I can not think of many reasons why a small business or dedicated home office worker would need to spend big money to provide basic network routing functions and ensure general security. As soon as I start to ponder the cost of some of the hardware I've played with at previous jobs from my past, laughter creeps from me. I'm laughing because this same technology available to anyone today is so inexpensive.

Case in point;
The Belkin 4 port Cable/DSL router, which you can buy through just about any good computer/office store as well as hundreds of places online, provides a potent mix of advanced routing features, security and ease of use. Just what the doctor ordered for the home office, small business or serious telecommuter Better yet, you can likely find one of these for under a hundred dollars! That's right, no Ben Franklin necessary to provide yourself with solid SOHO networking. While Belkin has it listed as a little over this on their site, a quick run through some of my favorite online price comparison sites and we were able to dig it up for much less.

On to the nuts and bolts. As its name suggests, this is a 4 port router with the WAN line in from your Internet source being a separate jack. The 4 auto-sensing 10/100 ports offer plenty of backbone for your home network. Belkin chose to go with the vertical concept for this and many of their other networking products. Multiple devices can be attached together via an odd rubber disc mechanism found on the side. Large display lights for WAN/port activity are easy to see from just about any vantage point.

The disc provided with the hardware contains .pdf manuals and some custom Belkin software consisting of a wizard that walks you through MS file sharing. This is not a necessary install if you already know how to configure this in Windows. Once connected and turned on, users need only to connect to the router via web browser. Pretty standard stuff. The configuration of NAT, DHCP, DMZ, intrusion detection, logging, filters and special action ports is all handled by radio buttons in a very easy to follow layout.

The Belkin F5D5230-4's web based interface is very easy to follow.

We had ours plugged in and configured in 10 minutes without ever cracking a manual. Performance seemed as good as any other fast Ethernet switch. Moving gigs of data between our test systems was not a problem, nor were there any issues noted during any online gaming that may have happened during testing. One thing that we couldn't find (still can't) is the ability to assign specific IP addresses to DHCP clients (commonly known as reserved IPs). Potential for problems if you're planning to run network services on multiple machines. A phone call to Belkin's tech support line (free support with this product, btw) confirmed that this option is not available. Strange...you can assign a DMZ by it's IP address, but you can't guarantee that machine will receive that IP address when coming online. You can work around this by setting the DHCP lease time to forever and then seeing what each machine is assigned. It almost seemed like an entire section was missing from the setup screens. DHCP, being a staple in a networking appliance such as this, should be more configurable than "on" or "off". A product definately aimed more towards the home user. This is the only time you could say "you get what you pay for" when looking at the F5D5230-4. Everything else about it seems too good to be true.

 

Features of the Belkin 4 port Cable/DSL Gateway/Router:
- Easily found for under a hundred bucks!
- 4-port 10/100 switch
- Fast routing/switching speeds
- Many IP services, NAT, DHCP, DMZ
- Easy web based configuration
- Printed and .pdf manuals
- Appealing design

Overall Rating: 4 out of 5 Stars.
Pros: Very affordable, platform independent, easy setup and solid performance
Cons: DHCP server does not allow for IP reservations based on MAC address.

Belkin 4-port Cable/DSL Gateway/Router F5D5230-4
Current Street Price: $79.95

Belkin Components
310-898-1100
Compton, CA 90220
USA
http://www.belkin.com