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ZoomAir Wireless Internet Router - 4165
Score: 3 out of 3
Review Type: Hands On
Reviewer: Chris Kaminski
Date: Jan 7, 2001
Firmware: R1.93s2
Price: Aprox $220
The ZoomAir 4165 is a cable/dsl Internet Router with 11Mbps 802.11b Wireless Ethernet,
a firewall with SPI, a serial port and a bi-directional parallel port for a printer.
With it’s built in serial port, the device can also act as a 56k modem based
router or an ISDN router. With only a NetMeeting pass-through support missing, the
ZoomAir is a solid wireless router that packs an extra punch with an SPI firewall
at a competitive price.
What it does
The ZoomAir wireless Gateway connects all of the computers in your home up to the
Internet using a single IP address. The built in network print server allows a single
parallel printer to also be connected to your network and shared. With 802.11b built
in, there is no need to run cables to computers in your other rooms of your house
– it connects both your wired and wireless Ethernet computers together. You
can even attach a 56K modem or serial ISDN line to the router to act as a Internet
Connection backup or as your primary connection.
Administration and Setup
Administration of the router is done through a web interface. An HTML based setup
wizard on the install CD will guide you through the initial configuration. Administration
can also be done remotely across the internet if the remote admin option is enabled.
Admin Screens
Security
Security is somewhere this router kind of shines. A nice balance between usability,
security and flexibility has been reached. First off, the firewall includes SPI
– stateful packet inspection. This keeps nastiness like Denial of Service Attacks,
Pings of Death and other attacks from affecting your computers or Internet connection.
This protection works automatically and requires no setup or maintenance.
From an outbound and LAN security standpoint, the ZoomAir has many options. First,
the ZoomAir Wireless Portion supports 40/64 bit encryption keys and 128 bit encryption
keys. To make it easy to use other peoples wireless adapters, the ZoomAir allows
you to enter those keys in ASCII (passphrase) or hex. Second, all computers on your
LAN and WLAN can be assigned to three different security groups. Access to the Internet
and the printer can then be controlled through those groups. Internet blocking can
even be tuned down to specific port ranges!
VPN Support
The ZoomAir passes both PPTP VPN traffic and L2TP/IPSec client VPN traffic. Zoom
was unable to tell me how many L2TP tunnels could be created but I was able to use
SafeNet SoftRemote through the router just fine.
The Missing Stuff
The major missing component in the ZoomAir has to do with application support- NetMeeting/H.323.
Most modern routers now handle NetMeeting pass through. This means that when initiating
a call in an H.323 conferencing application (like NetMeeting) the computer does
not need to be placed in the unsecured DMZ. The firewall appears to be smart enough
to handle them, but the router does not yet support them.
The ZoomAir has a nice SPI Firewall but has no remote logging – Zoom should
add either SNMP traps or syslog logging to the router.
Links
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ZoomAir 4165 Router
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