routehero
09-27-2002, 06:28 PM
Through my work I was able to evaluate a Nexland ISB Pro800 Turbo router. This is not your ordinary router.
The device supports two 10baseT uplinks and 8 LAN ports, as well as a serial connection, for the possibility of a 33.6 analog modem, 56k digital or 64k/128k digital isdn.
The device has fairly comprehensive configuration options, allowing you to configure PPPoE, DHCP or static IP addresses for your uplinks. You have the ability to map MAC addresses to LAN IP addresses, bind a certain uplink port for SMTP use, as well as setting a DMZ host (fairly standard fare), binding defined or user-input ports to a LAN IP.
For the two uplinks you can run them in redundant or load balancing mode. You are able to set the percentage of load balance, which is handy for those of you who have two connections of varying speeds. The device has built-in ability to test an uplink for its status, and if it can not ping the IP you enter, it will disable all outbound traffic and use only your one connection, until the test succeeds.
The device is configured via web and is a fairly good interface, except it requires many reboots for changing the configuration.
The device does not do any sort of channel bonding/multilink. At best it does load balancing, or it can be used as a redundant router (similar to Cisco's HSRP in some ways). Your outbound traffic will be split up and send out the differing connections as you establish the sessions. If you are streaming, (ie, ftp), your first ftp session will go out WAN 1, while your ftp session will go out WAN 2. Incoming traffic will be routed to the source.
One of the drawbacks of the device is that there is a bug in the firmware that does not allow for static routes to work correctly. If you try to set a static route, all traffic destined to your route will simply fail, rather than going through. I was a bit frustrated with this, as I use newsplex and wanted to route my specific news servers through the specific LAN ports (newsplex + 2 connections + 4 news servers = drool, if it would work as I had hoped).
All in all the device is a good investment if you are interested in a redundant connection with the possibility of downloading some files a bit faster, and is relatively cheap (I believe it retails for somewhere around $600). While I still had the device, I noticed with Starcraft that my battle.net connection was a bit laggy. I didn't have enough time to test opening up more than what Blizzard recommends, but despite that, the device worked without a hitch.
Edit: For the record, I used 1 ADSL (1.5 megabit down, 640k up, 3COM HomeConnect DSL modem) and 1 Cable (Terayon cablemodem).
The device supports two 10baseT uplinks and 8 LAN ports, as well as a serial connection, for the possibility of a 33.6 analog modem, 56k digital or 64k/128k digital isdn.
The device has fairly comprehensive configuration options, allowing you to configure PPPoE, DHCP or static IP addresses for your uplinks. You have the ability to map MAC addresses to LAN IP addresses, bind a certain uplink port for SMTP use, as well as setting a DMZ host (fairly standard fare), binding defined or user-input ports to a LAN IP.
For the two uplinks you can run them in redundant or load balancing mode. You are able to set the percentage of load balance, which is handy for those of you who have two connections of varying speeds. The device has built-in ability to test an uplink for its status, and if it can not ping the IP you enter, it will disable all outbound traffic and use only your one connection, until the test succeeds.
The device is configured via web and is a fairly good interface, except it requires many reboots for changing the configuration.
The device does not do any sort of channel bonding/multilink. At best it does load balancing, or it can be used as a redundant router (similar to Cisco's HSRP in some ways). Your outbound traffic will be split up and send out the differing connections as you establish the sessions. If you are streaming, (ie, ftp), your first ftp session will go out WAN 1, while your ftp session will go out WAN 2. Incoming traffic will be routed to the source.
One of the drawbacks of the device is that there is a bug in the firmware that does not allow for static routes to work correctly. If you try to set a static route, all traffic destined to your route will simply fail, rather than going through. I was a bit frustrated with this, as I use newsplex and wanted to route my specific news servers through the specific LAN ports (newsplex + 2 connections + 4 news servers = drool, if it would work as I had hoped).
All in all the device is a good investment if you are interested in a redundant connection with the possibility of downloading some files a bit faster, and is relatively cheap (I believe it retails for somewhere around $600). While I still had the device, I noticed with Starcraft that my battle.net connection was a bit laggy. I didn't have enough time to test opening up more than what Blizzard recommends, but despite that, the device worked without a hitch.
Edit: For the record, I used 1 ADSL (1.5 megabit down, 640k up, 3COM HomeConnect DSL modem) and 1 Cable (Terayon cablemodem).