Abstract:

Often found with rebates for final prices under $50, it's awfully hard to go wrong with the Barricade. Good performance and decent ease-of-use round out the package.

Features:

4 ethernet ports, modem port (for backup failsafe), print server via parallel port, ethernet cable included, built-in NAT firewall with logging, web interface, compatible with Win-Mac-Linux.

Design:

A bit dated and inconvenient. Chances are if you've a router, you've got other flat rectangular peripherals that you'd like to stack (like my Belkin 4-port USB hub). The top cover has got geometric designs that raise the lower left and upper right corners, making whatever you put on top a bit wobbly. There are the standard LED's that show network activity and connections as well as a reset button.

A huge issue I've had with peripherals is the "power brick". I'd like to see more manufacturers integrate the power supply INTO the unit rather than have a 2"x2"x3" box at the end of the cord. This is especially the case with people starting to adopt uninterrupted power supplies (UPS). It's irritating to buy one and only be able to use 1 of the 3 outlets.

Build quality is quite good and it feels hefty for such a small light piece of equipment. I would like to have had the ports in the rear. It doesn't make much sense to have them in the front, because the ethernet cables are most likely going to have to wrap around to the side and then down the back anyway. The Barricade is light enough that if you had 4 cables wrapping around the side, the cables would drag it in that direction.

The overall engineering and design, however, must be reliable and economical - 3com, Asante, Speedstream and others have adopted the Barricade and put it in different housing as their "own" models.

Interface, Setup, Performance:

The setup is via web browser and very easy. A reasonably literate techie can do it on the fly without consulting the manual (hint: if you know what TCP IP is or what port 80 does, you fall into this category); everyone else can follow through the manual and be okay. The setup manual is on paper, but the more detailed one is an Acrobat file that requires printing out (bad).

The Barricade is astonishingly flexible, allowing you to run virtual servers (I run an MP3 server), very lenient port-forwarding, detailed firewall logging (automatic and needs no configuring), a DMZ for troublesome networking services, a failsafe modem backup, and a slow-but-reliable parallel port print server that you can use with Macs via Dave software or VPC.

Performance is good, well within the range of the genre's leaders. For internet, chances are your cable modem or DSL is the limit. For intranet, your bottleneck is likely to be your NIC or hard drive rather than the router. Either way, the Barricade is not likely to disappoint with its speed or the reliability of its data transport.

Caveats:

1. Note that you DO NOT need to have a static IP to run virtual servers with the Barricade, regardless of what the manual says. Just configure it as you normally would and you'll be fine.

2. Don't be alarmed if you have to login twice to get in the web interface. It's a known bug with recent firmware updates.

3. Adding clients from right to left (in descending order) is the preferred order. I'm not sure why, but posters at different networking forums have noted this as well.

4. The rear power connector (to the cord) can get loose. Check occasionally to make sure that it's secure. I once spent a whole day wondering why it wouldn't reset.

Value:

With rebate, I got mine for under $50 - a great price for a fully featured firewall-router that's flexible & easy to setup & use. I haven't heard nearly as many problems with the Barricade as I've heard with the more popular (and more marketed) Linksys, whose virtual server capabilities are very suspect.

Recommended: Yes