Dual-WAN Router Showdown
Router
Dual-Wan Router Showdown
Introduction
A little over a year ago, we reviewed an advanced broadband router from
Nexland called the ISB
Pro 800. We gave the router high marks because of its
advanced feature set. However, because of the high price tag of
$300, it was not a router for the everyday home user. In addition
to the Pro 800, Nexland also made a dual WAN router that could shotgun
two broadband internet connections, the ISB Pro 800 Turbo, and was
available
for around $400. Since then, Nexland has been purchased by
Symantec who now sells the the ISB Pro 800 Turbo under a different
name for a whopping $900!
Today's review is of two similar products from Xincom and Edimax. These dual-WAN routers
offer many of the same features as the Pro 800 Turbo but at a fraction
of the cost. In order to review the products, I ordered a second
broadband connection to my house. I am lucky enough to live in an
area where there are two cable/internet companies competing for
the same customers. Because of this, they are locked in a
sort of "bandwidth
war". Obviously, I chose the company with the faster connection,
Wide Open West. WOW offers an
"Ultra" connection that is 4 Mb/s
downstream and 500 kb/s upstream. Using two of these
connections should give me a total bandwidth of 8 Mb/s down and 1 Mb/s
up. To give you an idea how fast that is, its over FIVE TIMES
FASTER than a T1 and 25% faster than a DS-2 (T2) downstream!
Because of the multiple IP addresses of the two connections, a download
manager will have to be used in order to reach these speeds while
requesting a single file. The primary use of these devices though is
for load balancing in a small to medium sized office. How do they work?
Well lets first check out the specs.
Specifications
|
Xincom
XC-DPG402
|
Edimax
BR-6524
|
CPU
|
Samsung ARM7
(50MHz)
|
Conexant
ARM7 (75MHz)
|
RAM
|
4MB
|
8 MB
|
ROM
|
512 KB |
1 MB |
| WAN/LAN Ports |
2/4
|
2/4
|
Throughput
|
12 Mbps
|
20 Mbps
|
Firmware Ver.
|
Ver. 2.1
(Rel. 0F)
|
Ver.
0.98
|
Upon first glance, you can see that the Edimax router has higher
specifications. However, the quality and efficiency of the router
depends greatly on the software. Both units were upgraded to the
latest public firmware version for the purpose of this review.
Also to note is that the specified throughput is a measurement of WAN
to LAN performance. In most cases, 12 Mbps should be more than
enough speed for dual cable internet connections.
|
