Networking Reviews

I've been using this hub for about 6 months now and am looking to replace it. About once a week, it hangs unrecoverably and requires its power cord removed to power it off, then replaced to reset it. In short, it is really a pain, and since hubs like this are a dime a dozen you would probably be better off with an SMC or a D-Link.

As stated in the other review, this product is housed in a sturdy metal casing, has lots of indicator lights, and comes from Bay Networks.

I use my DS-108 in a 100% Netgear environment. It is connected to my NetGear RT-328 ISDN Router. I have had no problems with this piece and it worked as advertised right out of the box.

The support for NetGear products is great! You can get lots of answers from the NetGear website as well as register your products online too.

I am a Systems Administrator for a growing software development company, and I give NetGear two thumbs up! If you can't or don't want to pay big bucks for Cisco, 3Com, Intel, then NetGear is for you-- the most BANG for the BUCK!

Too many Linksys hubs getting cooked. I've replaced several of them with this hub without a problem since. NETGEAR TAKE NOTE: When you have a LOT of Netgear components, you want them all to look/stack in a uniform manner! So why the silly silver oval garbage with the dim LED's??? I like rectangular blue metal! It's a much more professional design to work with.
Get these hubs before they're all gone and all you can get is funny colored plastic.

While this piece of hardware works flawlessly--and, as another reviewer notes, is a great way to turn a modem into an Ethernet feed--it's a silly concept to actually network more than 1 computer using a conventional modem as found in the RM356. Once you see this thing in action feeding 4 computers, you understand how silly the concept is... not to mention that 4 56kbps modems are, in fact, cheaper than this 1 unit.

In short, get (or wait for) broadband, make sure your broadband modem is of the ethernet variety, then buy one of the multitude of lower priced switches/minihubs available here and elsewhere if you want to share that connection.

This product has been very helpful in our office. We have 6-8 computers connected to the router (and a connected hub) on a 56k connection. It may be a bit slow at times if several people are trying to download large documents at once (which is very rare), but that certainly outweighs the hassle of having to shout across the office to see who's online and wait your turn for the modem phone line. And it outweighs the cost of having a phone line for each computer... the person that said four modems are cheaper than this router might be right, but not for long once you get four monthly phone bills!!! Also, this router has allowed us to network our office so we can share documents and printers. I recommend it!

If you don't have broadband, but would like to have your laptop access the Internet through a wireless connection, this would be a good option (you would also need to by a wireless base station as well). An alternative is the Apple Airport.

I thought these units were wonderful until mine literally(!) went up in smoke. A chip by the powerjack overheated, and continued to burn until it finally melted itself off the PCB. The unit was mounted on a wood wall in my attic - a little hotter and I could have lost everything!

Before the flame-out I thought it was great - small, cheap and easy to use. Now I'll think twice about trusting their products.

At the price this switch seems like a great deal. The switch is nice and small and I swapped it out for my old 10 mbps hub without a problem. I did not know what to expect in terms of performance, but a 550 MB file that use to take about 10 minutes with the 10 mbps hub now transfers in about 4 minutes.

This is a great inexpensive switch! I share an ADSL connection with my roomates, but the modem/router we have only has a 4-port hub built into it limited to 10Mbps. All I had to do was plug the computers into this switch, and the switch into one of the router's ports. Everything works just the same, and now we have a switched 100Mbps internal network, with room for more computers (and a free ethernet card to boot)! The "Auto-sense Crossover ports" in this switch make networking a breeze. I don't know why their other model (PN828ES) retails for so much more just because it has an uplink port.

I got the USA-19HS thinking it would be good to support a company that releases it's products with linux drivers. Well, what a disappointment this was, even though there is a picture of Tux on the box along with the Windows and Mac icons this model is not supported in Linux. I emailed Keyspan support and got an auto-repsonder that said they'll get back to me within 72 hours. It's been 4 days and still no response from them. Luckily this thing worked pretty well in OS X so I sold it to a friend of mine and bought myself another USB serial adapter, a keyspan USA-19, which is an older model with good Linux support. Although I replaced this purchase with another one of Keyspan's products I wouldn't support this company in the future and won't recommend them to anyone else.

Despite the first reviewers comments, the Keyspan 19HS works just fine with linux. The driver for the 19HS was included in the kernel source a while ago. Standard off-the-shelf kernels (2.4.24 and 2.6.5) work without any patches. In addition to regular usb support, my kernels also load the keyspan and usb-serial modules.

After executing "mknod /dev/ttyUSB0 c 188 0", I am happily communicating with Palms and GPSs using the new /dev/ttyUSB0 device.

I usually don't write-up reviews, but I am writing this to let those Mac OSX users (inc Panther which is what I am running) know that this adapter does work. I bought this for my Garmin etrex Legend GPS. I use it with my iBook and my Power Mac G4. It was a flawless installation. (1) I installed the Mac OS X drivers (2) told virtual PC to emulate COM 1 using the OS X driver, and (3) Download GPS map data to my GPS. It's that easy! Keyspan has good instructions to set up your serial devices.

I bought this product and hooked it up for a year with 2 computers on it. When, after just over a year, I put for computers on it for LAN gaming, the processor burnt up. Since hubs don't need to do much processing this is pretty poor quality..... Bottom line is if you are going to hook more than 2 computers up to it get a different brand.

We installed a 7 node LAN in our house. 5 PCs plus two HP print servers. My 17 year old daughter did the router and hub installation by just reading the manuals and using her intuition. That is a pretty strong recommendation!

I've worked as a computer consultant for may years. I migrated over from 3COM to Intel, and finally to Linksys. Why?

I found the 3COM network cards to be difficult to install and configure, both the intel and 3com hub and network cards to be expensive. I've installed over a dozen of these types of Linksys hubs and network cards have always been trouble free and easy installations. I like less work.

The 100BaseT connections work great for file transfer between servers and high use computers. The 10BaseT works great for connecting devices like network printers. And, nothing beats a self-starting network printer on a network.

Be sure to get linksys network cards too. They are cheap and work perfect, and are easy to install.

Note: If you plan to daisy chain many hubs separated by more than ten (10) meters there are issues with configuration that limit speed. This is true of all hubs. For complicated networks, see your local computer consultant.

I loved all the features, cables included, front panel, cables all in the back, good HotKey sequence, but the performance was so slow, my mouse and keyboard crawled, that I had to return it.

We have been using it for a few weeks with no problems. Works as described and we don't have any keyboard or mouse problems. The beauty of this switch is that it includes the cables at an excellant price. We are very pleased.

The PR-14-S-KIT is packaged to give the user the most value and peace-of-mind in functionality and reliability and we offer free pre-purchase consultation to evaluate compatability with your specific computer or server configuration. Now that's customer service!

Beware of a few things. First the print server is compatble with very few printers. Go to D-Link's website and make sure your printer is compatible. Also if you are running a firewall on your PC's they may not see each other. The documentation is very sparse. The unit has a firewall but no explanation as to how it functions - your just suppose to trust it! D-link support will blow you off with ANY network questions. Unless it deals directly with the box they will say they can't help you. Other than that it works - next time I'll look at Netgear.

I am happy with this router. I have a HP845C USB printer that was not listed as being supported on the D-link web site, but I had no problem networking my 2 home pc's to access DSL internet and the printer. I was unable to find another product with the USB print server feature with the router. I have had it for a month now and no problems.

Warning : The product description says "USB print server" not "Maybe a USB print server". The list of the printers that are actually supported is buried in their website. I had no trouble connecting a Windows 2000 PC to a LAN port and using my DSL connection but a Windows XP computer, connected through a 10Mbps hub, even on the same port, could not see any network connection. It looks as if the 10/100 autosensing had a problem.

this is a 2 star or less router which will take you a week of screwing around if you havn't read my review. out of the box the DHCP Server within the router will re-lease lan ip's every 9min, 24/7, constantly restarting the lan, which somehow causes all kinds of seemingly unrelated problems throughout your lan if you don't follow these simple steps. when you get the router home, plug it into the wall, cable modem and computer. turn everything on and wait for things to settle down. log onto the web base interface by pointing your web browser to your new router's lan IP of http://192.168.0.1/ (BTW, 192.168.0.1 is not a public IP . . . it's contained within your local network), admin, no password. click the tools tab and firmware button and download the firmware to your desktop. MOST importantly: nOw . . . GeT a BaLlPoInT pEn aNd ReSeT the router _BEFORE_ u go back and update the firmware!! congratulations, you have a smooth running, art state, 5 star router

I had a high-end 802.11b router for two years. When I started having problems, I wanted to go with a dual-band router. This was the cheapest one, but it matched my requirements (built-in switch). Not only was the setup simple and quick, but the network delay caused by my earlier router disappeared. I now have a great wireless network with blazing speed. Wonderful product.

I am using a DWL-G650 in my laptop and my wife uses an 802.11a based card in her laptop she uses at work mostly. She gets a good connection from within the room of the office, but if she goes very far away from the room she loses her connection. 802.11a is that way for everyone so it isn't just this router. That is the price you pay for faster speeds.
802.11g is a happy medium with adequate speeds and good range. I can go anywhere in the house and if I am furthest I can get from the router I still get a good 2Mbps transfer speeds which means no slow down in gaming online and surfing online.
The router/AP keeps our connection fairly good. There have been times when we were dropped from the wireless connection, but it came back up in about a minute after that. It happened at completely random times so it might have been something do to with interference or some weird wireless thing. It rarely happens and it fixes itself so everything is fine with me.
I'd recommend it to others and advise in changing the default password, SSID, and enable WEP to actually be secure. You'd be suprised that about 75% of people don't secure their wireless connections.

If you want a device to make your computer to freeze, and not startup, this is the device you are looking for! Oh and did I mention that some of my devices didn't even work on it? And it is UGLY! This is my first and last product from "Macally"! Don't make the same mistake I did!

This single hub has three firewire jacks, four usb 2.0 jacks, and 1 usb 2.0 upload jack. Don't let the earlier review lead you astray -- This will not let you use USB 2.0 devices through a firewire port. The firewire connections are separate from the USB connections and if you want both you need to connect two wires from the hub to your computer, one to the USB interface in your computer and another to the firewire interface.

Otherwise it's nice looking and seems to work well enough.

This is the only hub I can find that has both USB and Firewire ports, which makes it a cheap sort-of docking station for a laptop.

... I don't think it is possible to upgrade to USB 2 simply by plugging in a USB 2 hub into a USB 1.1 port. The bus controller speed is still 1.1 on the actual computer, so the signal will slow down when it hits the USB port on the Cube. Sorry.

The other review for this product suggests there is no other USB 2.0 Cardbus adapter that fits a Thinkpad. Not sure what Thinkpad he has, but I have a T21 -- and I just got an IOGEAR adapter for half the price of the IBM proprietary one that fits just fine in the upper slot of the laptop. My guess is that other products also fits fine -- but for a fact the IOGEAR works... I have not tried the IBM but I have to give it 1 star for overpricing (more than double!) other viable alternatives.

This card is a little pricy but it has several features that I haven't found on many other cards.

One, this card has two ports with one running at full power (500 mA) without having to use an AC adapter. Most of the other cards will require you to plug in an AC adapter to get the full 500 mA. Some of these cards don't even come with the AC adapter even when one is needed.

Two, like someone else on this review said, this card uses a cable extension which makes the card itself very flat. This will prevent the card from blocking any other slot whether it is on the top or bottom slot.

I have tried this card with my Maxtor 200GB external hard drive and my Sony DRX510UL external DVD burner without any problem.

Overall, I gave it a 4 stars instead of 5 because of the high price.

This USB 2.0 PCMCIA card has a dangle cord, which few other cards have, so that it does not block the second PCMCIA slot. It has two USB connectors, one powered and one not powered.