Newbie: SMC2404WBR Barricade Turbo 802.11b: Do I buy?

[maverik]

SMC2404WBR Barricade Turbo 802.11b

I don't know much about wireless networking, but feature wise, this seems to be as rich as i can get for the 802.11b protocol stuff, with the SPI security (better than just NAT right?), which the other similar systems i was looking at don't possess. Plus of course, the 22Mbps speed, which i know doesn't translate to double the speed, but the benchmarks have it showing a nice improvement.

Question is, i have no idea about SMC and how good their products are. So if you guys tell me that the company products are good, then for the features and price ($65 newegg, with the rebate) i'll go for it. otherwise, was looking at netgear stuff, which i know is a good company.

 

[Lord Evermore]

Stateful Packet Inspection isn't likely to be of serious help to anybody on a home network. It's used to prevent DoS attacks mainly, by stopping certain types of data passing through or being processed by the router -- some types of packets can cause a router or computer to simply overload trying to process them; unless you expect to be attacked like that, SPI shouldn't be a make or break requirement.

If the price comes out to be less than similar devices, or another device with fewer features, then it's certainly not a bad buy. We got one recently when it was on slickdeals.net for something like 50 dollars for both the router and a wireless card. Works alright, not much usage of the wireless since it's only for one laptop. The firewall logs didn't really show much in the way of "intrusions", nothing that would have gotten past the NAT in the first place.

The 22Mbps feature of course requires that you have a network card with the same capability.

 

[maverik]

In the performance reviews i saw, they showed that even with 11Mbps capable adapters, with the 22 Mbps base station, you get a significant boost in the the throughput, though not as much as a card with the 22Mbps capability.

so as i said, the other systems seem to be similarly priced (after the rebate on this one), so might as well go for the additional functionality if the product performs fine.

thanks

 

[Garet Jax]

Maverik,

Did you buy it? What do you think?

There are a couple of deals right now that allow this router and a matching card to be had for ~$55 after MIR.