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|  | | | Customer Reviews: | | | Average Customer Review: ( 66 customer reviews )
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
39 of 39 found the following review helpful:
 Love It! Sep 13, 2008
By Stefanie
"Stefanie"
I'm a Network Engineer and I have a habit of over doing it with my home equipment. I was limping along with my old Linksys router. The Barney of home networking equipment. My Vista laptop did not get along well with it at all. Refusing to upgrade convinced that N was just a stepping stone and the moment I bought a new router they'd release a new better product that actually lived up to the hype. However I was to the point that I would only use the internet if I was wired in. I did a lot of research and I finally chose the SMC Barricade Router. I installed the Barricade yesterday and I was shocked at how many features this router really came with in the Admin console. And my wifi connection is fast, 100% reliable and my laptop hasn't kicked me off of the internet since the moment I turned the router on. Signal...100% excilenta all of the time. Buy it, you'll love it. Stay away from Linksys you deserve better. The only thing that could make me happier with the Barricade is if the built in Gigabit switch had more than 4 ports. I have a few ethernet network storage drives and I'd like to have some extra slots for other devices. But 4 is standard with wifi routers. Thank you SMC for fixing my relationship with Wifi. It has really lived up to the good reviews. Check out Cnet.com for a good run down on it's features.
16 of 17 found the following review helpful:
Good router but not without some hassle factors... Jul 05, 2008
By Jazzspielen
Bought this SMC router on the strength of a CNET review to replace my old, failing Netgear for my home office with four laptops and four desktops. Had some difficulties with installation but a call to SMC tech support helped resolve the problems (SMC tech support is fast and excellent - best tech support I've found in years). Unfortunately, I have to contact Lenovo to have them re-configure inbuilt wireless card in laptop running Vista (adding to my growing distaste for Vista). My Macbook and other laptops running XP connected with no difficulty. My two desktops running Netgear cards will not recognize the router, so I had to call Netgear, but they wanted $36.50 for a half-hour of support b/c my cards were out of warranty. So, that sucked. Looks like I'll need to get SMC adapter cards for the desktops. I suppose I should have just purchased a newer Netgear router. I think the SMC router is very good overall -- I'm getting a strong signal and fast downloads. My problems are probably not the same that other users might experience, but I just wanted to save another user from the same hassle factors that I've had to go through with my setup....
11 of 11 found the following review helpful:
The most stable 11n router for consumers May 26, 2009
By T. Takebe
I work in network engineering so I'm used to the stability of expensive commercial routers and APs. Many consumer routers tend to fluctuate in output or have software issues that cause slow downs, connection drops, and even device crashes which require manual reboots to fix. Features and ease of set up are important, but stability is usually the single most important requirement in home networks so that the router can be installed and forgotten.
I have worked with various consumer routers from SMC, Linksys, D-Link, Trendnet, Belkin, Netgear, etc but SMC routers have usually been the most stable one for me that requires the least connection drops and manual restarts since their first 11a/b routers. Linksys routers do have the best software and most features so they are popular for enthusiasts, but they simply don't match SMC's stability with various types of networks.
SMCWGBR14-N is another rock solid router from SMC that doesn't require routine manual restarts even for very flaky PPPoE WAN connections. It's the perfect router to install and forget. Feature wise it has mostly everything you need, from one touch set ups to advanced signalling configuration. The printer / scanner port is definitely a plus for home networks sharing a printer. It saves energy and hassle.
The router has a small footprint and has an average but very solid signal strength. (Which is far better than various "boost" models which fluctuate in strength and cause connection drops) A design issue would be that it does not have wall-mount holes. It does come with an optional base for vertical standing, though.
If I were asked to install a 11n wireless home network for a regular family, I'd choose this router without a blink. Like every router there may be some compatibility issues with certain wireless NICs but these can usually be fixed by updating the NIC drivers or by tinkering with wireless settings.
27 of 32 found the following review helpful:
 Firmware Bug Does Not Allow User to Change Default Admin Password Jul 28, 2009
By M. Payne
I see that overall, this product has gotten mostly good reviews, which is why I purchased it. After setting it up, I discovered that I could not get any of my computers to connect to the internet. Nice! I called SMC Tech Support, and was walked through re-setting it. Lo and behold, I could now get onto the internet. Next, I went in and dutifully changed the default SMC Admin password. Again, NO INTERNET. I called SMC Tech Support again. This time, the tech told me that there is a KNOWN BUG in the firmware that, if, as suggested, you change the default admin password, then you CANNOT ACCESS the INTERNET. After voicing my displeasure with the technician, I went to the SMC website, and sent them an email asking if and when they were going to fix this bug. CRICKETS....... This is unacceptable to me and should be to anyone else considering this router.
18 of 21 found the following review helpful:
 Reliable router but bad web filter and access control Nov 26, 2009
By zemes
The stability is probably the best feature of this router. It's so stable that it is almost boring. For basic network connectivity, it just plain works.
