Airlink101 AR430W short of a full deck.
Written: Jul 09 '07
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Cheap Super G 108mbs
Cons: To many major bugs
The Bottom Line: Don't buy it, instead look at the Airlink101 AR325W
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| nomoe's Full Review: |
I've used other Airlink101 networking products before. All have had some minor problems, but that can be said of other brands as well. When I came across the AR430W being sold for $24.95 by a local big box store I figured it was time to update my home network, so I bought 6 of them.
The AR430W feature set was rich and included most everything I desired, Super G 108mbs, VPN IPsec, WEP/WPA2 encryption, 802.11 roaming etc..
The plan was to use one of the AR430W as my main Gateway router and the others as simple wireless APs. For those of you that don't know, a wireless router can be configured as a simple AP "Access Point" to help provide wireless coverage in dead or weak signal areas. You simply disable the routers DHCP services and use only one of the router's LAN ports to connect it to your network. Basically you are converting the router into a Wireless hub.
The AR430W's setup interface was pretty much like every other router I've setup. However I did discover what I'd would call some serious problems.
1. When setting up the DHCP IP pool, you couldn't change the range of IPs assigned by the DHCP server. It was locked into a range of 100-150. Most router allow the range to be any value between 1 and 255.
2. When attempting to assign a LAN IP to the router, it wouldn't allow any value greater than the IP pool setting. This is another big problem as you were limited to IP values between 1-99. Again most routers allow values between 1-255. Plus this router wouldn't allow you to change the base IP, 192.168.1 to 10.10.10 for example. So if you wanted to use with an existing network that used the base 10.10.10, you couldn't.
3. Because I planned on using several of these units on my network, I wanted to be able to remotely administer them via the internet. Most routers have this capability, but the AR430W for some reason had a very poor implementation. It only allowed 3 choices for administration ports and it only affected the router's WAN port. Most routers allow any valid port 1-64000 and applies monitoring to both WAN and LAN ports. Being some of the AR430W were going to be used as APs, it was important that the administration port be monitored on the LAN. This bug basically put the brakes on the whole deal.
After having spent several hours with the above mentioned bugs I decided to go ahead and test the routers other features.
4. I home office and use a VPN client called "Nortel Networks VPN Contivity Client". My company has used this product for years. I've never had any issues with it working with the various routers I've had over that time. Interesting is the fact that none of the previous routers had any support for the various VPN protocols. The AR430W was the first router I had ever purchased with any VPN support featured, yet its the only one that didn't work with my VPN client.
Airlink101 tech support acknowledged they were aware of items 1-2 and indicated they were working on a fix. Based on my past experience with Airlink101 products I doubt if they are working on a fix. They are basically just a US based importer with the bulk of their product going to one big box store chain. I've never noticed any firmware updates for any of their other models which had problems, so I assuming it won't be different with this product.
I went ahead and did a side by side RF test of the AR430W with the AR325W (non Super G)model. The units were placed at a distance 40 feet, with 3 walls between. The signal levels and connection speeds were slightly 9% better with the AR325W.
In conclusion I can't recommend the AR430W as a viable router or AP. If you want a low cost solution I recommend the AR325W, which I've seen selling for less that $20 at local retail stores.
Recommended:
No
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Epinions.com ID:
nomoe
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Reviews written: 4
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