Introduction:

Compex has been around since 1987 when a group of 4 partners came together with microcomputer design experience and found this networking company.  They are dedicated to pumping out networking hardware which specializes on the needs of the consumer.  "COMPEX is committed to creating the networking industry price/performance curve while maintaining the highest quality and reliability standards."  Compex prides themselves on their rigorous product testing in lab before the product gets shipped.  It is this testing that Compex claims separate them from other manufacturers of LAN/WAN equipment.  "Each port of each product must pass 1 million packets of data before shipment."  

Compex has a broad networking product line with many components to choose from. In the Broadband Router category they have two types, the 'NetPassage' series (which we are reviewing here) and the simple 'Passage' series.  They also have a 'Wireless LAN' category with their Wireless 'WavePort' series.  The company also manufactures switches, hubs and other types of networking hardware. They have a complete SOHO kit designed to get you started on a complete networking environment.  They also have Mobile products such as USB and Ethernet PCMCIA cards.  And last but certainly not least they do carry Network Interface Cards (NIC's) in the form of 10/100BaseT AND Gigabit Ethernet.  If you'd like to see their whole product line, check out this page.

Now to our product we will be testing here.  I have sitting on my desk for the last few weeks the NetPassage 15B Internet Router from the NetPassage series..  You can find a complete product page on it here.  I've been testing it running it as my main router for the past few weeks and have tried it in every configuration and application I came across.

Specs:

Industrial Standards
IEEE802.3 10Base-T, IEEE802.3u 100Base-TX, IEEE802.3x flow control; FCC Class B, CE Mark, UL

WAN Protocol
Static/Dynamic IP, PPP over Ethernet (PPPoE), Dana RAS

WAN Interface
1 x RJ45 Ethernet port

LAN Interface
4-port 10/100Mbps Fast Ethernet Switch (NetPassage 15B)

LED Indicators
Power Status, LAN & WAN Link/Activity

Supported Users
Up to 253

IP Packet Filtering
Yes

Network Address Translating (NAT)
Yes

DHCP Server
Yes

Access Control
IP-based : Yes
Time-based : Yes
TCP/UDP Port-based : Yes

Load Balancing
Yes (via Parallel Broadband)

Virtual Server
Yes (IP-Forwarding and Port-Forwarding)

VoIP Pass-Through
Yes

VPN Client Pass-Thru
Yes (PPTP)

Netmeeting
Yes

Clock Synchronization
Yes

Configuration Interface:
Web-based interface, Telnet command console

Firmware Upgrading
Yes

Power Supply
External power supply with either 110V or 220V AC input 47-63Hz and 5V DC 3A output

Power Consumption
20W maximum

Environment Requirements
Temperature
Operating: 0°C to 50°C
Storage: -20°C to 70°C
Humidity
Operating: 10%RH to 80%RH
Storage: 5%RH to 90%RH

A Closer Look

As you can see here the router is actually pretty small and thin! In fact I was thinking it would be a lot bigger but it surprised me being smaller than even my cable modem.

Here it is compared to my previous cable modem, you can see how small this piece really is.

A close-up of the LEDs. When it's connected at 100Mbps the top row of LEDs lights up. When there is Activity the bottom row blink, otherwise they are solid green. Same for the WAN LED's. The Conn. LED stays lit if there is a WAN connection being made. And the Diag. LED flashes when you reboot the router.

Yes that's my hand, and yes it's THAT small.

Ahhhh, you remember Linky right? It likes to come out and play whenever I get new hardware ;)

Overall the appearance and size of this router are very appealing, it is a really well designed space saver.

Management Interface

The router ispretty standard in NAT / Firewall / Port Forwarding and DHCP.  It is interesting to note the Parallel Broadband feature.  What this does is allow you to hook up other NetPassage routers to each other to perform a load balancing scheme to use on highly bandwidth intensive networks!  This is a pretty neat bonus feature usually seen only in high-end routers!  It's also interesting to note the unit has an internal clock which becomes very useful because you can set time limits or time of day when LAN clients can access the Internet. The router has built-in support for the usual applications, such as NetMeeting as well.  PPPoE is on board for you lucky DSL users.  Configuration can be done easily via the HTML browser based interface, or via telnet, if preferred. The unit does not have a console port, however the HTML based interface includes all the needed configuration features with the added bonus of being intuitive and completely user friendly.

