Netopia R910 vs Nexland pro 800

[BlackSword]

What do you guys think. Is the Nexland pro 800 worth the extra money in comparison to the Netopia R910.

YeOldeStonecat has the Netopia R910 and has often stated it is great.

Phantom-Vortex has a turbo Nexland pro 800 and say it is great... but I dont need the two WAN ports,,, so how about the Nexland Pro 800.

The Nexland Pro 800 looks like it is about $100US more than the Netopia 910, is it worth the money?

Netopia 910 = $179 ???

Nexland Pro 800 = $279 ???

Question #1, if I only used it as a Router and had a separate switch then I would assume that the Netopia would be the best buy, correct?

Question #2, if tossed my router and switch, then I would assume that the Nexland would be the best buy, correct?

Comments from anyone with either of these devices would be great. Thanks.

[YeOldeStonecat]

Haven't dealt with the Nexland, it's actually one router I haven't used yet, but it's users seem to love it, and it seems to be more advanced users that have it, which should say something about it.

Wow the Netopia's have come down in price...I paid about 280.00 US for mine....wholesale! Not retail!.

Just a word of warning on the Netopia...there is no easy to use Web Administrator like most of the home market routers, it's all telnet or hyperterminal/serial. And lots of reading of PDF files to learn her well. Their website does have good documentation.

Pros and cons of who has what switch...lot of people may say "But it's only got a 10 Mb hub, even a Linksys has a 10/100 switch". Well, I've seen some 300 dollar 3COM SuperStack hubs run circles around sub hundred dollar 10/100 switches. In my opinion, there is no REAL switch for under a hundred dollars. Notice Cisco and Netopia routers don't come with switches, yet their users don't have problems with multiple computers doing concurrent heavy usage of the router. Key thing to remember is your WAN connection is the bottleneck, not the fact that your routers LAN interface is 10 Mb. And unless you do a lot of large LAN transfers...who cares then? I may transfer a few dozen megs, perhaps a hundred or two hundred megs, across my LAN once a month to my server or something, the fact that it takes 45 seconds longer...really doesn't bother me. If you do lots of LAN transfers, they sling a nice switch off the back.

[BlackSword]

Thanks for responding!

YeOld, Telnet for setup is a snap,,, I am from the old school,, have been working with computers/devices for 20 years. Thanks for the heads up.

Phantom, dont have Aliens vs Predator2,,, but from what I have seen on the net that looks like a kick butt router. I would only go for the ONE wan port, I am going to start looking around for pricing.

Thanks again,

[dficken]

BlackSword...

If you decide on the Nexland let me know how much you found it for. I have only saw it on their website for $299 (i think). I was reading up on the *non-turbo* model and it seems pretty sweet. I am currently running a ugate 3200 and it has been running great. But I have an issue where my server has to be on the DMZ in order for people to pull anything larger than a 12k file. My buddy has the same unit and his works great utilizing the port forwarding feature. The only 2 differences is that his is on the original firmware 2.04b and i am on 3.06h and the other is him having a static ip address and I having PPPoE. I would request his version of firmware but Maxgate decided to bail (at least it seems that no one has been home for a couple months). Kinda ticked off at them right now.

Anyway.... getting back to the subject, I think I am going to go with the Nexland and was just curious if you found somewhere else besides their site for purchasing one.

Also, it is nice to see that they offer a 30 day $ back guarantee.

* On a side note... for anyone who owns one already.... have you experienced any problems using gamespy or Kali? I read a review where someone had problems if gamespy would ping more than 15 servers at a time. They said it locked up so they had to govern gamespy to only ping 15 at a time*

Last... I would like to see some result scans on this firewall.... i.e. does it stealth all the ports or just show them closed.... would be interested to see any results if anyone has them.

Thanks,

Dayill.

[BlackSword]

Called Nexland,, they recommended ISB-SOHO over the Pro 800. They say that the SOHO was developed with gaming in mind. Plus the fact that it is cheaper doesn't hurt.

