We get to see a lot of wireless products come and go through the lab. Many of them are the same, or at least share some very common characteristics. Every now and then you get an individual product that boasts some amazing feature or rock solid performance. Sometimes these products outside of par are on the not so amazing end as well. The new Actiontec wireless-ready home gateway fall somewhere in the low par range. It has some really neat potentials though, so before dismissing it you should read on.

This home gateway product does much more than just provide a point of passage to the Internet. Included, you'll find a 4-port 10/100 auto sensing switch on the back of the unit. Always good for the home backbone and performance seemed solid enough. Transfers between systems were as fast as you'd expect from a peer to peer fast Ethernet network. The WAN port is a separate 10mb Ethernet jack. The front of the Actiontec contains an array of LED's that will confirm the very basics are functioning; power, Internet, PC Card (more on this below) and an "alive" light for each of the switched ports. They are only visible if you are looking straight at it. Even a slight angle will render them useless. Seeing them at all during the day is almost impossible unless you are directly in front of it and in close proximity. Size wise, it's a tad bulky. Actiontec provides a stand that allows you to mount it in a tower orientation, which seems to be a popular look among SOHO products these days. It is made of plastic that seems a little too thin for our tastes. Our test environments can be abusive and I seriously doubt that the Actiontec could survive a short fall off of a shelf or desk (or roof, in our case).

The Actiontec's main start up screen lays out all of the options in a very easy to follow format.

Now, here is the stand out feature. Out of the box, this is basically a cable modem/DSL router-gateway offering NAT, DHCP, DMZ and port forwarding functionality. It claims to be wireless ready, and this is accomplished via two PCMCIA slots on it's side. One, (the top slot) is dedicated to work with an 802.11b wireless network card. We used Actiontec's wireless PC card. Seemed like a good fit. Wireless performance is decent and includes the standard 128bit WEP. The bottom slot is free to be used with other products, likely available through Actiontec. They (Actiontec's www site) list examples like BlueTooth or HomePNA phoneline networking cards. This also could allow easy upgrading to other cards such as 802.11a and maybe other wireless cards in the future. My brain was reeling with much bigger ideas, like SCSI cards with large hard drives attached. The network appliance options are endless with an idea like this. Kudos to Actiontec on this thought. Of course, functionality like that would require a little more than a firmware upgrade. In any case, the point of these expansion slots is for expandability You can start out with the routing functions and then upgrade to a full wireless LAN later on should you want or need to. Scalability comes to the home network world!

The "Advanced" setup page displays all of the serviced offered by the Actiontec.

Configuring the Actiontec is super easy. The browser based screens flow very nicely and are a snap to get through. The basic configuration option (as opposed to the advanced configuration option) walks the user though a wizard like setup. The advanced setup lets you get into the guts of the routing functions, which are a little limited (understatement). Folks with little or no networking expertise will have this up and running in minutes. Network savvy people will be frustrated in just as little time as they look in vain for common routing features they are used to seeing. For Example; the DHCP server lacks such basics as MAC assigned reservations and an active client list. It boggles me...how can you have a DMZ but no way of reserving IP addresses? This doesn't make a lot of sense. Port forwarding seemed to work sometimes, but not consistently. I had no trouble with the DMZ option. That seemed to work as advertised.

Security features are well planned and seem very suited for use at home. Web site filtering is a great way to keep folks from visiting those sites you feel are undesirable. You can also block common ports, restricting access to specific Internet functions on your LAN. So while you may be able to curtail access to certain web sites and functionality, you will never be able to tell exactly who is on your network.

In the end, you have a product that will please the novice, satisfy the savvy but disappoint the pro. If they shrunk down the package, wrote a better manual and thought about the potential of a PCMCIA based home network appliance platform, it would be an impressive piece of hardware. Until then, I suppose I'm not all that impressed. This product seems like a good idea that was never fully developed before being designed and tossed on the retail shelf. If you're the non-power user type, then this is a great starting point for your home or small office. It gives you the basics you need to share a secure Internet connection among your peers (or kids). It is an entry level product that luckily comes with a entry level price tag to match.

Features of the Actiontec Wireless-Ready Home Gateway:

- Expandable from normal home router to wireless access point/router.
- 4-port 10/100 switch for fast networking
- Very easy configuration, one of the easiest we have seen
- Many IP services, NAT, DHCP, DMZ
- Easy web based configuration

Overall Rating: 4 out of 5 Stars.
Pros: Affordable, expandable, platform independent and extremely easy to get configured and running, wall mount and tower options for mounting.
Cons: No default password, Wireless has no external antenna option

Actiontec Wireless-Ready Multimedia Home Gateway
Current Street Price: $99.95 (without 802.11b wireless card)
Actiontec 802.11b Wireless PC Card is $79.95
Deal Alert - Computers4Sure has this (2/14/02) for $64.95 after rebate!

Actiontec
760 N. Mary Avenue
Sunnyvale, CA 94085
(800) 797-7001
http://www.actiontec.com