Hardware One - Review Printout

Wireless LAN has rapidly been gaining popularity during the recent two years. This is primarily fueled by the trend of smaller and lighter notebook computers, removing the need for users to be "anchored" to a specific locality for Internet access. If you recall, I have taken a look at the SMC Barricade EZ Connect Cable/DSL Router back in January. This time round, I am privileged to be testing out the SMC7004WBR Wireless Broadband Router.

A shot at the back of the box.

The router provides data rates of 11, 5.5, 2, and 1 Mbps coupled with 40-bit WEP encryption for wireless LAN security. According to specifications, the router has a functional operating range of up to 1500 feet depending on the data rate. The built-in Network Address Translation (NAT) enables instant access for up to 252 PCs on the LAN simultaneously using the WAN port.

More on NAT…
In case you're still in the dark about NAT, it is basically a protocol that allows a LAN to use a set of IP addresses for internal traffic and another set for external traffic. Whenever the machines behind the router require communication with the outside world, data packets must first flow through the router. The router will then substitute the internal IPs of the machines with its own and forwards it to the machines residing outside. By the same token, the external machines will reply to the router, which will in turn determine which machines the various packets are supposed to go to.

The basic principles of NAT are to:

Enable home/office users to use a single WAN connection for their internal LAN machines.
Combine multiple ISDN connections into a single Internet connection.
Provide a type of firewall by hiding IP addresses. All external access will appear to originate only from the router.

NAT Limitations
Even though NAT is able to translate most protocols successfully, there are certain instances where NAT is unable to do the job. NAT is not a total cure for sharing Internet access, and many protocols e.g. XDCMP embed IP address information inside the IP datagram payload. NAT by itself only translates IP header address and port information. Such special protocols hence require helper functions called Application Level Gateways (ALG) to make them work behind NAT.

Specifications
Below are the specifications of the router, lifted directly from SMC's documentation.

Instant Internet sharing for cable and DSL subscribers, ISDN and even 56k modem users.
Static IP, Dynamic IP, PPPoE, PPTP, Dial-up networking
11 Mbps wireless operation for maximum mobility use.
Firewall security against hackers.
Simultaneous Internet access for up to 252 PCs on the LAN using 1 IP address.
LAN: 3 port 10/100 Mbps (RJ45)
WAN: 1 port broadband uplink (RJ-45) for Cable/DSL modem
1 RS232 port for dial-up and ISDN
Built-in print server. Supports Win95/98/NT/2000,UNIX LPR
Built-in DHCP server, VPN, NAT Firewall Protection
Platform independent – works with PCs or Macs
Supports IEEE 802.3, IEEE 802.3u and IEEE 802.11b standards.

Packing List

One wireless broadband router unit
One installation CD-ROM
One power adapter
One CAT-5 UTP Fast Ethernet cable

Contents inside the box.

So, what is this new IEEE 802.11b standard?
The wireless router supports the IEEE 802.11b, which is a newly ratified standard for 11 Mbps High Rate Wireless LANs (WLAN). It operates at a 2.4 GHz radio frequency band using Direct Sequence Spread Spectrum (DSSS) and delivers up to 11 Mbps wireless performance. This is comparable to wired Ethernet.

To put it down in layman’s term, you can think of the SMC Wireless router as the “base station” for your cordless phone system and the PCMCIA card analogous to a cordless handset. Communication is achieved between the “base” station and the PCMCIA card via radio waves.

The IEEE 802.11b is an upgrade to the previous IEEE802.11 that only supports up to 2 Mbps. By using the 2.4 GHz band, wireless users are way above the 900 MHz and 1800 MHz band reserved mainly for GSM/GSM1800 signals. Also, due to the different signaling mechanisms, such as DSSS or Bluetooth’s Frequency Hopping Spread Spectrum (FHSS), IEEE 802.11b WLAN products will not interfere with one another even though they are all operating in the same 2.4 GHz frequency band.

Taking a closer look, the SMC Wireless Router is compliant with Wi-Fi™, a protocol necessary to handshake with other manufacture’s products that also uses the IEEE 802.11b DSSS.

Test-Bench Setup
Before embarking on the tests per se, here's my test-bench setup for reference:-

”Base Station” should refer to the system where the SMC Router was connected to.

