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Date: 2001-04-17 10:42 Author: Philip Category: Nexland Manufacturer: Nexland Product/Model: ISB SOHO List Price: $119

Conclusion

The ISB-SOHO is a mature product, reflecting Nexland's long history in the market of Internet Sharing devices, with a full set of user-configurable options that should suit even the most demanding Home/SOHO user. Although you can only buy the ISB line of products at Nexland, they're all competitively priced.

The Good:

• User-configurable MAC address, hostname and domain
• Multi-session PPPoE support
• Static Routing
• Custom Virtual Servers
• Multi-Session PPTP
• High throughput on the WAN Port
• High Reliability
• Overall very comprehensive set of features.
• Downloadable Firmware upgrades
• Competitively priced
• Excellent Tech. Support

The Bad:

• Single-session IPSec Only ( Multi-Session available in the Pro-Series)
• Primitive logging - only logs for availability of the WAN interface provided, no logging of attempted intrusions, errors, email alerts provided.
• nslookup unavailable on LAN PCs, even when a PC is set as a DMZ Host ? Note: Firmware v1 Rel. 1J fixes the issue partly, hostnames seem to resolve however only after returning an error:
  *** Can't find server name for address 192.168.0.1: Non-existent domain
  *** Default servers are not available

Wish list / Suggestions:

• More extensive Browser Help menus with examples.
• Adding basic networking tools for troubleshooting to the interface, such as traceroute/ping ?
• More extensive Dynamic DNS support, with help/examples for popular services, such as DHS.org, TZO, etc.
• Default MTU to 1500 rather than 1472 for DHCP, default renew DHCP lease at some interval, rather than 0.
• Additional information on Status screen, when was DHCP lease obtained, how many hours until renew ?
• For authentication, enable custom username, rather than admin (for security reasons)
• Firmware upgrades directly using the browser interface ? Non-destructive firmware updates, way to keep or backup the current configuration.
• Telnet management

The router gets almost perfect score in all our tests, with a few minor shortcomings that should be easily corrected in future firmware upgrades, keep in mind the one we tested is a pre-production unit with a first-generation firmware/interface. I'd say the guys at Nexland did a great job compared to Linksys and other routers' manufacturers that took over a year to fix their firmware to a point where it's fairly usable.

Overall, the ISB-SOHO is a great product for its price and Home/SOHO target audience, offering a comprehensive set of features not available in competing routers. Combined with the company's history in this market I'd say Nexland's  new ISB line of products raises the standards for Internet sharing devices and offers a great value to users.

Rating
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by Mistral - 2006-08-16 00:56

Have the related Pro-400 model for 4 years now; excellent reliable and FAST router. The speed is maintained even when all four ports are processing lots of data simultaniously.

But where to buy now in 2006 is the question.

by Ronny - 2008-05-02 11:45

I have this router.. But every 5 minutes i have to press its reset button because internet doesn't work anymore