After you get the router all hooked up, which the router manual goes beyond it's duty to help you, you will then log into the router with your Internal IP address by default that is 192.168.168.1 I have changed mine so that it is 192.168.1.1 since this is what I was used to with my Linksys router.  Once you type that address in if everything is connected and setup in TCP/IP correctly then you will come to the Login screen... Here are some screenshots of the management interface:

The password is set to a default one which will let you login, after you are logged in you can of course change it. If you forget your password, simply refer to the manual.

As soon as you get logged in you will want to go to Router Identity and set your System Name (If on @Home it's your computer name, the c123456-a number for example). Note the Message Window, as you apply settings and such it shows what you've done. Also note you have to click on Reboot Router and reboot the router for the changes to take effect.

The system time setting, self-explanatory

Nice feature we've seen in newer routers, is the ability to clone your Network Adapter's MAC address...

Select if you want to assign Static or Dynamic IP, etc.

Here is where you want to setup for your LAN, on mine I have chosen to set my IP's Statically so I can forward Ports.

Filtering Configuration. Notice the Warning ? Nice reminder that "Incorrect configuration causes undesirable behavior"... Kind of obvious, when you think about it :)

It's Port Forwarding feature which is very convenient

You can even setup the Routing Table

System Information

These are just some of the major menus in the router's GUI interface.  There are even more in the router which I do not have room to show, there is a Remote Management menu, a Rebooting menu, an Easy Firmware Upgrade Menu and a Router Save Settings menu which I DO have to show you because I like it a lot and think it's an excellent feature.

From here you can save your Router's current Configuration so that if you change settings you can always restore what you had before. You can do a quick Backup of the routers configuration as well. And you can restore the configuration from a saved file on your hard drive of the router. Or you can clear and rest it to factory defaults. These are all great features to have for anyone who is worried about changing their settings and forgetting what you had set previously.

Security:

The first thing I had to check is the security of the firewall on this router.  Everyone these days is very concerned with security; hackers  are very aggressive and can cause serious damage to your infrastructure, the one thing you want to be sure of is that no one can get in (or out) of your network to cause trouble. This router does come with a built in hardware Firewall.  Some routers have what's called a DMZ which allows you to place one computer out of the Firewall protection, such as if you are running a server. However this router does not have that feature, instead it's Port Forwarding capabilities are supposed to take care of all your needs as to what ports need to be forwarded.  Lets see what the security is like with the default settings and nothing port forwarded.

The first program I wanted to try is a program called LeakTest from GRC.com What this program does is attempt to connect to the GRC main server to see how good your firewall is at caching OUTBOUND signals from your computer.  This is important to know because of the threat of SpyWare.  SpyWare in a nutshell are programs running in the background that take information from your computer about the things you do and send it off to a server to collect information about you without your knowledge or consent.  The LeakTest program tests to see whether your firewall is stopping outbound traffic from your PCs.  If it DOES stop it then that means SpyWare is useless on your computers and you are protected with great privacy.  If the LeakTest goes through that means outbound communication can occur and SpyWare, if you have any on your computer, can send it's information to it's servers..  As you can see, this router did NOT pass this test with its default configuration. Keep in mind that some programs use standard ports, and in order to have a functioning Internet connection you will have to open some ports :)

The two open ports, 80 and 23 are used for remote administration and are open by default, meaning the Administration interface is accessible via the WAN port from the Internet. I went and checked on both of these ports in the router under Remote Administration and both have a 0 indicated they should be disabled. However that does not appear to be the case does it. I needed a Second Opinion so I went to DSL Reports and tried their Security Test. However this did not work I got this error: "Sorry your current IP xx.xxx.xx.xxx does not match scan IP." I couldn't figure out the problem so I was not able to run the DSL Reports Security scan. So I went searching on google and found some other free port testing sites, they all showed the same thing that GRC did, however I still am not 100% sure of their validity. So it does look like there is some kind of vulnerability here, I don't know if it's anything major or not, and maybe a firmware upgrade can cure it, but as it stands if you just install the router and use it in your daily routine those ports ARE open.

Test Setup

Main PC	Server
MSI K7T266 Pro	Abit BE6-2
AMD 1.4Ghz Athlon T-Bird (266FSB)	Intel Pentium 3 600E @ 800EB (133FSB)
512MB PC2100 DDR SDRAM	512MB PC133 SDRAM
Western Digital 30GB 7200RPM @ ATA/100	Western Digital 30GB 7200RPM @ ATA/66
3Com 905c TX-NM 10/100 PCI	D-Link 10/100 PCI
Windows XP Professional	Windows 2000 Server SP2

Speed

For my download testing what I did was disconnect my router and plug the cable modem straight into my computer so that there would be nothing in between and downloaded a huge 80MB file from a server that is on a major backbone that I always get the highest speeds from and they are always constant for me.  At downloading without the Router I got a constant 440KB/sec which is the MAX download throughput my line is capped at.  Then I setup the router and did the exact same test with only about a 5 minute period between the test and I still got a constant 440KB/sec my max download cap.  Therefore I can conclude the Router did not slow down my download speed at ALL given all conditions are equal.