01 x PIII700 at 933MHz (7 x 133MHz)

1 x 128 MB PC133 SDRAM

1 x MSI 6337 i815 motherboard

01 x MSI 816 GeForce 2 GTS video card; Official Nvidia 6.31 Win2K drivers

Attached to RAID ATA-100 IDE slots (IDE 2/3): 02 x 30.5GB IBM 75GXP ATA-100 drives; AMI HyperDisk 100 v2.4.1024.0 drivers;

Attached to standard ATA-100 IDE slots (IDE 0/1): 01 x 30.5GB Maxtor Diamond Max 45 ATA-100 drive (Primary Master) + 01 x 28.5GB Seagate Barracuda II ATA-66 drive (Primary Slave); Intel Ultra-ATA Storage 6.1.8 drivers

01 x 19” Sony G400 monitor

01 x 10/100 INTEL Pro Express NIC (connected to Cable Modem)

Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional w/ Service Pack 1
Laptop specifications are as follow:

Acer TravelMate 340
Pentium® III 500MHz
128MB memory
12 GB HDD
Integrated 10/100 Ethernet RJ45 connection
128-bit AGP graphics accelerator with 2.5MB SGRAM video memory
One CardBus PC Card slot (Type II), ZV supported
Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional w/ Service Pack 1

The SMC Wireless Router was connected to the SCV Cable modem.

Installation and setting up
Having experienced firsthand the configuration of the SMC Barricade Cable/DSL router in my previous review, setting up the SMC Wireless Router proved to be quick and easy. Similar to the Cable/DSL router, the SMC Wireless Router does not come with a manual. However, a thin “Quick Start” booklet accompanies the package and further details can be obtained from the PDF/WinWord DOC files provided with the CD.

The SMC Barricade Wireless Router with its antennas sticking up.

Below is a graphical view of the router’s front panel. Just like the SMC Cable/DSL router, I find the activity LEDs too small to be useful. I would have preferred the LEDs to be larger and more prominent.

Graphical view of the router front panel.

A feature that I find useful is the ability to restore all the settings via the RESET button found in the front panel. By using a sharp tipped instrument, you can depress the RESET button for about 5 seconds while you power up the router. This can be handy if you have accidentally forgotten your administrator password but need to regain access to the router.

Frontal shot of the SMC lights.

Rear view of the wireless router.

Configuring the Router
Having played around with the Barricade Router before, configuring the wireless version was smooth sailing. You may need to deactivate any proxy settings in your browser as you are going to surf an internal network (Class C internal IPs start with 192.168.x.x).

I proceeded to the default URL http://192.168.123.254 and keyed in the default administrator password.

The router main login screen.

The menus are arranged in the same order as the non-wireless variant. After logging in, I clicked on the Administrator’s Toolbox to change the default password.

Administrators’ Toolbox Screen.

Again, similar to the non-wireless version, the wireless router has the wonderful ability to clone MAC addresses. Certain Cable/DSL ISPs lock on to the specific NIC in your system, thereby blocking you from accessing the services from other machines. With the MAC address-cloning feature, you no longer need to be bound by such a rule.

Users will be glad to know that the wireless router offers an easy and intuitive web-based interface to upload the updated flash ROM. Of course, please do not power off the router while the flashing is in process! New firmware can be found here.

Upgrading the firmware of the router is a breeze.

Without boring you with intricate details such as configuring the DNS IPs and other unimportant stuff, I will jump directly to the wireless setting of the router.

Administrators’ Toolbox Screen.

1. Network ID(SSID): Network ID is used to identify the WLAN. Client stations can roam freely on this product and other Access Points that have the same Network ID. The SSID gives you a way to separate your “cell” when you are in an area with multiple wireless products being used at the same time.

2. Channel: The radio channel number. The permissible number of channels depends on the Regulatory Domain.

3. WEP Security: Select the data privacy algorithm you want. Enabling the security will protect your data while it is transferred from one station to another. The standardized IEEE 802.11 WEP (64-bit) is used here.

The WEP Protocol
As mentioned earlier, the IEEE 802.11b operates on a 2.4 GHz spectrum. This 2.4 GHz spectrum coupled with Spread Spectrum technology was initially used by the US military as a way to send unbreakable codes that were difficult to detect, jam or break. However, since knowledge of Spread Spectrum is currently widespread, there is little security gained by using spread spectrum itself.

Hence there is a need to further encrypt the data going via the air medium. Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) Protocol is eventually implemented to provide a way to encrypt/decrypt traffic across the wireless network.

