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Review of the Netopia R9100 Ethernet to
Ethernet Broadband Router
For December we continued our tests of DSL
/Cable
Modems/Routers and this month we tested the
Netopia
R9100 Ethernet to
Ethernet Broadband Router
Netopia may not
be a manufacturer you heard a lot about. They concentrate soley on the
CPE (customer prem equipment),
which means they build, design and sell smaller customer end routers.
Netopia hasn't ventured into the
Cisco/Lucent/Bay Networks dominated world of high capacity core network
routers. Netopia's competition in the CPE end of the market is
pretty stiff with newcomers Linksys, Dlink ,
Netgear, Ramp
Networks (bought by Nokia), Alcatel, as well as big
boys Lucent and Cisco
and most other modem manufacturers clamouring to
develop and launch products in cutthroat competition for a piece of this
rapidly exploding market.
The Netopia
R9100 Ethernet to
Ethernet Broadband Router is basically an evolution of Netopia's
current line of routers. If you've seen a
Netopia then the
R9100 (or R6100 or R7100 DSL Routers) look very similar since they are all
based on the same basic modular design.
The R9100 is designed to be used with your Cable/DSL modem to connect with
your ISP (other Netopia
models such as the
upscale R6100 has a built in Alcatel DSL modem). An added feature the R9100
has is an 8 port half duplex 10base-T hub
built into it and it has an uplink port to connect another hub in. Some
consider this a great feature but this really
only should ohhh and ahhhh the SOHO (small office home office) user who
buys a Netopia and gets
this great built in
hub. In all honesty most medium to larger businesses who would buy this
router already have their own 10/100 hub
or Switch already so a half-duplex 10 base-T hub is redundant. The router
can do NAT/PAT, act as a DHCP server as well
as route for a block of public IP's. A basic firewall is included in the
router as well if you wish to enable
it and down the line, Netopia is planning on
VPN enabling these routers as well.
Quite simply plug the included ethernet cable from your DSL/Cable Modem
into
the "Line 1" port on the R9100 (first knock against the Netopia, on most other
routers you refer to the port going to
the DSL/Cable Modem as "WAN" port, not line 1. It almost sounds like
engineers built the router, left off the
markings and in a rush, some non-engineer decided to label the port as
"line 1" for lack of a better term). Anyway,
the R9100 is pretty easy to configure out of the box, if you have a
standard config, simply telnet to the router, or
use
the included console cable to connect to the router and the first screen
you go through is the "Easy Setup" menus,
simply fill in blanks on the
screen (PPPoE username, password etc...) and you could be up and running
within minutes... On the other hand, since
there isn't much in terms of documentation so either you run through the CD
included or wander your way through
Netopia's configuration menus. The configuration menu is designed to be
easy to use, locate and change settings.
Its not too bad, although the configuration menus on say Ascend Pipeline
series router by are far simpler and
contain more information then the Netopia menus.
Unfortunately there is little to no help screens in the menu's and
some
things you just guess at and hope you get them right. For example one
quirk I really did not like was the fact that
on many routers, like a Cisco, you don't need to make a routing statement
to an ip, you can just route to an
interface. Not so on this Netopia , if you don't
know your gateway,
and for many ISP's you won't, you are supposed to
set your gateway to 127.0.0.2 and when we asked a Netopia Engineer about
this, his responce was, "Well that is what
we decided it should be." Now the average joe on the street who buys a Netopia R9100 and doesn't
know what to put
here, he will start guessing at IP's, bug his ISP and they might tell him,
but the moment that changes, he has to call
his ISP back etc... It works but.... its an old design flaw, more annoying
then anything. Other then that, using the
"easy setup" is a breeze and will get 90% of users up and online within
minutes.
The rest of the Menu is subdivided into: WAN Configuration, System
Configuration, Utilities and Diagnostics,
Statistics and Logs, Quick Menus and finally Quick View. Pretty good
setup, all divided nicely into logical
sections, good design. If you are looking for something, its usually
pretty easy to find... although certain things,
like say the menu for username and password to connect to your ISP is
buried a couple menu's deep under "data link
options" (kind of
an important menu to be buried that deep I'd say..). My other big beef
with the menu's besides their lack of help is
the annoying feature that you must hit enter after you enter your
selection, many many many people I have talked to
growl and snarl when they sit down at a Netopia to configure it,
other routers you type in your subnet mask, for
example, and hit tab to go to the next line down to enter something else.
