| SMC7004VWBR Barricade Cable/DSL router w/ 4-port 10/100Mbps and 802.11b 11 Mbps Access Point |
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Model: SMC7004VWBR
Brand: SMC
Manufacturer: SMC
Average Rating: 
(submit your review here)
Total Reviews: 71
Form factor: External
Hardware platform: PC
Data link protocol: Ethernet, Fast Ethernet, IEEE 802.11b
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| Features: |
Share your Cable/DSL connection
802.11b High Speed Wireless Lan connection
4 port 10/100 Mbps switch
Stateful Packet Inspection (SPI) Firewall
64-bit or 128-bit WEP encryption and MAC address filtering |
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| Description: |
| MODEL- SMC7004VWBR VENDOR- SMC NETWORKS FEATURES- Barricade Wireless Cable/DSL Broadband Router The Barricade Wireless Cable/DSL Broadband Router is the ideal networking solution for any home and business user. This platform independent multi-functional router combines a 4-port 10/100 Mbps dual-speed switch an 802.11b wireless access point Stateful Packet Inspection (SPI) firewall security network management and Virtual Private Network (VPN) pass-through support into one convenient device. The Wireless Barricade Router is the first router in its class to offer an integrated Stateful Packet Inspection (SPI) firewall. This firewall provides protection against hacker invasions such as Denial of Service (DoS) attacks by analyzing individual data packets as they pass through the Barricade to ensure that only authorized packets are allowed access to the network. To control network access parents or business owners can block certain web sites by entering either a URL address or just a keyword of the web site. In addition to these incredible features this latest addition to the Barricade family provides hacker prevention and logging functionalities. For example when a hacker attempts to access your network the Barricade can alert you via email so you can take appropriate action. The Wireless Barricade provides a 10/100 Mbps WAN port for high-speed integration into your network. Supporting NAT the Barricade can provide simultaneous Internet access for up to 253 PCs using a single purchased IP address. To manage these connections the Barricade has a built-in DHCP server to auto-assign IP addresses to devices on your network. To install this device simply place the EZ 3-Click Installation CD into your CD-ROM drive and in minutes you will be surfing the web. By using the web-based management system you can configure this router to handle IP routing and port forwarding through the Virtual Server option. For added management this router also has a full-featured Access Control ... |
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| User Reviews (71 total): |
Page 1 2 3 4 of Total 4 Pages
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A problem pack !, April 9, 2003
By techno_phile (New York, NY, USA)
[A] Needs a mandatory restart every 16 hours as
a) The router hangs responding quite often.
b) Internet connectivity speed drops by this time.[B]My wireless card detects all other wireless routers in my neighbourhood, while this Router takes atleast 10 minutes to reciprocate. [C]Horrible Manual. Mentions all about installation, which any lamer could get along with. But no section on trouble-shooting. [D]Pathetic Customer support. I got so sick of this router that I did away with the cover and decided to follow the circuit myself ! Horrible router.
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Don't waste your money, April 3, 2003
By D. Dobson (La Jolla, CA USA)
I purchased this wireless router to allow me to access the web on my laptop throughout my home. As it turns out, I can only obtain a signal within 20 feet of the router. I changed out the router unit as well as the wireless adaptor and it didn't help. Finally after spending two days on the phone with their tech support, the concluded that I was unable to use the device because I had a cordless phone. (The also listed the presence of a fireplace or chimney as potential causes for connection failure.)
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You just can't beat this for [the price.], March 24, 2003
By unknown
That's right, after instant and mail-in rebates. For the price, I couldn't complain. Anyway, I don't like the online manual. I like to see the manual printed out so that I can read it while I'm working with the product. I also don't like the "3-step" setup. It didn't seem to go well. It took me some searching through the docs, but I was able to determine how to get to the Web interface to set up the router.I moved out a Linksys Cable/DSL Router/Switch out to replace it with the SMC. I feel that I am now getting faster refreshes with this product. Pages come up extremely fast. The Wireless portion of this isn't all that bad either. I do have a Cisco Aironet Wireless card that is superior, but I'm not convinced that is the only reason my wireless is successful. I did utilize the 64 bit WEP and I do not see the service suffer. All in all, I have not had any issues with this unit. I'm happy with my purhcase. I have a 1600 sq ft house and I can move all around and still have ok signal. If you can get a good deal on the unit, I say get it. Realize this is a Consumer unit and will not perform the same as a professional unit.
