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85% Rating: 
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Netopia R9100 |
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Effectiveness
As with all Telnet sessions, navigation of the menus is
done via keyboard interface. In order to get help with configuration, the online
reference guide is required. While useful, it would be nice if Netopia could
have bundled a utility that can both provide access to the router's
configuration, while offering context-sensitive help. Overall though, Netopia
has made the router fairly easy to configure, provided you have a strong
understanding of what the various options
mean.
In order to evaluate
the effectiveness of the R9100, I used Steve Gibson's very effective Shields UP
tool located at https://www.grc.com. this site is designed to test the security
of your connection to the internet, and helps ensure that the internal lan is
not accessible by a would-be intruder. upon opening the shields up main page, i
was greeted by the following page.
(Click to
enlarge)
As you can see, my computer
is not directly accessible by anyone on the internet. This demonstrates that the
Network Address Translation features of my router are functioning properly. In
addition to this test, Shield's UP also offers a rudimentary port scanner, which
determines which ports are actively open on a system, and what the ports are
generally used for. The port scanner reported that all ports were in stealth
mode, meaning that the router is effectively hiding them from view.
Conclusions
The Netopia R9100 Ethernet router is clearly targeted
at the small/medium business, and has a price tag to
match. Costing approximately $600 US for the unlimited user version (a 12
user limit version is available for slightly less), it is clearly not designed
for the average home
user.
With support for Virtual
Private Networking, built-in DHCP server, and a very effective firewall, this
router provides excellent security for its target audience. Netopia has done an
excellent job in targeting the business market with the R9100, and it is
definitely a viable solution for providing enhanced security on a corporate
LAN.
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