Buffalo Air Station Turbo G Wireless Cable/DSL Router  

This high-speed wireless router for SOHO networks bundles excellent security, manageability and performance at an affordable price

Wednesday, February 22, 2006

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This is an HSM 125 Mbps router, meant for SOHO users and small networks. It offers a four port 10/100 Ethernet switch, as well as one 10/100 WAN port. As is the standard for Buffalo wireless products, this Air Station also supports AOSS (Air Station One-touch Secure System) for security. The unit can be set up to work both as an access point and as a router. In AP mode, it can be used both in ad-hoc as well as infrastructure modes. It can also act as a bridge or repeater between two APs.

For configuration and management, the router has a Web-based configuration interface. The router automatically configures itself when you select the 'Easy install' mode while bringing up the Air Station for the first time. It can be switched from the router mode to AP mode and vice-versa. All configuration of this router is done through a Web interface. It has a built-in DHCP server to provide IP addresses on systems connected to its switch. It supports 11 channels with automatic selection. For a higher performance, you can turn on its HSM mode from the 'Frame Bursting' menu on its Web-based configuration screen, and the available connection speed is boosted from 54 to 125 Mbps. It also lets you control the output power of its antenna. If the output power is assigned below 100%, it reduces the range of the Air Station. It supports WDS bridging to let you create a network of APs without letting clients along the way connect to it. Another feature is the DTIM (Delivery Traffic Indication Message) period, which indicates how often the clients will be served by the AP. For security, the Air Station has a firewall with IDS. Whenever an intrusion is detected, it notifies you via e-mail or a pop-up to a configured IP address. It supports WEP, TKIP and AES encryption schemes. Other security features include an optional 802.11g protection. You can also use its MAC filtering feature to register a list of known MAC addresses and then only those clients will be allowed to connect. With its Privacy Separator, two clients connected wirelessly through this AP will not be able to communicate directly with each other. The Air Station features 26 different types of logs from access to traffic statistics. It can also send the logs to a syslog server.

This Air Station uses DSS (Direct Sequence Spread) and OFDM protocol for communication and frequency range of 2.412-2.462 MHz. By default, this device receives RIP information only from LAN but it can be configured for RIP transmission and reception over WAN. Manual routes can also be entered. Air Station also supports DMZ. Just enter DMZ's IP address and incoming packets with no recognizable destination port information will be redirected to the DMZ's IP address. It has pre-configured IP filters, but new rules can be added. You can monitor clients connected to the AP and packet traffic information through its Web interface.

Test results
For our tests, we used an IBM Think Pad with Win XP SP2 and ran NetIQ Qcheck. For HSM testing, we used Buffalo's Air Station Turbo G CardBus adapter. On the 54 Mbps mode, we got a throughput of 23.810 Mbps. When we turned on the HSM mode, this went up to 34.783 Mbps, which is slightly higher than its rated 34.1 Mbps with the CardBus adapter's box. Latency was 1 ms. In the file transfer test, a 50 MB file took 29 seconds in default and 25 seconds in HSM modes. However, when we used it in the 802.11b mode, the throughput obtained was 5.063 Mbps with a latency of 2 ms.

Bottom Line: The product is competitively priced and comes with a 2-year warranty. A good buy for the SOHOnetwork.

Swapnil Arora

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