Related Articles

Asante FriendlyNet 10/100 DSL/Cable Router

The Asante - FriendlyNet Boxshot

The Asante FriendlyNet FR3004LC router is a brand new product they just released in late summer, and is one of the most interesting broadband routers we’ve come across in person or in print. What makes this router interesting is that it includes an integrated printer port, and an integrated com port. The built-in printer port is HIGHLY exciting because it suggests that we need not get a separate print server and still have the convenience of a dedicated network printer.

Side view of the Asante

The FriendlyNet has a metal chassis over which is mounted a translucent plastic case. The design is intended to allow multiple routers to be stacked, and also enables the router to be mounted on different surfaces either through the holes in its plastic casing, or through the holes in the metal body for added security. The smoky blue case has few markings, which make the LEDs a little less intuitive at first glance. The diag LEDs are as thorough as on the other routers, but I found them less convenient because they weren’t labeled clearly, and also because the organization was not intuitive at all - A far cry from the crisp, at a glance status that you can gleam from the Linksys router.

The Asante is the only router in the roundup without some sort of hardware reset switch that allows you to reset the settings to factory defaults. Asante instead allows you to use the com port to directly patch into the router via a serial cable and reset the router’s IP or admin password using a telnet like interface. I found this to be a tedious exercise compared the simplicity of the reset button on other routers.

Front view of the Asante

The Asante FriendlyNet is also the only router in the roundup that does not have some sort of uplink port. Some of the routers feature a separate uplink port, and other routers include a small switch that changes one of the regular ports into an uplink port. The Asante provides for neither, and so I had to re-arrange our network a little in order to accommodate the router. For those of you with aspirations for expanding your network, this poses only a minor problem (as long as you other hubs or switches have uplink ports, you should be fine), but I thought it odd that such a standard feature was left out.

Rear view of the Asante

The configuration of the Asante FriendlyNet is made easier by its preset WAN types. Basically you choose one of 5 possible settings, including a static IP setting, dynamic IP, @Home compatible, and on-demand PPPoE. I found this to be a lot more user friendly than the other routers, because depending on the WAN type you select, you are shown a different WAN configuration screen. This is especially nice for @Home novices who may not know the exact details of their @Home service setup, because once you choose @Home as your WAN type, you are only asked for your host name, and everything else is pulled from the DHCP that the @Home services run. Very cool.

The FriendlyNet, like the other routers, has some pretty hefty access controls. It uses a completely different system than the other products though, in that it allows you to allow or block lists of specific ports for groups of IPs within your network. This makes it really easy to block a whole slew of different ports for any one group, but it lacks the flexibility inherent in the routers that allow you to specifically block UDP,TCP or both UDP and TCP transmissions.

So far, other than its more robust access controls, the FriendlyNet is no different than any of the other routers in the roundup, but Asante tries to differentiate from the crowd by including a “popular applications” configuration screen where you can configure the router to allow certain popular applications to run properly through the router.

Under side of the Asante

The router comes with some preset popular applications such as Napster, Quicktime, RealAudio and Windows 2K Terminal Server, but the “popular applications” feature allows you to set any applications where you know their ports (even if it is a port range, such as for RealAudio). Basically the way this feature works is that you set a port to act as a trigger, and when one of your client computers make a request using this port, the appropriate incoming ports are opened for that client. So if you set your incoming port range to be 6970-7170, with a trigger of port 7070, every time you access a RealAudio file, you will open up those ports for your own system’s use. This is a REALLY powerful feature, but it is also limited because it only allows a single client to access any one popular application at a time. Asante advises network administrators to use the more powerful Access Controls features (described above) if there is a need to give multiple clients access to some applications.

As with the other routers, the Asante also has the capability to set a DMZ for a single IP address in your network for unrestricted two way access between that computer and the WAN. Remote administration abilities round out the features for this router. The interesting clincher with this feature is that Asante thoughtfully included the ability to lock remote administration to a specific IP. I found this to be an excellent way to allow remote admin while limiting security risks.

send article   hardware newsletter   article comments (9)

Submit our article to: Digg this! del.icio.us