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Date |
: May 14th, 2002 |
| Category |
: Networking |
| Manufacturer |
: Nexland |
| Author |
: Jin-Wei Tioh |
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The Pro100 has a quite a few features not found in competing products. There are a plethora of ways to achieve port forwarding through its firewall; static port, port range and triggered port range mapping are all supported.
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A nice feature is the ability to identify machines by MAC address and reserve IP addresses in the LAN DHCP table. This eliminates some potential work in configuring the client machines, and allows the machine to be assigned to an access filter (ie. port filter) group as well as being binded to a specific PPPoE session in a multi-session scenario.
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A full range of access, or port filters is provided, allowing you to control who has access to what services on the LAN. There are 12 pre-made filters that cover most popular services (eg. News, Real Audio, Telnet), with the ability to roll your own custom TCP and/or UDP packet filters. In a more corporate setting this is an integral feature when coupled with access filter groups, preventing frivolous use of network resources (or indeed blocking WAN access entirely), and yet granting others unrestricted access at the same time.
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One of the more intriguing features is the serial port. Using the provided null modem serial cable, it is used to access the serial configuration console of the Pro100, although the functionality is fairly limited compared to its web-based interface. Another use of the port is for the connection failover feature of the Pro100. If the Ethernet-based WAN connection crashes and burns, a PPP session via an attached modem or ISDN device will be triggered. It will drop back to the Ethernet connection once it comes online again. This will provide at least the necessary bandwidth for essential services such as e-mail in an emergency. We had a USRobotics Sportster installed, and in a simulated Ethernet WAN failure, this arrangement worked beautifully.
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The main selling point of the Pro100, and the reason for the $50 or so premium over competing products is its VPN capabilities. The main buzzwords in VPN are L2TP (Layer 2 Tunneling Protocol), IPSec and PPTP (Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol). Nexland's product line support unlimited PPTP and IPSec tunnels through it, with both PPTP and IPSec servers being simultaneously supported with VPN client sessions. All this through a firewall - small wonder that Nexland holds a patent on its Multi-session Pass-Thru technology. A single L2TP pass-through session is even supported. A 10 client license for Symantec's RaptorMobile personal firewall and VPN client is bundled.
To top it off, the Pro100 sports a built-in dynamic DNS client and support for both the RIP2 dynamic routing protocol and static routing.
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