Speedguide has a review of the SOHO on the main page. The review doesn't look bad,,, but taking everything into consideration the review on the Linksys on Speedguide's main page doesn't look bad either.

Anyone at Speedguide run the SOHO against the LINKY to prove out the better router for the gaming job?

P.S. dficken, U are right $299 for the PRO 800

[dficken]

OK. Thanks for the info. I went ahead and bought the Nexland Pro 800 Turbo. I honestly don't need the turbo right now, but i plan to host the web sites that i build so I will need the extra broadband port for backup purposes. I would rather have it and not use it right away then to kick myself cause i didn't spend the extra 100 bucks for this feature.

It is supposed to come in a couple days. I will let you know how it performs once i get it set up.

Regards.

[dficken]

BTW...

I am a fairly hardcore gamer as well (when i have time) and I will definitely be testing features out for playing various games and hosting game servers.

Regards.

[BlackSword]

Originally posted by dficken
BTW...

I am a fairly hardcore gamer as well (when i have time) and I will definitely be testing features out for playing various games and hosting game servers.

Regards.

Thanks

[BlackSword]

I am tempted to buy the Nexland ISP-SOHO to test it out. I would hope that for that money it would be better than the LINKY for gaming and overall performance.

Since you are getting your TURBO in 2 days I will wait till you post your opinion,,, thanks again!

[YeOldeStonecat]

Originally posted by BlackSword

Anyone at Speedguide run the SOHO against the LINKY to prove out the better router for the gaming job?

LOL...well, being quite an extreme hardcore gamer, run some popular public gaming servers, setup LAN parties, and occasionally run some public gaming servers from home....there is a BIG difference in the performance of home market routers and SOHO class routers.

My first router was a Linky....easy to use, but really only good for the most basic of internet sharing needs. Never for hosting anything serious, or pushing for performance demanding apps which demand a lot of it's router feature or it's humble cheap little so called "switch". (I don't believe in anything under 200 dollars being a true switch, you don't see Cisco or Netopia routers sticking switches under the hood of their entry routers, they'd rather use a high quality hub than a cheap imitation switch)

Example....at my house, with 1 online UT or Q3 player....ping in the 20's - 30's. Have a second player log on from my LAN...logging onto the same public server....and the first persons ping goes up a bit, say to 30 - 40. Have a third player log on...and the prior two players pings go up quite substantially...say 80 - 120 or more...4th player...forget it. So each player creates quite a performance hit for the other players.

NetGear....performance hit isn't as bad as the Linky...but still noticable.

Netopia....can get up to 3 players on at the same time until the other players even notice a ping increase.....4th player adds a wee bit to them...I'm guessing a 5th player which I haven't tried at my house would start taxing my WAN throughput...which would become the weak link. But the Netopia still isn't even breaking a sweat.

[BlackSword]

Originally posted by YeOldeStonecat

Example....at my house, with 1 online UT or Q3 player....ping in the 20's - 30's. Have a second player log on from my LAN...logging onto the same public server....and the first persons ping goes up a bit, say to 30 - 40. Have a third player log on...and the prior two players pings go up quite substantially...say 80 - 120 or more...4th player...forget it. So each player creates quite a performance hit for the other players.

NetGear....performance hit isn't as bad as the Linky...but still noticable.

Netopia....can get up to 3 players on at the same time until the other players even notice a ping increase.....4th player adds a wee bit to them...I'm guessing a 5th player which I haven't tried at my house would start taxing my WAN throughput...which would become the weak link. But the Netopia still isn't even breaking a sweat.

I actually have the one port Linksys connected to a 3COM switch, and honestly there is very little hit with two rigs on, "from what I can see" one problem I have is a 60 to 80ms first HOP ping, therefore I seldom play sub 100ms on any server now that sucks,,, anyway I think that is why I can't detect the hit with the second because 10ms to 20ms to me is almost impossible to see,,, NOW then with 3 rigs my ping time does increase problably 30ms. I guess one question would be is it possible that the 3COM switch does a better job than the internal Linksys switch?????

