Customer Reviews

SMC Barricade N Wireless Broadband Router SMCWBR14S-N4 - Wireless router 4-port switch - Ethernet, Fast Ethernet, 802.11b, 802.11g, 802.11n - external

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

Great little router, I run it in a mixed wired/wireless N environment and use it to share the Internet between two desktops, a laptop, a netbook, two Nintendo DS, one Nintendo DSI, Xbox 360 and a Wii. I bought it to replace the old SMC G router which I had for years (love the brand, so I stuck with them). Not much else to say, the set up was easy, and I haven't had to do anything else since the initial setup - it just works. Forgot to mention - didnt have to install any software, just like with SMC's other router, just logged into the web server menu and it was ready to go. Like I said, its a no brainer.

Well I thought I would give this inexpensive router a shot. It arrived quickly and was fairly easy to set-up. The installation CD didn't work for me, so I had to install manually. Manual install is basically like any other router out there. There are a few little quirks, mostly with the wording of things but still easy to figure out. If you have never installed a router on your home network, I probably wouldn't recommend trying to install this one on your own. If you are familiar with other router vendors and how to install them - this one is a bit different, but not too difficult to set-up.

Ok so set-up complete, on to get the network up & running. Had a few issues, but may more lie in I have a few older computers with older network cards. After a couple of hours of rebooting my various systems, I was finally able to get everything up & running. Note: all my Win7 systems set-up without any issues. Only had issues with my WinXp systems. Xbox also set-up just fine.

So everything was working well for about 4 days, then BAM router starts acting up and not in a little way. It just started continuously rebooting itself and dropping connections along with it. So I was a little disappointed.

Being that it's so cheap, I have a feeling it's a little hit or miss if you get a good one. I wanted to just exchange it, but as seeing as it was purchased through one of Amazon's third-party vendors, I could only get a refund. I would of happily just exchanged it in hope of getting a decent one, as signal strength & network speed were good while it lasted. Just sucks it didn't last more than a few days. Every other wireless routers I've ever owned have at least lasted several years. So I'm giving this router only 1 star - even at this low of a price, it needs to last more than a few days. If it was just a year or two - I would of felt like I got my money's worth.

Pros
1) Price. Especially if you're a Comcast customer. You can buy the router for around $30 dollars. But if you order a wireless router from Comcast they will "loan" you this router for $9 dollars shipping. While you do have to return it if you cancel your cable, it still gets you in the door to wireless-n for under $10 bucks.

2) The range is much better than my other 2 routers I own. Dlink dir-655 and Belkin N1. I don't have very far to send the signal, just down one floor and into a shield tv nook. But neither of the other routers could access this location well. The dlink wouldn't connect at all, and required a hawking wireless n extender to connect. The Belkin could connect but got very poor connectivity. Both the Belkin and Dlink with extender showed 300 mb/sec connections... neither had performance that could back it up. Neither of the routers were able to run vnc or inputdirector reliably due to packet loss.

3) Works well in heavy wireless area. There are more than a dozen wireless networks in my location and I have absolutely no problems or interference using the standard channel 1/5 setting.

4) Throughput to htpc in shielded television nook one floor down.
dlink dir-655: less than 1 MB/second
dlink dir-655 with hawking range extender: 1-3 MB/second with very high interference during peak times
belkin n1: 3 MB/second but disconnects often with 10-20% packet loss
smc: 7 MB/second with no disconnects and 0 packet loss

Cons
1) Installation disk is worthless. Just change your network card ipv4 to 192.168.2.10, subnet 255.255.255.0, and preferred dns server to 192.168.2.1, connect with an cat5 and then type 192.168.2.1 into a browser to admin the unit. U: admin P: smcadmin

2) DHCP is very slow. Wired computers would take 30 seconds or more to get internet access. Wireless would sometimes never get internet access and required a manual connection. While static ip takes 4-5 seconds to connect after rebooting or coming out of sleep. Unlike my belkin and dlink, setting up static ip addresses was a piece of cake and would connect and register about 2 seconds after making the changes.

This product makes me want to try the 300 mbit router from smc. But, I'm so happy now with this router than I don't even feel the need to change and possibly be disappointed. Even with the cons, the price and performance still make me rate this 5 stars.

I bought this router to replace my G router to get better signal strength on the far side of my house. Sadly, the signal was worse at distance than my old G router was so I returned it. Worked well within 50 feet, much further and it was spotty.

This is a nice little router for many purposes; my only complaint is that I am unable to connect to my university's Virtual Private Network through it. I can connect to the VPN through my neighbor's router, and I can also connect by plugging my computer directly into the cable modem, but the SMC router blocks the connection, even when the firewall is completely disabled and all ports are open. I spent hours on the phone with my university's tech support and with SMC's tech support, and neither can figure out why this router won't let me connect to a VPN.

This wireless router was easy to set up and easy to use. All I had to do was a couple of clicks and there was NO need for the software. Definitely a 5-star! Also, VERY small. No way you can't fit it.

Comcast provided this router with their Internet service. We were converting from Qwest and a very reliable Cisco router. The SMC router worked OK functionally. But it consistently dropped wireless connections to a Windows PC, a MacBook, a MacMini, and an iPad in our house. Comcast Support suggested moving the router around in the room to see if it would maintain connections better. It did not. Seeing online comments about this router dropping connections, we bought another one just to see if we got a bad unit. The new unit exhibited the same behavior, consistently dropping wireless connections to all the computers in our house. Wireless connections would often be lost within 5-10 minutes, even to my MacMini in the same room with the router. We replaced the second SMC router with a NetGear wireless router and the problem went away - no more dropped wireless connections. With consistent connection dropping from two of these SMC routers and the problem occurring with a Windows PC, Macs, and an iPad, I can only conclude that the router design is poor or the manufacturing quality control is poor. I would not recommend this router to anyone who wants to maintain reliable wireless connections.

Unfortunately, I could not get it to work with both wired and wireless devices at the same time. The router was rated very high on the different reviewing sites but it didn't work for me. It was likely defective so I sent it back. Amazon was very good at taking care of me from that point on. I recommend them highly as a product source.

Considering the price, the brand, and all the other reviews, I knew this was a disposable product when I made the decision to buy it. Although it's a router, I had no intention of replacing a perfectly good wireless G router running dd-wrt. This was going to serve as an AP exclusively for my wireless N devices and for that purpose it works fine. I don't even allow it to do DHCP as my current router does that. Everything works seamlessly and I'm even able to connect to the Cisco VPN at work. One major disadvantage with this router is the signal strength. I can see the signal drop as I walk away from it. That may be due to its tiny antenna, which doesn't seem to be replaceable. I'd be pretty disappointed if this was the only AP in my house, but I have two others so I don't have to rely completely on this one. But it does serve its purpose well when I'm in the same room as it. I'm easily getting double the throughput compared to a Linksys wireless G AP.

I got this router hoping to use it as a low cost WDS bridge in conjunction with the Apple Airport Extreme base station that we already have. I initially found some of the manual setup pages confusing (for example, rather than describing the connection to the WDS partner as being 802.11 B/G/N, it refers to them as CCK, OFDM, HTIX) - reading the manual that came on the CD is a must.

I was ultimately able to get a good WDS bridging setup going -- however, it required that I turn off wireless security. For reasons that are still not clear to me, I was never able to configure the WDS to work with WPA or WPA2 encyrption turned on.

If I was starting from scratch, I probably would have been happy buying two of these Barricades to setup WDS; but given that we already have and wanted to keep the Apple Airport, it was a bit disappointing that it couldn't encrypt the link.