Setting up the router was straightforward enough,
however for the novice I can already see snags in the installation. My ISP is
Charter @Home, and in order to grab the DHCP lease from them to assign your IP
address/gateway/DNS, you are required to have a correct "Machine Name" (in the
case of @Home, usually along the lines of "Cx123456-a" ) and a defined host
(i.e. in my case roughly cityxx.statexx.home.com). This is not mentioned in the
quick installation guide. Big deal? Well @Home is the LARGEST broadband provider
in existence currently, so I would have to say yes. There is an addendum in the
back of the .pdf manual mentioning just this very thing, along with instructions
for another ISP, MediaONE. But this is in the .pdf, not anywhere in print.
Again, not having the printed manual could cause a novice user a great deal of
grief. One good thing, the SMC Barricade has free 24/7 toll-free tech support.
It's a pity though that less people would need it, if the manual were easily
available. A .pdf is not enough.
Beyond the above, following the 1-page installation
guide is straightforward. Having already had TCP/IP installed on my machines
here, and DHCP enabled, I didn't even have to bother with it. In order to enable
my net connectivity, I simply had to login to the router through http, and set
the aforementioned machine name and host. In order to use the print server
function, a port driver needs to be installed from the installation CD. The
print server function works simply and seamlessly, although it will not function
with many printers (such as several Lexmark/HP/Canon inkjet models) that are
Windows Host based printers and require bi-directional control over parallel. It
did function seamlessly enough with an Old Okidata LED page printer here, and
should work fine with any typical office laser printer that uses a parallel
interface.
As mentioned above, control of all of the routers
functions are handled through an http server embedded into the router. This
simple/slick approach allows the router to work on various OS machines
(Windows/Mac/*nix) with the same http interface. The control interface is
divided into 8 sections.
The status page shows your Lease time, IP address,
Subnet mask, Gateway, and DNS settings. Two status indicators let you know the
status of a modem on the external COM port, and the printer.
The Toolbox page is where you can change the default
admin password (something that you need to do immediately for safety's sake),
View the status log, Clone your WAN devices MAC address (necessary for MediaOne,
and perhaps other ISP's) , reboot the router (does NOT require a reboot of the
PC's it's connected to), and download new firmware for the router.
The DHCP server page, is where you can enable or disable DHCP services for machines on the lan, insert your domain (necessary for @Home) and define a default gateway.
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