme N Gigabit RouterDefault IP address: 192.168.0.1 default username: admin Default password: blank

The DIR-655 has more quality of service and port mapping features, than you can shake a stick at the Advanced tab. Quality of Service engine has an automatic classification, which is essentially a quality of service of non-intervention, leave this enabled. You can adjust the setting of priorities for specific ports. As Belkin, D-Link is referred to as port forwarding virtual server, and port triggering rules as applicable.

For radio, WMM is enabled by default in Options, Advanced Wireless, and a separate configuration page for want is available.

Netgear WNDR3700 Dual Band Wireless-N Gigabit RouterDefault IP Address: 192.168.1.1Default username “admin” default password “password”

Quality of service for this router is available in the right pane in the configuration of QoS. It’s a bit difficult to navigate, but keep the WMM enabled for both 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz, then enable Internet service quality. Click QoS Settings item, and you will see a list of applications, including IP phones, Google Talk, and Vonage. Set these to major, and adjust the rest as needed.

Under Wireless Settings and Network Room dn / d (5 GHz), you’ll find a little gem called Enable Video Network, which the company claims will provide smoother video delivery in the 5 GHz channels (the unit offers wireless Simultaneous dual-band). Enable this option either network will be streaming video.

When to update

You should be able to get almost any device or application to function properly with quality of service or port forwarding. However, if the router is so old that can not handle the traffic – which is more likely to occur with wireless technology – then throw in the towel and get a new one.

All routers above, except the 2Wire 2701, are top of the line models, and supply and Gigabit QoS. While the additional bandwidth Gigabit is not strictly necessary for any one task, it can successfully run more applications simultaneously, such as talking on the VoIP phone while streaming an HD movie to the living room. All routers here, apart from 2701 and the Buffalo Nfiniti WZR-HP G300NH offer simultaneous (concurrent) 2.4GHz and 5GHz wireless. I’m not necessarily a type of art, but in this case, if you are really serious about streaming media, especially wirelessly, do not skimp.