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Don't buy it at any price, March 15, 2003
By encinoman (Canada)
After spending what must be 200 hours with firmware, software, the DSL modem, the wireless ports etc. etc. I'm buying another router. Most of the time I use the ethernet ports, but they lock up from 1 to 20 times a day. As I run with a lot of passworded windows open, it may take 5-10 minutes for me to be up and running and signed in again. How long till the next lock up? Who knows, but you can imagine the frustration of spending 200 minutes on a bad day getting going again. Last Monday, it took from 9:00am to 12:00am to reset before I could limp along at a low throughput for the rest of the afternoon. Other days it may go all day without issue. How can you get any work done like that? My cheap Netgear router has NONE of these issues.The Tech service was terrible, all they could suggest was to repower it. It took 15 minutes for them to even understand the part number of the unit, and normally the techs have simply ended up hanging up on me in the end. And no, I'm not that hard to get along with. The manual might be glossy and look slick but it is poorly written and is inconsistant. If the router won't run for you right off the bat, there is not much that the manual or that a tech can help you with. The wireless was very difficult to get running. The setup is simple, but it just wouldn't start communicating. Only with the downloaded new software off the Web would it start communicating, and even then it was not clear what change was made to get it going. I'm an electrical engineer and have been involved with computers for a long time. This is the worst product I've bought in 20 years.
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Worthless, March 10, 2003
By J. Cabanela (MN)
I bought this wireless router without reading the reviews... a big mistake. This router's wireless features failed consistently. Usually within 12 hours of setting it up (or resetting it up on the subsequent attempts) the wireless connection would suddenly be lost as would the wired connections. Tech Support was not terribly helpful, all they could suggest was "resetting" the router. In fact, they recommended I return the router to the store. I see this as a reflection of their lack of confidence in the product.I have used other SMC routers (including setting up a different, older model as a wireless access point) so I consider this a glitch in an otherwise fine company's products, but the SMC7004VWBR should be avoided at all costs.
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DON'T BUY THIS PRODUCT, March 5, 2003
By gjames58 (Laurel, MD USA)
I made a HUGE mistake, I bought this router before read the customer review.....This item works fine until I set up encryption mode, because I really need it, but it stop to work. Installation is really easy, but al least 50% of features doesn't work. Advice, go for others vendors, I will ship a Linksys.
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simply great!!, March 5, 2003
By unknown
simply great pretty much sums it up! The customer service was awesome (if you don't mind a little accent). I did not even read the manual. I just called them and they walked me through the installation.. I am even using it for VPN and it works great!
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Wow! is the word you hear when you use this Router., February 27, 2003
By unknown
It is really 1,2,3 steps to set this up and it took only few minutes to get it going. I had some trouble setting up as I had some customized settings on my PC to use earlier LinkSys Switch. Once I un did those settings it's really smooth and the customer service from India (through 1-800 number) is excellent and they even explained the steps as they walked me through.I am using LinkSys USB access point with this SMC router and there was no problem in configuring them to communicate to each other. I would say if you can cruise the web, then you can install this on your computer. A+ is rare but I can't give any other rating than A+.
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Excellent wired router, so-so wireless..., February 16, 2003
By nagappa (Houston, TX United States)
I was upgrading from a three year old NetGear RT311 Cable/DSL wired Router because I wanted wireless 802.11b capability. The main reason I bought the SMC Barricade SMC7004VWBR over other wireless routers was the low price.In comparision with my previous router's wired ethernet capabilitues, the SMC Barricade was slightly easier to setup and the web-based setup and maintenance menu is certainly a great improvement. Besides that, it offers a lot of features for the money - DHCP, NAT, Firewall, 64 and 128 bit WEP (Wireless Encription), Status log, etc. Wireless capability for me was a convenience and not a must-have, because my laptop at home is mostly connected via Ethernet. Only with my Sharp Zaurus SL-5500 PDA (with Linksys WCF12 WiFi CompactFlash card) did I really need wireless. Using the SMC EZ Connect Wireless PC Card on my Dell Inspiron (running Windows 2000) I noticed the signal strength was nearly 100% upto 20' away from the router. When I took the laptop to my bedroom, about 30' away from the router and separated by two dry walls, the signal strength dropped to 50%, but with no loss in connection. The Sharp Zaurus SL-5500 PDA with Linksys card similarly had no loss of connection. The only time I did notice a problem was when one morning the wireless network suddenly stopped functioning (whereas the wired ethernet network continued without a problem). I had to do a reset of the router (using the web menu) and then the wireless began functioning again. My bottomline recommendation is to get this router if wired ethernet is essential and wireless is not so critical.
