Customer Reviews

SMC SMC7004BR Cable/DSL Router with 4 Port Switch

5 star:		(19)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I bought this unit instead of the less expensive competition because of my faith in SMC support. I have literally called up SMC's 800 number at 11:30 PM on a Sunday and had a friendly, knowledgable technician answer the phone and guide me through a network card install. I didn't need their support.

I know networking, but the little book was written for the brain damaged. Really easy to understand. The connection through to the unit was instant. I just used winipcfg to do a DHCP release and renew and there I was. I have Home.com cable. I just added the computer's ID for my home.com connection in the appropriate field, saved and rebooted. Voila, instant shared network on three computers.

Besides the two free Cat 5 cables, the print server feature is quite nice. I haven't used it yet, but I intend to. Also I'll probably add a dial up modem to the unit so I can have an easy fallback if home.com has an outage.

I got this for the office after using the linksys at home, the idea of a router was fixed in my head. The print server and the serial port were almost necessities for the office environment. It was a fairly easy installation hardware wise, of course. the Software had a few issues but upgrades from their web site and a quick call fixed them, I found tech support to be helpful and patient. Theproblem involved needing to do a hard reset of the router, which is a pain, use a paperclip and jump two of the pins on the serial port. I could not believe that this was their answer, but it worked. Since then I have had a few months of no problem connections. I just wish they would implement a fax sharing program into the unit or even a modem sharing for other than Internet connectivity. I still giv eht eunit 5 stars for the print server and the ability to use the dial up if my DSL goes down (too frequently).

This port works great for networking computers! I have AT&T broadband and my cable modem is connected through a USB port on my computer instead of a network card. The hub had no trouble recognizing the connection, or the connection of the laptop computer in the other port (which used a normal PCMIA network card). This is a great device for networking beginners. Only a couple of things stopped me from giving this product five stars. First, when buying this, make SURE that your printer has available networking software (my old Epson 480 printer could not be networked to this device, software did not allow for that) if you want to network your printer. Also, some printer cables will not function with this device...make sure you have a cable that will function as a direct cable connection between your printer and this hub. Another thing I was told by AT&T support was that I needed a "crossover" network cable to connect the USB port to the hub. WRONG! Its correct to use a regular patch cable for all connections, as I found out through SMC support. Keep all this in mind and it will set up correctly and work just fine. Great for the price!

Got this thing for a pretty good price, now it's even cheaper. Bought it for a Mac network in my house, running enet cable through the walls to the bedrooms. Works great for @Home Cable modem, which is what I am running. Don't follow the directions in the manual, just put in all your ISP settings in the config. panel and set all your other computers connected to the router to DHCP. Worked great for me. Only compaint is that the 4 ports are on the front, so cables are going in both front and back, which makes it akward to sit on a desktop. Other than that, it does the trick.

Just wanted to make three points about this great product:

1) Setting it up consists of filling out web-based forms from your favorite browser -- so if you can order this product from Amazon, then you already know how to set it up when you get it home!

2) It increased my cable modem performance! This won't happen to everybody, but for me I think the reason was that I previously had the cable modem connection going through a USB adapter (I have @Home in SF Bay area). When I got rid of the USB adapter, performance went from a maximum download speed of 300KBps (that's kiloBYTES), to 450KBps! Sweet!

3) You can hook up a dial-up modem as a backup. This is handy, because you don't have to muck with your computer network settings whatsoever. Usually when you switch ISPs you have to do said-mucking.

All in all a very nice product.

I bought this router to share my Verizon DSL among 2 computers. Within 5 minutes I accomplished my goal. I simply plugged in the cables, entered my Verizon DSL username/password into the router configuration, and I was up and running.

Best of all, the router worked perfectly with my corporate virtual private network (VPN), without any additional configuration.

The router comes with one ethernet cable, so if you are connecting multiple computers you will need to buy extra cables. And make sure all your computers have ethernet cards. With those basic ingredients, you'll be up and running with this product in no time.

I got this SMC7004BR router from ...(the website) because of the rebate offered by SMC and the discounted price ...(on the website) as well as free shipping.

I figured that, if all things fail, at least I would have a firewall for ...(a good price) for my always-on cable connection.

Lo and behold, I have a working 4-port router, a working print server, and a firewall. All for ...(such a good price)!

Installing was basically without complications. Just follow the instructions in the leaflet. As others have noted, because I use @home, I have to enter the complete mail server IP address in order to get Outlook Express to work. Get that complete address from @home.

It took a little bit of fiddling to get the print server feature to work. One thing that the leaflet doesn't mention when installing the print server function is to reboot the router after plugging in the printer cable. Once I did that, it worked fine and my print/network speed seems unaffected whatsoever (contrary to what others have experienced) by this function up and running.

Now, I have two computers and a laser printer on my home network and the capacity to extend that to another two more pcs. What a deal! Buy it..........especially when SMC/...(the website) offer an undeniable deal.

Although I had to download and install a firmware upgrade before it was fully functional, this turned out to be a terrific device, performing as advertised. I had trouble accessing the router's internal web page, but tech help was available within 5 minutes and very helpful (and this at 12:30 AM EDT). This may not be a device for totally rank beginners, but its very close. Well done, SMC!

I had been investigating routers and read that this was faster than the Linksys and other comparable routers, so I decided to buy it. It was surprisingly easy to set up, even though I am in the computer industry and don't find these things difficult anyhow. I had some issues with my e-mail after setting up the router, but that was solved with a trip to the support site and a phone call to @home to get the fully-qualified mail server name (not an SMC issue, but an issue with routers in general)...

I don't have a broadband connection at home, but I still wanted to be able to share a dial-up connection among several computers with one device. This little switch has met my needs perfectly. I took it out of the box, plugged it in, and enjoyed a home network for the first time. There was basically no configuration needed; there is a simple-to-use web interface which allows you to enter the information for your ISP. I have an external modem plugged in for my dial-up, and it works like a charm. The print server is a nice touch -- I have a Canon BJC-210, just a little $80 inkjet printer -- and my computers are able to print to it quite easily via the included software. Perhaps the only caveat I've encountered is that when you are sending a document to the printer, the network seems to slow down substantially. But this could be an issue with my configuration. All in all, this SMC switch has been a marvel. It's really nice when something works so perfectly out of the box.