Due to the fact that air is a common medium, everything that is transmitted or received over a wireless network can be intercepted. The main security issue with wireless networks, especially radio networks, is that they intentionally radiate data over an area that may exceed the limits of the area the organization physically controls. For instance, 802.11b radio waves at 2.4 GHz can easily penetrate building walls, and your neighbor can easily use a laptop to passively retrieve all your unencrypted data.

Initial Woes
After going through all the settings again, I rebooted the router, removed the Xircom 10/100 network card and inserted the SMC PCMCIA wireless LAN card provided for our evaluation.

After popping in the SMC PCMICA wireless LAN card, I realized that I could not establish a connection with the wireless router. For the next couple of hours, I tried all sorts of debugging tests to investigate the root of the problem. Another new laptop was used to test the SMC wireless LAN card, but it did not work as well. I went through all the Network Settings and I was certain they were correct. But still, the laptop could not detect the router. Eventually I gave up and decided to try the Lucent Orinoco Silver wireless LAN card instead.

Lucent Technologies Orinoco 11 Mbps Wireless LAN card.

Fortunately, the SMC Router is compliant with the Wi-Fi™ standard and I was glad that the Orinoco worked without any problems the first time I plugged it into my Acer laptop!

Checking the network configuration
With good signal strength between the wireless router and the laptop, I performed some rudimentary tests.

Issuing ipconfig on the laptop, I was glad that the wireless LAN card was able to communicate with the wireless router and retrieved a dynamically assigned IP.

0 Ethernet adapter :

IP Address. . . . . . . . . : 192.168.123.127
Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0
Default Gateway . . . . . . : 192.168.123.254

Pinging the gateway, I was greeted with the usual ICMP response.

PING 192.168.123.127 (192.168.123.127): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 192.168.123.127: icmp_seq=0 ttl=128 time=2.6 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.123.127: icmp_seq=1 ttl=128 time=2.6 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.123.127: icmp_seq=2 ttl=128 time=2.7 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.123.127: icmp_seq=3 ttl=128 time=2.6 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.123.127: icmp_seq=5 ttl=128 time=2.5 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.123.127: icmp_seq=6 ttl=128 time=2.5 ms

Pinging one of our machines connected via the 100 Mbps port on the SMC router, we can see that there is a slight latency from the 11 Mbps wireless LAN card.

PING 192.168.1.220 (192.168.123.220): 56 octets data
64 octets from 192.168.123.220: icmp_seq=0 ttl=128 time=0.3 ms
64 octets from 192.168.123.220: icmp_seq=1 ttl=128 time=0.3 ms
64 octets from 192.168.123.220: icmp_seq=2 ttl=128 time=0.4 ms
64 octets from 192.168.123.220: icmp_seq=3 ttl=128 time=0.3 ms

Internal traffic seems to be routed correctly. I proceeded to ping Yahoo.com and was glad to receive response from them as well.

Pinging www.yahoo.akadns.net [216.32.74.52] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 216.32.74.52: bytes=32 time=237ms TTL=235
Reply from 216.32.74.52: bytes=32 time=248ms TTL=235
Reply from 216.32.74.52: bytes=32 time=233ms TTL=235
Reply from 216.32.74.52: bytes=32 time=250ms TTL=235

Firing up my browser, I was able to surf to outside world without any problems. As I am not the paranoid type, the laptop is put into the DMZ zone, and I was able to use programs like mIRC, ICQ etc without much problems. For the paranoid type, you may like to setup port forwarding under the Special Applications menu. For a list of ports used by various program, I always refer to the useful Special Applications – Port List from Practically Networked.

However, as mentioned earlier, there are limitations with the SMC Barricade's NAT capability. Even if your machine is already in the DMZ zone or you have already configure the appropriate port forwarding rules, you may not be able to gain access to certain services. For example, the SMC Barricade does not have built-in support for XDMCP and I was unable to initiate a X-session with the Linux box at home. To overcome this problem, a suitable firmware needs to be released by SMC.

Firewall Capabilities
As usual, it is important to test the firewall capabilities of the router. I decided to do some good old port sniffing to see what’s going on behind the router. Using nmap v2.53, I got the following results:

Starting nmap V. 2.53 by fyodor@insecure.org ( www.insecure.org/nmap/ )
Interesting ports on 192.168.1.50 (The 1521 ports scanned but not shown below are in state: filtered)

Benchmarks Galore!
Time for some benchmark results. Again, we tested the FTP transfer speed by using a 92536832 byte test file.

