If you are looking for a great wireless routing solution for your home or office, SMC does the job quite well. The router is easy to set up and there are tons of features. The NICs set up quickly and don’t require any knowledge of networking to get connected. The routing features take literally seconds to set up, they start working immediately, and there’s plenty of speed and range for internet routing purposes. The downside is for true networking purposes such as filesharing or fileserving, the speed just doesn’t compare to a hardwired 100Mbps fast ethernet network. Response time can be slower, transfer speeds can vary, and reliability isn’t always 100%.
To sum it up, this is a great package for wireless internet routing and light networking, but if your needs require some heavy-hitting network throughput then wireless isn’t for you. If you want printserving, fileserving, big filesharing, super-security, or anything like that – go wired. Despite its lack of power in true networking, I doubt that’s what most people use wireless for anyway. Because of that, I give it an 8.5/10.
Pros
- No wires!
- Easy setup for both router and clients
- Great for internet routing
- Fully featured router
Cons
- Not the best for heavy networking
- Pricey – $200-$250 for the set
