SMC SMC7004BR Cable/DSL Router with 4 Port Switch

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...Read more