Average transfer rate.

Time taken to transfer the sample file.

Ping flood test results.

Transfer rate vs Signal to Noise Ratio
FTP throughput for transferring the 90MB test file was observed with variations in the client Signal to Noise ratio. The variations in the S/N ratio was obtained by locating the laptop at different distances and places from the base station.

From the results shown below, the higher the S/N ratio, the better the reception. This will translate into better performance.

FTP Throughput with variations in Signal to Noise Ratio.

Conclusion
From the benchmark results, we can see that the 11 Mbps wireless LAN is slower than a 10 Mbps twisted pair network. This is not surprising, considering the fact that it is wireless and I am personally more than happy to sustain over 500 kilobytes/s on the 11 Mbps network card.

Although the transfer rate is slightly mediocre compared to a 10 Mbps network, I am finally given the freedom to work/surf anywhere I desire in the house. This is more important to me than speed as I do not transfer gigabytes of files across the wireless LAN. For me, portability is more important than transfer speeds.

The SMC was able to cover a range of up to 50 meters before I encountered poor signal reception. Although the wireless waves were able to penetrate walls, I soon realized that reception dropped drastically once I was behind a wall or a glass door.

Hmm, the cute antennas again.

Looking ahead, if you fancy a wireless desktop machine, there is actually a 3rd-party PCI card that is able to accommodate the wireless PCMCIA card. Hmm, not exactly a bad idea to totally do away with all those pesky RJ45 cables I have in my house.

In short, the Wireless Router offered by SMC performs admirably and offers good versatility. As such, I have no qualms in recommending the US$270 router to anybody who intends to go wireless in their homes.

With all these, I’m signing off from the bathroom. Take care folks!

Executive Summary

Wireless LAN has rapidly been gaining popularity during the recent two years. This is primarily fueled by the trend of smaller and lighter notebook computers, removing the need for users to be "anchored" to a specific locality for Internet access. If you recall, I have taken a look at the SMC Barricade EZ Connect Cable/DSL Router back in January. This time round, I am privileged to be testing out the SMC7004WBR Wireless Broadband Router.

Front shot of the colorful box.

The SMC Broadband Router should be a god-sent for people staying in apartments that pose too much of a challenge and hassle to wire up. Indeed, wiring up can be such an endeavor as it may involve activities like hacking walls, burying cables, and sealing the walls back. This is definitely not cost-effective for me. I'm not exactly hot on the idea of laying a trap of Ethernet cables all over the floor either!

To put it down in layman’s term, you can think of the SMC Wireless router as the “base station” for your cordless phone system and the PCMCIA card analogous to a cordless handset. Communication is achieved between the “base” station and the PCMCIA card via radio waves.

The IEEE 802.11b is an upgrade to the previous IEEE802.11 that only supports up to 2 Mbps. By using the 2.4 GHz band, wireless users are way above the 900 MHz and 1800 MHz band reserved mainly for GSM/GSM1800 signals. Also, due to the different signaling mechanisms, such as DSSS or Bluetooth’s Frequency Hopping Spread Spectrum (FHSS), IEEE 802.11b WLAN products will not interfere with one another even though they are all operating in the same 2.4 GHz frequency band.

Taking a closer look, the SMC Wireless Router is compliant with Wi-Fi™, a protocol necessary to handshake with other manufacture’s products that also uses the IEEE 802.11b DSSS.

The EZConnect Wireless PCMCIA card for the laptop.

Installation and setting up
Having experienced firsthand the configuration of the SMC Barricade Cable/DSL router in my previous review, setting up the SMC Wireless Router proved to be quick and easy. Similar to the Cable/DSL router, the SMC Wireless Router does not come with a manual. However, a thin “Quick Start” booklet accompanies the package and further details can be obtained from the PDF/WinWord DOC files provided with the CD.

Firing up my browser, I was able to surf to outside world without any problems. As I am not the paranoid type, the laptop is put into the DMZ zone, and I was able to use programs like mIRC, ICQ etc without much problems.

However, if you are the paranoid type, you may like to setup port forwarding under the Special Applications menu. For a list of ports used by various program, I always refer to the useful Special Applications – Port List from Practically Networked.

Benchmarks
Time for some benchmark results. Again, we tested the FTP transfer speed by using a 92536832 byte test file.

Average transfer rate.

Time taken to transfer the sample file.