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PRO800turbo Dual-WAN broadband router
from Nexland
Score: 3 out of 3 
Review Type: Hands On
Reviewer: Chris Kaminski
Date: June 06, 2001
8/6/2002: after 14 months this is STILL the router I use on my lan, chrisk
Price: Around $399 
 The 800turbo is a solid cable/dsl router that supports
two broadband connections and unlimited IPSEC VPN outbound connections. The 800turbo
performs load balancing on your outgoing requests (where appropriate) splitting
the traffic between your broadband connections. The built in 8 port switch allows
for a great deal of LAN expansion before needing additional hardware. Even without
the dual-wan connection, the Nexlan does a good job of standing above its competition
by offering advanced features like MAC address based security, advanced PPPoE support,
a user defined MTU, a backup serial modem/idsn connection and more.
Installation
Installation went very well thanks to the included 64 page manual. The manual is
well written, comprehensive and easy to follow. A generous use of screenshots made
the process even easier. Download the manual here (3.3Mb pdf) (Sorry, no longer published,
link removed)
Two WAN ports?
 The
800turbo has 8 LAN ports and two WAN ports. The 2 WAN ports make this beast unique.
This router allows you to utilize two separate broadband connections or alternatively,
a single connection with multiple IP addresses. Surfing the web becomes much more
responsive and downloading large files interferes less with streaming video and
other bandwidth hogs. The 800Turbo would also be appropriate for a small office
that has grown out of the bandwidth available on a single DSL line. A second DSL
line could be added to both increase available network bandwidth and increase network
efficiency.
Limitations of Connection Teaming
Because of the way Internet protocols work, downloading a single large file or watching
a single streaming video still happens over only one of the WAN connections leaving
the other connection free to service other requests. Connection teaming is perfect
for operations that create many network connections (like web browsing) but does
not do much for operations that utilize only a single connection – like
downloading a file or video-conferencing. Still, the snappiness of web browsing
makes this a great solution. UPDATE 8/5/2002: Nexland has somewhat overcome
this with a software solution.
Cable modem with multiple IP’s?
If you are a cable modem user that has multiple IP address, you might be able to
use the 800turbo to speed up your web browsing. The key is to use two IP addresses
that are on different subnets. Your bandwidth is not actually increased but the
increased network efficiency makes web surfing seem twice as fast! (DSL may
or may not work the same way because both IP address' are probably
on the same subnet)
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Nexland PRO800Turbo
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