SMC Barricade700BR Router Review

The Miscellaneous Items page, is where you can assign 1 (and only 1) IP to be placed into DMZ (demilitarized zone, essentially making it NOT behind the firewall), set up the IP address of a remote admin host outside the lan, and discard pings from the WAN (internet) side of the connection.

How did it work would be the next question to be asked I would think? Hmm... ;)

I browsed websites, chatted on IRC, ran Dialpad for some free long distance telephone calls, used ICQ, ran RC5 (needs network access for grabbing new keysets) downloaded off of many FTP sites, all in all seamlessly. Once it's set up, and it is quite simple to set up (with aforementioned caveats regarding the non-existent print manual), it just works. Cant ask for much more than that.

In this "new" field of broadband routers, the SMC does have quite a few stand out features. It's support for ISDN and POTS dialup is unique, as well as it's built in print server. Setting up a printer on a LAN isn't exactly hard without it, but this is a nice feature nonetheless. It supports VPN (Virtual Private Networking) connections, where the less expensive D-Link product does not. Unlike a couple of it's competitors, the LAN side of the router is a full switch, which will get you better throughput between local machines than a hub arrangement. It is more expensive than the D-Link and Netgear offerings, but is priced similarly to the Linksys product, and comes with a better warranty (limited Lifetime). All in all, if you are looking for an easy to use and simple way to set up multiple machines on a LAN and share an internet connection of nearly any type, the SMC Barricade deserves serious attention. 

Pros

Cons

Rating: 8/10

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