January 20, 2006 :: SMC 2870 Access Point, Repeater, Bridge.

Actually the SMC 2870 is a little more than an access point. Actually it's a lot more. This device has a triple personality. It is an access point, a repeater and a bridge. The SMC 2870 performs all of its functions rather well. As an access point, it supports both the B and G 802.11 protocols. What that means is that if you happen to have PDA's in your office that talks 802.11b, maximum 11 Mbps throughput, and you have floating laptops that talk 802.11g, that's maximum 54 Mbps, the SMC access point should support them all. We ran into problems here. First, as many of the devices we review, this device comes with outdated firmware. Unpack the boxes and proceed to their website immediately. Their tech support is useless. They are simply not familiar with their own equipment. Proceeding to their website will save you a lot of headaches. Connect the devices one at a time, via the USB cable or the Ethernet crossover cable supplied to a PC, and download the firmware. When you do, you will get a new control application which is used to control the devices. You can also access them via your browser. If you should so choose, you will note that the function available to you within the browser are many more than available through the control application. We set all of our devices to WEP security, since we tested the access points with PDA's, as well as, laptops, and these support WEP as opposed to WPA. Once the control application fires, it immediately recognizes all of the devices and what mode they are in -- access point, repeaters or bridges. We setup all of the devices to communicate using both, the B and G protocols. The devices work very well; however, we found that we could not successfully mix them, and simply could not use them with our B devices. Other than that, these devices are a keeper. You can place one of them around your entire building and use them as repeaters giving yourself a unified access blanket. These devices are cheap and they work great! Managing them all is a snap. They also work really well in bridge mode. For example, lets say you're sharing an office building and the lobby is not exclusively yours and you are not permitted to run a cable destroying the marble and the like to your touch-screen informational computer. Well then this device in bridge mode is for you. Connect the supplied Ethernet crossover cable right into the network adapter, give it power, and you're on. NO hubs nor switches required. Overall, the SMC 2879 is a very useful, inexpensive and reliable device.

e2g labs review: 1/20/2006

Coming up review of the Nikon D50 with a 17-80 mm lens Digital SLR

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