These units are very cheap these days. They tend to run very hot. But they do
the job as a standby unit.

It has 4 UTP ports, a WAN port for a modem and also boasts a managed printer port
so that all the wireless & utp units can access it.

What proved painful in getting this unit working was the contrast with how easy
it was to get my former (now deceased) Buffalo Airstation working.

The last hurdle I had to overcome was getting the SMC Barricade to be accepted by my adsl modem. This adsl unit is a D-Link DSL 300+ (modified by the ISP).

It requires you to connect to it (it uses ip 192.168.0.1) and I have to enter my pppoE details then save them in flash (only holds 1 set of params). It also takes note of your computer's MAC address.

When I tried accessing the adsl from behind the SMC Barricade unit (SMC Wan connected to adsl modem lan port & pc connected to port 1 on the SMC) it wouldn't show the admin page on the adsl unit. I could access the admin page for the SMC ok.

After several hours fruitless trying, and a 5 hour break. It occured to me I needed to do an initial set up to my isp connection by going direct from PC to adsl modem, then I noted down the MAC address the adsl had stored, then reconfigured my SMC Barricade to use the same MAC address and BINGO the internet was there when I connected its wan port to the adsl port.

I must have totalled 8 hours messing with various configs. As mentioned, my Buffalo Airstation unit never had any difficulty accessing the adsl modem. I was always able to see the adsl admin page thru the Air station & thus go through a normal delete / add of my account info in the adsl modem.

Anyway, it seems that most WiFi routers will allow you to spoof the required MAC address should that be needed.

Doug Marker

The problems with the Barricade accessing my D-Link 300+ adsl modem were repeated with the new WGR614 I installed today.

The easy fix was to tell the D-Link WGR614 to use the MAC address expected by the adsl modem & as with the SMC Barricade, the WGR614 then worked ok.

As to be expected the newer box has more config options although the Barricade wasn't too bad.

It is very light compared to the Barricade but the power source is the same (Both require 5VDC@2A). But the WGR614 does also get a bit warm (SMC gets hot).

For a while, I will run both (WGR614 on chan 11 & the SMC on 3), will be interesting to see how they cope. I am sure the channels need to be at least 5 apart to avoid any frequency overlap.



Doug Marker