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frequency interference problem, February 13, 2003
By unknown
i tried Linksys- & SMC-wireless 4 port routers for my home network.(and i am using many cordless phones including Siemens cordless2.4Ghz phone at home.) These routers are 802.11b standard and use 2.4Ghz frequency. Both suffered from frequency interference problem, and lost signal strength(to near zero level) every morning when i turned on my wireless laptop to use. I called SMC tech support, and they kindly gave me a clear solution, which is to power off/on SMC router every morning. If anyone has 2.4Ghz cordless phones at home, you better avoid these two routers at least. I will try Netgear and Dlink soon and if they don't work well either, then I will have to choose the costly 802.11a(5.4Ghz) router.Another bad thing about SMC7004 is that SSID did not work out and there is no way to prevent anonymous wireless log on to your LAN unless you setup 64- or 128-bit WEP. And my wireless adapter does not have WEP option. One more bad thing about SMC7004; Multiple admin logon to router setup page is not allowed. Whereas Linksys allows it, and I can control the Linksys router setting from any computer.
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Tempermental and difficult to maintain, February 12, 2003
By Thomas Chen
Like most others who wrote reviews, I was attracted to the price of this unit and the ability to have a router and wireless access point in one unit. I should also mention I chose this router because it explicitly supports Macintosh computers (including AppleTalk) and its setup is web-based.Ironically, the setup with my Powerbook using Airport was painless, and I've not had a single problem with it. I love the web-based administration, and the range of functions you have (MAC control, WEP, SPI, Firewall, etc.). The biggest hassles I have had with this router revolve around its DHCP server and getting it to communicate with my wife's Sony Vaio with a D-Link DWL-650+ card. So far, I've had no luck even using static IP. I've not needed to reset this box like some others. Your mileage may vary. Tech support is based in India. Very polite, but they follow a script pretty rigorously and I haven't been referred to a higher level technician despite repeated calls. Bottom line - an OK unit. I suspect there are better ones out there, but for now, it fits the bill.
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Good, Secure Wireless Solution!, February 10, 2003
By unknown
This unit has been great. I've had it for almost a month and waited to see how it performed before I wrote a review. Here are a few of it's positives:1. It's cheap! After rebates, I got this unit, plus the matching PCMCIA wireless adapter for only [...]! 2. It's simple! You just plug your Cable modem into the WAN port, power it up and run the configurator on the CD included. Any idiot can set this up. I had a DHCP allocated IP address and was browsing the web in under 10 minutes. 3. It's secure! With 802.11b, I was worried about security. I mean, anyone could drive up with a notebook and tap into my LAN to get an IP. But this baby has a built in MAC Address filter. You log your home computers on once, then copy their MAC addresses to an 'allow' list using a web form. It takes about 2 minutes and now, nobody gets access to my lan (wireless or otherwise) without having their MAC address on the 'allow' list. 4. Range is good. I can go anywhere in my two story house and never get worse than a 'good' connection (3 bars at the worse) and I keep this unit in a closet with the cable modem at the farthest corner of the house. Don't expect to take your notebook next door to the neighbor's house, but I can go sit on the back deck or in an upstairs bedroom no problem. In conclusion, this is a good unit and I got it because my last firewall was also a barricade (sans wireless) and it worked great too. I was a tad sad to see they dropped the printer port for sharing a printer on the wireless model, but I like that they still have the serial port for hooking up an external modem. If your cable goes out, or if you only have dial-up, you can still use this thing to get on the net and share your connection! The ONLY thing that I have noticed about this that I wish was different is that you can't set the IP address of the NTP Time server that it will access to sync up the current time. It tries to find one automatically at boot time, and if it can't for some reason, it just won't sync. But it doesn't really matter that much, it just means that it is like a regular clock and will lose time a second a day or something. I'm really happy with this thing.