Not with this Netopia,
you have to hit enter
first to save your setting. As well sometimes you hit tab and other times
you hit enter to bring up a pull down menu
to make a selection. Some issues like trying to configure access lists or
as Netopia calls them "Filter Sets" to
keep users from accessing your network are a pain in the neck to figure out
how to do and with little help on the CD,
and the website not to mention minimal help in the menu's make it a hair
pulling experience. I wish Netopia would of
cleaned up the Menu's a bit more and make entering data in the menu's less
quirky.
Netopia has a good
warrenty, Support Site and they have tech support which is quite
helpful. My emails to tech support get
responces within 12 hours which I consider great tech support and well
worded helpful support. Although I have heard
a couple of complaints from collegues who have called tech support asking
fora bit of guidance on how to setup MRTG to
monitor the router and getting the runaround from an engineer who basically
told my collegue to look on the web for
help configuring MRTG to poll a Netopia. In terms of
quality the Netopia
isn't to bad, yes it is plastic but hey its
not a Cisco 2610 (and only
$2000 less then a 2610 to). Although of the 3 test units we used, one had
a power button that didn't work, stuck on continually, the same unit's
case also was slightly ajar (maybe related eh??) and the back metal plate
with all the connectors was quite flimsy and felt cheap. I never noticed
the router getting super hot like a Cisco 827
(ModemHelp.Org's January Review)
which is a bonus. Another quirk (I'm running firmware 4.6.3) and maybe
upgrading to a newer
firmware will solve it, is that the router doesn't always "dial" or attempt
a connection at the slightest bit of
traffic coming from the LAN... Many times I would have to go into the
router and make it connect, then it would stay
up for hours, days etc.. but it kind of annoying when sometimes it wouldn't
"dial on demand" and sometimes would. I
had 2 other Netopia
R9100 users complain of the same issue and firmware upgrades didn't help
with them.
Yes the Netopia
R9100 does have
many little quirks but it does have some good features and it does its job
well. If this was say 1998 and this was a
new router, I'd be jumping up and down proclaiming this router as god of
CPE routers... but in reality the design is a
bit dated, and its lacking features and functionality of other routers in
its class. Its a decent router, just 3
years late to be the star of party.
Mark Breakdown:
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Category:
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Comments:
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Mark:
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Performance:
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Good performance, except sometimes the dial on demand doesn't always work.
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40/50
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Supportability:
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If you're an ISP, I feel this router will generate a bunch of support calls
based on quirks alone. Netopia Tech
Support is a quick phone call or email away. I think Netopia will even come
into your ISP and help train your tech
support reps if you deploy Netopia products which is
very good.
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10/15
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Ease of Use/Configuration:
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Pretty easy to configure if you know what your are doing and someone tells
you what to bunch in the "Easy Setup". If
you're a router rookie, and you want to play with the router a bit, be
prepared for growling hair pulling swearing at
the router sessions.
The Menu's are a good start, they just need a bit more organizing to make
them more functional.
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4/10
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Compatibility:
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This router will work with your current IP, IPX or Appletalk network and
your Cable/DSL connection with your ISP
although Netopia says
this router does PPPoA as well as PPPoE, we couldn't make the router do
PPPoA to work with our 3 Meg DSL.
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7/10
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Features:
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The 8 port half-duplex hub is a nice feature.. although other routers in
this class are including 10/100 switches
(such as the Linkys tested in our
August review ). Pretty standard
router, basic firewall instruction set but quirky. One feature missing is
good debugging and troubleshooting which is
a must for a good tech support department. The more information you have
the easier it is to diagnose and fix a
problem.
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3/5
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Personal:
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Not a bad router, not a great router, middle of the road router that's has
features that are a bit dated. To quirky
for a new user to easily configure out of the box and probably not the
first choice of many ISP's to deploy.
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5/10
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Overall:
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As I already said, not a bad router, but there are other routers that are
newer, with more features, cheaper, with
less quirks and a newer more modern user friendly design.
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69/100
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