Setup is incredibly easy as well. You could get a basic network connection within five minutes. I however struggled a little bit in the beginning, not because of this router, but because of my Internet provider (Verizon FIOS). I will give a more detailed count for this at the end of this review. For the basic setup, if you follow the proper DHCP lease renewal with your Internet provider (details see below), this router is virtually foolproof. Really, all you need to do is to hook up two Ethernet cables, one to the wall and the other to the computer. As usual, it is highly recommended that you log onto the router to change the SSID and security for your wireless network (WLAN).
The speed of this router is comparable to the D-Link DIR-655 which was replaced. The D-Link worked fine for a couple years, but recently became unreliable. Perhaps I am spoiled, I don't find anything so exciting about the speed of this router. But for my purpose, it is plenty fast. So I don't have any complaints either.
The signal strength is excellent. I have this router upstairs. The entire house (a two-story building) gets excellent connection everywhere.
Advanced features like "virtual server" all work as they should.
Bad Web filter and access control:
My biggest complaint about this router is its worse than inadequate design of the web filter and access control. To be fair, most routers don't have a carefully designed Web access control and Web filter. You have the feeling that all these features are added as an afterthought just so that the manufacturer can make a claim. Not carefully programmed at all. The web filter of SMC, however, is without doubt the worst among the bad.
The SMC's web filter has just one mode. If the web filter is enabled, it essentially shuts down the Internet by default and specifically allows only those individual websites you manually enter. All other websites blocked. This is such an extreme control mode. I can imagine that some parents wanting tightest possible Web access control may be interested in this mode. But for most common situations, what is more practical is an opposite mode in which all sites are allowed by default except for the ones that are entered by the user to be blocked. The D-Link router DIR-655 has this mode and is therefore better, but even with D-Link, the design is very much inadequate.
The filter and the schedule policies are completely inflexible. The whole router has just a single filter. You may set different policies with different schedules, but there's no way to customize the web filters for individual computers. For the manufacturers, having a feature like this is just a matter of programming. They're just not paying attention to such things that are really useful. I guess they've been just busy trying to make these routers work in the first place during all these years. With SMC, however, it does so well in connectivity that you have a feeling that the router technology has finally matured enough to consider other things beyond just making a stable network connection. But SMC did so little. It's just a pity that they do such a poor job beyond the basics.
DHCP issues with the Internet provider (not a SMC problem but highly relevant):
Finally, I'd like to tell you my experience with setting up a wireless router with Verizon FIOS because I think it may save you a lot of trouble. With FIOS (I suspect with many other Internet providers as well), the Internet connection comes with something that they call a "DHCP lease" which is given to a particular router with a specific Mac ID. To switch to a different router, you will have to break the existing lease and get a new DHCP lease. If you don't do this, but just take off your old router and connect the new router, you will not be able to get an Internet connection.
After almost 2 hours of struggling, I thought I got a bad sample of the SMC router, and decided to pack it and return it. I'm glad that before I did that, I picked up the phone to call the customer service. Frankly, the Verizon tech support representative was nearly useless. He kept thinking that I was someone who didn't understand how to set up wireless, and kept telling me how to set up the wireless network, which was entirely unrelated to the problem I was facing. I had the feeling that following a scripted procedure to set up wireless network was the only thing he knew how to do. At the end, he just gave up and said the only thing he could do for me was to break my connection and restart it and see what happens. Although he didn't have a clue, that was what actually solved the problem, and I suddenly realized what was going on. All I need to do was to break the DHCP lease for the old router, and establish a new DHCP lease for the new router.
Once I realized the problem, I saw that the whole thing could be super easy, because I really didn't need to call the customer service at all. There are several ways to break the existing DHCP lease and get a new one.
The first method is from your PC. To do this, follow these steps: (1) Make sure that you have the old router connected first (critical, because otherwise you can't get a connection for your new router no matter how you set it up). (2) Go to "start", type in the search box "cmd" and it will give you the DOS window. (3) From there, enter DOS command line: [ ipconfig /release ] (not including the brackets). (4) Once the old DHCP is released, disconnect the old router from the Internet immediately. (5) Replace the old router with the new router.
The above method may not be the easiest way, but it's probably the most accessible way because you don't need to remember how to access your router's management interface from a browser. I actually tried this method before I called, but unfortunately, because I did not realize what the problem was, I tried the IPconfig command with the new router connected. Of course it would not work. There simply wasn't any communication between the new router and the server.
The second method is to log onto the *old* router's management interface (with the old router connected of course). Most routers have a management interface that provides an option to release DHCP. If your router has that, do that.
The third method is of course to call the customer service.
Regardless of which method you use to get a new DHCP lease, it is extremely important to remember that once the old DHCP is released, you need to disconnect the old router from the router immediately. If you don't do that, the Internet service provider is likely to restart a new DHCP lease with your old router again automatically. This could happen within a minute. So you really need to be doing this very quickly with perfect timing. Strangely enough, no one told me this, and all my struggle came with my lack of this knowledge.
If you follow the right procedure, you really don't need the setup CD that comes with the router. Running the setup CD would really have made things much more difficult. Once you break the existing DHCP lease with the old router, and timely connects the new SMC router to establish a new DHCP lease (at least with FIOS, the new DHCP lease is established with the new router automatically and quickly), the Internet connection is set up before you even know. It's that simple.
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