ZyXEL Home Firewall Router With 4 Port 10/100 Fast Ethenet Switch

ZyXEL makes a full line of VPN firewalls that go by the name ZyWALL, and are generally considered the best products out there for the SOHO and small business market that needs VPN (Virtual Private Network) communication with remote offices or individuals. The Prestige 324 is a full SPI firewall with a 4-port switch that provides virtually everything that their ZyWALL product line does, only without the VPN circuitry. As a result, it is perfectly suited to most home users that want industrial-strength security for their always-on DSL or cable connections. It supports X-Box, Instant Messenger, UPnP, and virtually every Internet game out there. If you want to, it also provides all the settings that you will need to set up servers, web sites, etc.

The firmware that controls the product is taken directly from their enterprise level products. Because of this, it is subjected to a level of testing and evaluation by networking professionals that no consumer product would ever get. As such,...Read more

I purchased this product specifically for use in a situation wherein a dial-up connection must be shared (but not simultaneously) between two workstations. I had tried various other products, but most were too basic and did not allow the configuration needed.

The dial backup is, from what I can tell, completely useless on this device. I tried three different modems, and all achieved high connections speeds. For some bizarre reason, though, this device limited all dial-up traffic to atrocious speeds. Transfer speeds with this device never exceeded 1.5Kb/sec while the same modem connected to one of the other basic routers was consistently over 5Kb/sec.

It seems that the dial backup on devices like this is really just an afterthought which they never expect anyone to use and which they never optimize or even verify.

I had some problems getting it to communicate with our cable modem at first. Had to reboot the modem to get everything working, but it has been working fine since then except when I made a setting change on the router, I had to reboot it to regain modem communication. As long as I leave it alone, it seems reliable. The router it replaced kept losing the broadband connection. LAN connections have been flawless.