SPCR

Well just decided to let you know that back ink 2003 I bought the Micronet SP881 VPN Firewall Router.

The router was rated 10/100Mbps on all ports.
However in 2009 when it was possible to get 100Mbps Internet I discovered that the WAN port is only 10Mbps !

Back then Micronet was very respectable networking equipment company from Taiwan. There were no alternatives back then and the price was 280Eur. Now the router itself was very stable and reliable in comparison to any other like ASUS RTN-15, D-Link DIR 604 etc. Those were crap.

But to lie to a customer back in 2003 knowing the product will be discontinued long before there is need for such speeds for WAN, is ridiculous and cannot be forgiven even now in 2015.

I upgraded my network using Microtik products, and I'm happy now but the weird part is that the router RJ45 port has a link speed LED that shows 100Mbps, so does windows status windows for connections if plugged into WAN port. So the only explanations is the CPU is too slow to handle 100Mbps. This is clearly design flaw.

As this SP881 Micronet VPN Firewall router was marketed for business use I wonder how many companies got cheated this way. If one did not do immediate testing you would never know back in those days.

Just because the ports are 10/100 that is no guarantee that the router will be able to fully utilize a 100Mbit internet connection. Nothing strange with LAN-WAN being nowhere near 100Mbit on a router from 2003.

the modem or router was set to half duplex when the other was set to full, causing auto negotiate to fall back to 10?

I will echo Vicotnik in saying it is completely unrealistic for a a router from 2003 in that price range to route 100 mbit. The extremely popular WRT54G came out in Dec 2002 and can barely do 25 mbit without problems. The CPUs used in low end routers back in 2003 simply were not fast enough to do 100 mbit.

Smile wrote:Well just decided to let you know that back ink 2003 I bought the Micronet SP881 VPN Firewall Router.

The router was rated 10/100Mbps on all ports.
However in 2009 when it was possible to get 100Mbps Internet I discovered that the WAN port is only 10Mbps !

If I didn't misunderstand, you're talking about a more than a decade old networking product, which you found being somewhat weak 6 years after the initial purchase, but you're ranting about that further 6 years later you found it somehow inadequate, thus 12 years after the initial purchase, right?

In case, I'm a bit confused: all in all what could be the point of such a two-stages, retro-rant? Maybe something like that?

Nice link about that Pentium 90Mhz booting windows 7, it just shows what crap is windows 8. That it can't boot in a pc running windows 7. This has something to do how the DVD is made. The boot loader of windows 8 is non standard and can't boot on some DVD drives at all.

That said getting back on topic I agree back in those days the routing of 100Mbps is hardly possible with low end CPU's in the routers. However why then mislabel the products to 100Mpbs on all ports? Other than false advertising?

but you're ranting about that further 6 years later you found it somehow inadequate, thus 12 years after the initial purchase, right?

Right, but you buy some Micronet or other company networking gear now in year 2015 they promise you some specifications and then who stops them from mislabel the products now? You could get fiber ports half their speed, gigabit ports half their speed?

And who the heck has all their time benchmarking their gear on every port etc? If the company is not liable for their specifications then they are lying to their customers. Lie once and it will be very hard to trust such a company again.

washu wrote:I will echo Vicotnik in saying it is completely unrealistic for a a router from 2003 in that price range to route 100 mbit. The extremely popular WRT54G came out in Dec 2002 and can barely do 25 mbit without problems. The CPUs used in low end routers back in 2003 simply were not fast enough to do 100 mbit.

The router I mentioned was like 3 or 4 times as expensive as WRT54G

Vicotnik wrote:Just because the ports are 10/100 that is no guarantee that the router will be able to fully utilize a 100Mbit internet connection. Nothing strange with LAN-WAN being nowhere near 100Mbit on a router from 2003.

I benchmarked the 1 and 4 LAN ports their speed as around 90Mbps. The LAN port 1 and WAN port was 12Mbps. Now the connection LEDS show 100Mbps link between WAN port. The windows 7 LAN card status window confirms this as 100Mbps also.

So if the CPU of the router can route 90Mbps from port 1 to 4, then why it can't do the same for WAN port if the link is established at 100Mbps?

LAN 1-4 is just a 10/100 switch. I have no doubt Micronet put the buzzwords out there for all to see, but if you can point to where they actually guarantee that throughput I will eat one of my spare WRT54GLs.

Link speed is not actual speed. Do you also complain that the SATA HDDs can't do 6.0 Gbit/s?

What you can do is play around with different versions of the firmware and/or the settings to see if you can improve performance.

Smile wrote: The router I mentioned was like 3 or 4 times as expensive as WRT54G

The routing engine in a Cisco 7206VXR cost as much as a small car when new but cannot route 1 Gbps despite linking at that speed. I know this because I worked with a couple for several years.

As Vicotnik said, you are confusing link speed with processor speed. Should I wish to, I have the components to put a 1 Gbps NIC in a 486SX 25. It will link at 1 Gbps. Do you think it could route at that speed?

washu wrote:I will echo Vicotnik in saying it is completely unrealistic for a a router from 2003 in that price range to route 100 mbit. The extremely popular WRT54G came out in Dec 2002 and can barely do 25 mbit without problems. The CPUs used in low end routers back in 2003 simply were not fast enough to do 100 mbit.

Friend gave me wrt54gl, with tomato 1.28.
Simple non scientific benchmark speedtest.net shows 41mbit download, 34mbit upload.
Now your mentioned speed of 25mbit is way faster than 12mbit for micronet sp881.

Smile wrote:Now your mentioned speed of 25mbit is way faster than 12mbit for micronet sp881.

Mind, you're answering to a post "just" one year, three months and one day later, and still talking about a defunct 13-years old router in a silence-oriented PC forum: I understand that you posted 46 times in about 12 years, but have you ever heard about "necroposting"?