This week I upgraded my network’s router to a bit more expensive router. So now, I’m going to give it my official review. By the way, this is the first type of post like this for my site; one where I review an item I bought. So stick with me, and lets give it a go. By the way, feel free to leave your opinions if you use this router, or ask questions by posting a comment if you are looking into getting this router or need help. I can gurentee you that I will respond within a day or so.

First off is the speed (or throughput). This router seems to do a great job in this regard. Although I have not done tests to see what LAN network speeds are through this router, I do know that WAN throughput is at 100% my alloted speed by my ISP. This is a big plus in my opinion. I have noticed that LAN traffic has speed us considerably also. Wired clients are connecting each (all 3 currently connected) at blazing 100mbit speeds. I didn’t let this file transfer finish, but according to windows it was going to take 1-2 minutes to transfer a 671MB file across my network. This is a huge improvement over my old router (WRT54G) in which that would’ve took at least 5 minutes or more.

Wireless is a big issue also. It appears to have a great range (of course this depends on your environment) and you should experience close to 54mbit speeds if your wireless client has a G card and is within 50-100 feet (typical for any connections from within your home).

I read about people complaining about this thing getting really hot on CNET. I can tell you they are lieing. It does get hot, but so do all computers (which is what a router is). You can’t expect anything this small with a computer in it to run cool. I can tell you this though, its no hotter than my modem (around the same size that I have been using for 2+ years) and is no where near as hot as some of my external USB hard drives get. One thing is for sure, it does not get so hot that you can’t even touch it. If it does, you probably got a defected unit or you are blocking the vents.

I did experience one lockup. Its been running for four days now and on the night of day 1 it locked up. Since then it has been fine. The nice thing about this router is it will tell you if its locked up (for easy diagnostics) by a status light on the front panel. I don’t know what caused it to lock up, but I don’t believe it to be a bad thing yet as it has now been three days running nice and fine.

The logging is the thing I hate about this router. If you want to keep logs you must have them emailed to you. Expect 20 or so emails a day as these logs fill up fast. It needs either support for an external logging client or a bigger flash chip. Either way, Hotbrick did not succeed in this area.

Here are some other greate features of this router:

• It will remember who has connected to it, giving you a nice database to manage your network clients with.
• Supports up to 5 user groups who can each have their own setting in the firewall, internet access/restrictions, URL blocking, and more.
• Has a great internet setup wizard to get you on the internet with no problems at all
• Has built in DDNS update client
• Has a schedule to decide when certain restrictions or policies should be enforced
• Automatically updates system time
• Small design, great power

There is my short review of this router. I’d be happy to hear any comments from people who have this router. Please, share your reviews with me.