An acceptable wireless solution
Written: Jan 01 '02
|
Product Rating:
|
|
|
Pros: Works well with 3COM WiFi adapters. Has worked well will many ISP configurations.
Cons: Poor Support.
PPPOE support hard to configure. Doesn't work with cheap wireless adapters.
The Bottom Line: Good performance and easy to configure for basic configurations. 3Com has made a good product. The problem is there are many other excellent inexpensive products out there.
|
|
|
| millerkj's Full Review: 3Com Home Wireless Gateway |
As of this writing I have owned and been using the 3COM Home Wireless Gateway for 9 months. It has been an excellent resource freeing me from the confines of my office. I even enjoy brief lazy computing sessions in park next door. My range and performance is acceptable. However, from what I have read and heard many improvements have been made to newer wireless access points.
Features:
802.11b Wi-Fi compliant
3 Ethernet Switched ports for wired adapters
Web based setup
Firewall
PPPOE support
VPN support
Setup:
The web based setup is intuitive and easy to use.
The paper documentation was adequate to help an informed user to get the hardware setup. It can be difficult to configure different systems networking to allow access to the web based configuration.
Firmware updates are available from 3COM and are easy to install using the web admin interface.
Internet Connections:
With a Static IP DSL connection I experienced excellent performance with my 3COM base station.
I recently switched to Earthlink as a DSL provider and they use PPPOE instead which was a bit difficult to setup as it did not work on the first try. I was ready to give up when I configured it one more time and suddenly my internet started working.
Support:
In trying to solve misc. issues I experienced I emailed 3COM support and never ever received a response.
Adapter Connectivity:
I purchased a 3COM wireless PC Card adapter but still had a Addtron wireless adapter and could not get it to work with the 3COM base station.
I have experienced connectivity no problems with my 3COM AirConnect PC card.
Interference:
I test drove a fixed wireless internet technology from Nokia that caused significant interference with my home wireless experience. This was most likely due to the fat that Nokia's base station used the same frequency.
Word of Mouth:
A co-worker had serious interference and thus performance problems.
Advanced Gripe:
I used to VPN into work. Some servers at work were on the same subnet as the one the 3COM access point wanted to use. Thus I could not see any machines on that subnet since it was already "present" on my network. I wish it was possible to define what subnet the wireless adapter uses. I emailed 3COM support about this and never heard a peep.
Recommended:
No
Amount Paid (US$): 250
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
millerkj
|
|
Member: Kevin Miller
Location: Mountain View,CA
Reviews written: 11
Trusted by: 0 members
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.