Here is a screenshot of my download speed from IE. I also used DU Meter and watched it as the download was going, both times it was hovering around 450KB/sec according to DU Meter.

I then uploaded that same 80MB file to a fast server and used DU Meter to gauge it's upload, this screenshot is WITH the router. Keep in mind my cap is 128kbps on the upload, so apparently I'm hitting that cap quite nicely and the Router isn't slowing me down one bit.

To Test LAN transfer rate speed what I did was take 2 324MB video files and copied them from my Server to my Main PC and then from my Main PC back to my Server and used DU Meter's Stop Watch Feature. Here's the result going from my Server to my Main PC. It took 1min and 48sec to transfer 666.88 MB total with a Max transfer rate of 8.17MB/sec and an average 6.17MB/sec. Not bad at all!

Now this one is going from my Main PC back to my Server, same files, same setup. All I can say is holy crap! I got a maximum transfer rate of 9.34MB/sec and an average of 8.81MB/sec. It took it only 1 minute and 16 seconds. Obviously the router Is NOT a bottleneck here. The bottleneck seems to be my PC's or rather Hard Drive speed and configuration.

 

More Information:

One thing I look at when doing reviews is the Manual and accessories shipped with the product. The NetPassage 15B comes with two manuals, a "Quick Install Guide" written in English, German, Russian and French, giving sufficient instruction on how to setup the router, but only for Win9X. The other one is the complete manual titled "Software User Guide"  This is an 81 page manual written entirely in English. There is a fold out on the inside that gives you a rundown of what each thing on the router actually does.  This manual gives very detailed instructions on how to setup this router for various Cable and DSL connections. The only downside is that all instructions are based on Win9X, there are no Windows 2000/XP or other OS specific setup instructions.  There is also one diskette included that provides Firmware Recovery. This is a very good addition that I think all routers should include as it gives the user a sort of security in knowing they can feel free to flash their router with new firmware and have a fall back if something goes wrong.  There was the standard power cord, router and a stand up bracket for the router in the box. Did I mention I was a little disappointed in the manual, I feel it should have at least touched on a Windows 2000... Oh well, at least the box looks pretty ;)

One other feature I really want to talk about is the Firmware upgrade process.  On some routers you have a Serial port that you have to connect via serial cable to a local machine's serial port where you then telnet to it to upgrade the firmware.  This was the old and hard way to do it.  On some newer routers like the Linksys you could do it from any client through the Ethernet cable connected to the router.  However you did have to download a flash utility from Linksys that you used to TFTP to the router with.  While it was easy there were a few more steps involved to get a firmware flash done.  With this router it was the easiest firmware upgrade I've EVER come across by far. First you download the firmware image file to your computer, then you login to your router, navigate to the Firmware Upgrade menu, choose browse and browse to the firmware image, then you click on Upload... When it's finished, hit the Reboot button and you're DONE!  The whole process takes about 15 seconds, it's incredibly easy and I hope other router manufacturers take notice of this, because every end user likes such time saving, intuitive features.

Conclusion:

I'd like to say this router has exceeded my expectations.  The phrase "Size doesn't Matter" is very true with this little beauty.  It's both sleek and slim with its nice professional look to it. The unit supports everything a Home or Office would need for sharing Internet connection and expanding your network. DHCP server/client, NAT, Firewall protection, Port Forwarding, Easy Firmware Upgrading, PPPoE, Built in 4 Port 10/100 Switch, Parallel Broadband Feature, Fast and Reliable.  I have no problems recommending this router to anyone.  Especially at its price point it sure does give other routers in its class some competition!

Overall only 1 star away from our highest rating of 5 stars.  It was the Manual and that security issue that pushed it down one notch from the highest score here.  If those things are improved upon by making a more complete user guide online and coming out with some new firmware to fix and make the security/firewall more robust then that would for sure bump this router up to 5 stars and make it one of the best routers I've reviewed.

Rating
Price:
Features:
Setup Ease:
Tech Support / Manual:
Reliability:
Management:
Performance (speed/latency):
Security:
Overall Rating: