Routing Support All of the routers we tested had strong routing support. IP, IPX and bridging with packet-level filtering and source/destination address filtering were common to all of the products. The only router to rank significantly below the others was Ramp Networks' WebRamp Entrý with i ts IP-only routing. The Cisco 776 also offers support for NAT, and though we could only set this feature up via the command line, it was the quickest and easiest to install.

We set an IP address, range, gateway and Domain Name Service (DNS) settings for the DHCP server built into the 776 router and enabled the NAT handler on the port, and immediately our DHCP-bound Windows NT workstations picked up the address from the router pool and made connections. The address was mapped directly to the single IP address assigned on the Ascend MAX 4000 at the corporate end of the link. With the exception of ADC Kendrox's product, all of the other routers supported NAT.

We attempted to test the Cisco 776's compression capability with the Ascend MAX 4000 and had problems getting the two to negotiate the Stac LZS algorithm. In Cisco's defense, we were operating on a very recent softwar e version on the Ascend. The compression implementation was STAC-9, Stac Electronics' ninth implementation of the algorithm. Cisco w as able to replicate the problem with Ascend's new firmware and should have the problem resolved by press time.

The Cisco 776 supports fixed Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) community names and SNMP GET commands, letting us monitor the performance and configuration from Hewlett-Packard Co.'s OpenView Node Manager. The 776 didn't accept SNMP SET commands, most likely for security reasons, so we were not able to actually manage the unit from our SNMP management station.

We were skeptical about using SNMP over a tarriffed connection, feeling that we might not derive enough benefit to justify the additional connect charges. But when we saw the routing tables, system information, statistics tables and graphs of individual channel and protocol usage rolling onto our management stations screen from the SNMP-capable routers, we were convinced that this was the answer to keeping periodic tabs on remote connections--especially on large networks. SNMP SET capability would have been a plus for the Cisco 776. All of the other products except for Ramp Networks' WebRamp Entrý, which has no SNMP support, offer SET capabilities.

Although ADC Kentrox's PACESETTER has the most durable POTS interface for driving a variety of telephones, the Cisco 776 offers the most advanced POTS functionality in terms of programmability. It has DTMF commands that provide useful features, such as call transfer, call conference and call-waiting cancel. It also supports "always answer," "conditional answer" and "never answer" modes for bumping data calls or signaling busy during data transfers. This lets the user decide how the router should behave on incoming voice or data calls--whether to drop existing connections or to ignore the call. The Cisco 776 also supports multiple ring types of up to six other devices over its S/T interface, letting users distinguish rings destined to other users on the same line or destined to other devices such as fax machines or modems.

ADC Kentrox PACESETTER SOH O Access Router
Right behind the Cisco 776 in price and edging it out in performance, is ADC Kentrox's PACESETTER, also a solid ISDN SOHO solution. Like Cisco's device, it offers a quick-start setup routine. However, it lacks a few of the value-added features, such as DHCP and NAT support, that we thought were crucial. Overall, though, if you're looking for simple remote-office connectivity, the PACESETTER is hard to beat.

Follow the Arrows Although the PACESETTER has a weaker GUI than the other routers we tested, its text-based arrow key-driven menu utility lets you access every setting on the router without resorting to learning a command-line syntax. It is fairly intuitive and easy to follow and offered us a quick-start setup routine that walked us through our ISDN setup--much like Cisco's Fast Step routine but without the GUI interface.