Given the explosive growth of the Internet in the last couple of years and its importance as a powerful business tool, it is becoming more and more important for companies to have access to this vast source of information. Providing Internet access to the people working in a SOHO (Small Office Home Office) LAN can improve their work quality and thus benefit the entire company. Of course, the usage of the Internet by the employees must be controlled in some way, because you wouldn't want them wasting half a day surfing the web in search of free mp3s ;) Well, the people over Compex seem to have found the perfect solution for the SOHO market in the form of the NetPassage15-B Broadband Internet Access Router. I was impressed by this router, because even though it has a tremendous amount of interesting features it is very easy to configure and use.

Before we start exploring the capabilities of the NetPassage router I want to briefly describe what routers are and what they do. This will be just a short paragraph, explaining only the basics, because a more detailed discussion will follow in my future article from the "Master a Network" series and I don't wanna spoil your fun. A router is a computer whose main job is to select the best path for packets traveling in a network from source to destination. The router has more interfaces, each connected to a different network. The router switches the packets between these interfaces. As packets reach one of the router's interfaces the router looks at the destination network address (usually an IP address since IP is the most common Layer 3 protocol) and than checks it's routing table, a table stored in the router's RAM. The routing table maps a known IP network address to an interface. The information contained in the routing table tells the router to which interface it should forward the packets. It's very much like asking for directions when you are visiting a foreign city. If the router doesn't know the route to a certain network (this is the most likely scenario) it sends the packets to one of its neighboring routers - the default route - hoping that it will know which is the route to the destination.

The information in the routing table can get there in two different ways. You can manually add an entry to it (add a static route) or the router can automatically learn routes from other routers (dynamic routes). The routing protocols are used to exchange information between routers, information such as paths to networks to which they are not directly connected to, the state of a network or information about the traffic. The most important routing protocols are RIP, IGRP and EIGRP (Cisco developed protocols), OSPF and BGP. I'll explain these protocols in my future article, so keep en eye out for it.

Well, I think it's about time to have a look at what Compex has to offer with their NetPassage 15B router.

First look

The packet in which the router is shipped contains (besides the router ;)) the external power supply, a clip to allow the router vertical installation, two manuals ("The Quick Install Guide" - English, German, Russian and French Languages - and "The Software User Guide" - English only) and "Firmware Recovery Diskette".

To install the router and start enjoying it's features you don't need to have any additional software. You have to connect the WAN interface to the Cable/ADSL modem and one of the ports of the router's LAN interface to your LAN. Than you need just a few more steps to configure the router. All these are well documented as step-by-step instructions in the two manuals and even the most inexperienced users can configure the router in no time. The manuals also offer information on how to restore the router to its factory defaults or how to recover a lost password.

The router is relatively small, 122mm x 119mm x 26mm to be more precise :) (about the same as a portable CD player). It can be positioned both horizontally and vertically or it can be wall mounted so it occupies very small room.

NetPassage 15-B product picture

As you can see from the above picture the router has a simplistic design which doesn't confuse you.