With an inbuilt 10/100 4-port Ethernet switch, EtherFast can easily integrate into a small network, if you already have one. Setting it up is a matter of minutes. Just connect your ISP’s WAN connection (Cable/DSL) to the WAN port and the client computers to the LAN ports. Reset the router to factory defaults by the reset switch on the front panel and set one of the clients to obtain its network settings automatically from DHCP. Point the browser on this computer to http:// 192.168.1.1 (you can change this later) and log into the router’s settings page. These settings are very basic and easy to configure if you have all the required data with you.
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The router even lets you filter up to five internal IP addresses and ports (in case the client computers are allocated static IP addresses). It can also serve to set up public services by means of port forwarding. So requests from the Internet to defined ports are automatically forwarded to internal machines, which are running public services like FTP, Telnet, or DNS. The function of hosting a DMZ is available on a separate settings tab. And if you need to keep a tab on your network traffic, there is an option of setting up a static routing in the router. This can work in conjunction with a logging client on an intermediate machine. The price is a little steep at Rs 17,000.
Ashish Sharma at PCQ Labs