Anyway it makes sense what you are saying YeOldeStonecat,, I mean that the Nexland ISB-SOHO has 4 meg of internal memory and processor(how good who knows), but like what does the LINKY have? any ideas? not that I looked hard but didn't really see anything in their specs.

[BlackSword]

Phantom-Vortex, thanks for the post,,, from some of what I read there seems to be more problems with the 4port switch LINKY than my 1 port. I still will probably purchase the Nexland SOHO.

P.S. nice pict. I take it that the 2 WAN ports are transparent to the user? and does it cleanly double your bandwidth? or does it simply allow more users with less user noticeable WAN impact?

[YeOldeStonecat]

Originally posted by BlackSword
I guess one question would be is it possible that the 3COM switch does a better job than the internal Linksys switch?????

Anyway it makes sense what you are saying YeOldeStonecat,, I mean that the Nexland ISB-SOHO has 4 meg of internal memory and processor(how good who knows), but like what does the LINKY have? any ideas? not that I looked hard but didn't really see anything in their specs.

ABSOLUTELY a 3COM switch is far superior to the little 49 dollar so called switch that Linksys stuffs in their routers. Switches are usually in the hundreds of dollars at the least, anything under that is just a semi-glorified hub....put it under a load and watch smoke pour out of it while a solid quality switch doesn't even break a sweat.

Never saw what kind of processor or RAM the Linky has..I know my Netopia has a 33 mHz RISC processor, with 4 megs. I've never managed to get my CPU past 35% utilization.

[Phantom-Vortex]

Originally posted by BlackSword
Phantom-Vortex, thanks for the post,,, from some of what I read there seems to be more problems with the 4port switch LINKY than my 1 port. I still will probably purchase the Nexland SOHO.

P.S. nice pict. I take it that the 2 WAN ports are transparent to the user? and does it cleanly double your bandwidth? or does it simply allow more users with less user noticeable WAN impact?

It doubles it ,not by binding, if you begin a dl 1 will start dling and while that one is dl you can start another and both will dl to that one comp. Vice versa upload.

[dficken]

OK I posted a review.

http://forums.speedguide.net/showthr...threadid=55908

Check it out.

[BlackSword]

Thanks dficken,

Just to let you know I have ordered the Nexland ISP-SOHO, since it is for my home, and Nexland said it was designed with gaming in mind (they said it was better for gaming) I thought buck saved is a buck earned.

Problem right now is Nexland is all out of the ISP-SOHO so I am not sure when I will get mine.

Anyway, thanks for the update and I will let U know how mine works as soon as I get it. I hope your issues get resolved. Possibly Phantom can help you out.

[dficken]

I am very happy to reply that I spoke with Nexland as soon as I posted the review. Its kinda funny cause they just started working on the first 3 issues that I mentioned. They guy I spoke with seemed very helpful and said that they were already working on a fix for the first 3. I told him that I would try other ports besides 161 under advanced virtual server menu to see if its just this port or any under that menu. He said to definitely let them know what i find out. From the converstaion that we had, they seem like a company that is willing to take care of customer issues. Hopefully this is correct. So far I have a positive outlook after speaking with their techsupport. As before, I will keep you posted.

On a side note, although it would be nice to have https enabled for remote admin, i realized that it isn't absolutely necessary. I forgot about the ip access list fo rthis feature. As long as you restrict remote access to a certain ip range, i don't think you would need https.

Regards,
Dayill.

[YeOldeStonecat]

Following this brand....reading this thread....getting exciting to try one!

[Phantom-Vortex]

Are you using the latest firmware for the pro 800?ftp://ftp.nexland.com/pub/firmware/v...o_014m_all.bin now it is still beta but I used it and no problems yet (allows the use of more dns per connection) and less packet loss for gaming server if under heavy load (what I was told).
or try this shortcut ftp://ftp.nexland.com/pub/firmware/

[dficken]

I wonder what version "n" and "r" is. Do you think that is newer? Maybe I will ask them tomorrow.