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Good, but need some configuration., February 4, 2003
By att12 (VA United States)
At the first a few days of using this router, it locked up a lot. I found out that when I am using my 2.4GMhz cordless phone, the SMC router locks, which doesn't happen when I use my Microsoft wireless router. The only different between them is that the MS router sets the channel to 5 while the SMC sets to automatic by default.I updated the firmware, and set the channel to 5. After that, it works perfectly with my Microsoft and Dlink wireless pc card with no any single problem at all. I am using it under 64 bit WEP. Didn't try 128 bit WEP.
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Excellent product of good price, February 2, 2003
By Alex6001 (trumbull, CT United States)
Just bought the product a week ago when it's on sale (40 after rebate). I bought it because of the wireless feature. After a few minutes of setup, and both my laptop(wireless) and destop connect to internet and connect with each other!! No problem so far.Highly recommended, especially for its good price and good performance.
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A So So product, January 21, 2003
By unknown
I have used this router for half a year. Initially, it was very good. Set-up was easy and both wireless and wired connections were good. However, after three months, some minor problems began to pop up. First, the router could not connect to the internect though Lan connections were perfect. I thought it was the cable modem's problem, but it turned out all connections were fine when I connect my PC's directly to the modem. So it must be something wrong with the router. I corrected this problem by rebooting the router. But the story does not stop there. The problem has become worse and worse recently. Now I have to disconnect and reboot the router several times a week to make it work. I contacted the SMC's service center, and the tech person there had hardly any clue about what to do, though each time they were very nice and patient with me. For one time we worked together over the phone for one hour without any solution, but then suddenly the router began to function again. It supprised both of us without knowing how and why. Just within this week, one of the Lan jacks became dead without warning, though the wireless part is always good with or without 128bit encryption. I contacted SMC again and they just promised me a replacement. My feeling is that this router must have certain flaw by design, otherwise, it there could not be so many people having so many similar problems. My final suggestion is, if not for the price, try some other product.WZ
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Extremely Dissapointing, January 21, 2003
By unknown
Connected the cable modem to the router which I then hooked to my PC ethernet port. Followed directions for their 3-click setup.
Set up was easy. The hard part was yet to begin. Downloading popular web pages was a nightmare. Over 2 mins to get yahoo. No problem with my old Linksys. I then tried connecting the router to a switch. It did not recognize the interface (lights did not turn on. ) Again no problem with my old Linksys. A firmware upgrade did not help either. I was hoping to replace my router and WAP with a single unit. Very dissapointed.
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Firmware not ready for primetime, January 21, 2003
By mwalkden (Chicago, IL United States)
I have one of these and it locks up occasionally. I feel that SMC did not allow themselves enough time to get the product stable before they sent it out the door.
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Fine router if you don't need wireless, January 17, 2003
By unknown
Had all kinds of trouble with wireless functionality. As I booted my laptop (with a netgear wireless card), I could watch the router (through the Barricade status page) assign an IP to the node, then drop it seconds later. The node would still have the assigned IP address, but the barricade would not list it as a connected node. Sometimes the barricade wouldn't even assign an IP address to start with. Neither behavior was consistent, so I found myself constantly rebooting, or performing ipconfig/releases & renews, to establish connectivity. Real hassle. I returned it.
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Great Wireless Router, January 17, 2003
By swkenobi (Colorado)
Purchased it after reviewing many others. Setup was a snap, had my wireless device up in no time. One thing to do right away is to upgrade the firmware. It gives better MAC filtering, and numerous other tweaks over the firmware that ships. Love the email notification of attacks, SPI firewall works great. Excellent range, can move about the house with ease, even though is in my basement. Highly recommended.
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easy wireless for the novice, January 16, 2003
By Lee Lim (Irvington, NY United States)
great product and quick delivery. The customer service led me through tep by step and now I have a great wireless network at home, which is also expandable.
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