| MacSense XRouterPro Reviewed by: Michael Flaminio Review Date: 02.02.01 Manufacturer: MacSense MSRP: $169.99 |
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The XRouter Pro from MacSense is a cable/DSL Internet router designed to connect multiple devices to the Internet. Whether it’s a Mac, printer or even an AirPort hub, the XRouter Pro offers an effective and inexpensive way to connect practically unlimited number network devices to the Internet. The XRouter gives users flexibility and security for their networks at a reasonable price.
The Basics
When you’re connected to the Internet, your computer has an ID called an IP address. This address allows Internet servers to find your computer when you request information. For example, when you downloaded this web page, your computer
sent a request to IGM’s Web server.
The Web server then sent this page to your computer, using your IP address to guide
the data through the Internet. Like your street address or phone number, each address is unique for a specific destination. Each computer has its own Internet address. If you have two computers connected to the Internet, you will need two IP addresses. IP addresses come in two different forms, first a static IP address and second is a dynamic or DHCP address.
As an example for this review, lets assume that you have three computers that you wish to connect to your computer. To use all three computers at the same time, you will need three IP addresses. There’re only two ways to handle this, the first being to request additional IP addresses from your Internet service provider. Many ISPs provide one IP address per account for basic access, which allows you to use one computer at a time. For a fee that can typically range from $5 to $10 per month, you can add additional IP addresses. The second option, which we’re covering here, is to run some type of router device that can issue additional IP addresses on its own.
Most basically, a router handles the data flow between or within a network. For our example, we need the router to act as a DHCP server to assign IP addresses and handle routing of data between the Internet and our three computers. The old way of doing this was to set up a computer to act as a software router. It could be a Mac, Windows or Linux computer running software that can do what we need. This works fairly well, but you need to designate a computer get some software and know how to configure it all to make it work. Recently, however, a number of stand-alone products can do this task much easier and for less money.
XRouter Pro
The MacSense XRouter Pro is a combination four-port router and switch. You can directly connect four devices to the router, or add any standard Ethernet hub to add on up to 254 devices. The XRouter Pro is a 10/100 Mb device, meaning you can get the most out of network connections. While most cable modem and DSL service use 10 Mb connections, you can still transfer data between connected LAN devices at a full 100 Mb/sec. Being a switch and not just an Ethernet hub, connected devices can communicate at up to a full 100 Mb/sec.
To configure the router, you only need a Web browser. All settings for the XRouter are configured via a browser interface, making it fully cross platform compatible. Also, unlike other router devices, the XRouter offers both Mac and PC support for firmware upgrades. MacSense ships a Mac OS utility that is able to upload any updates released by the company. The advantage here is that Mac users can easily apply patches that can fix bugs and add features to the router.
Security
The Internet is a free for all environments that exposes users to all sorts of potential
problems. If your computer is online for any extended period of time, there’s always
a risk of someone undesirable poking around your computer. Mac users have typically
been immune to these problems, however, with the release of Mac OS X, Macintosh system
connected to the Internet will have a variety of new services available for remote
access.
The primary method for doing some malicious things to a computer is essentially looking
through a keyhole. Network deviants will ping your computer, looking to see what
services are running on the computer. Last year for example, someone came up with
a method of using Mac OS computers to act as a partner in a denial of service attack.
The attacker would essential fool a Mac with a phony IP address and request erroneous
network data. The attacker would make the Mac think that the host computer was in
fact another computer, such as a Web server of an unsuspecting company. The attacker’s
host computer would send bogus network data to a Mac and the Mac would reply with
a large data packet. Thinking that some corporate Web server sent the original packet
instead of the attacker host computer, the Mac would reply to the Web server. If
enough Macs unknowingly participate in this attack, it could easily overwhelm the
Web server and put it out of business.
In this example, the computer on the Internet was exposed without really doing anything.
Apple has since fixed the issues so that it can’t happen any more, but the way this
scheme worked, the attacker would try to find as many Mac computers on the Internet
as possible. It didn’t matter if they had a static or dynamic address, they only
needed to be online at a specific period of time and be able to transmit large amounts
of data. To find these computers, an attacker would just ping a wide range of computers
at a specific port number waiting for a reply. If the attacker found a reply, he/she
knew they found a Mac that could participate in their denial of service attack.
The XRouter prevents this type of thing from happening, as it limit the exposure
to such prodding. In a nutshell, a network router places a buffer between your computer
or LAN and the Internet.
Limitations
Just as the XRouter offers some security, it can also get in the way. If you do wish
to run an FTP server, mail server or anything else, the router must be configured
to handle external connecions. As with our example, lets say one of our the three
computers runs a FTP server. To make this work, you will need to configure the XRouter
to take FTP connection requests and router them to a specific computer. The down
side here is that you can only set up one service per router. In other words, if
you have three computers, only one can be a FTP server.
You can also run into problems if two computers behind the router try to access the
same server at once. From the server’s perspective, only a single computer is requesting
data, when in fact multiple computers are using the same IP address from behind the
router ti access the server. As an example, if two of the computers behind the router
tried to transfer to the same FTP server, or even play a game of Quake on the same
game server, the router could not correctly direct the data to the right machine.
Conclusion
Cable/DSL routers are a great thing. They’re affordable and very flexible. They allow
you to a lot of things with your home network while also saving you some money. Instead
of paying an cash each month for extra IP addresses, you can buy a Cable/DSL router
and it’ll pay for itself in a short period of time.
The XRouter Pro is a little more expensive than similar products, but does offer
full Mac support. Their software and tech support department supports the Mac OS,
which is always a plus.
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