Really the Final Words--LINKSYS Etherfast Router

In response to yesterday's "Final Follow Up" on our Tuesday Hands-On Report, a number of readers provided counterpoints stating that they had good experiences with LINKSYS's customer support and stating that they had many problems with the Macsense XPro router. I can't confirm either since I've had no need to use the former and have not tried the latter. I did receive other responses confirming my bad experience with the LINKSYS built-in Java page firmware updater. So there you have it.

Finally, I have written to Macsense so we may get an eval unit in the future to do a head-to-head comparo.

-- TGIF, September 8 --

Hands-On Report--LINKSYS Etherfast 10/100 5-Port Workgroup Switch: We received the $50 (free overnight shipping) LINKSYS switch (EZXS55W) from Outpost.Com overnight as advertised and plugged it into our Local Area Network (LAN). Here are its features:

* 5 Port 10/100 Autosensing Ports with Both Half and Full Duplex Modes
* Perfect for Integrating Your 10BaseT and 100BaseTX Network Hardware
* Switched 10/100 Ports Run at 10Mbps, 20Mbps, 100Mbps, up to 200Mbps
* NWAY Technology Detects Cabling Type, Speed, and Duplex Mode
* Compatible with Virtually All Major OSes
* Internal Bandwidth of 2.4Gbps
* Advanced Store-and-Forward Packet Switching Optimizes Data Transfers
* Auto Partitioning Protects PCs from Downed Network Lines
* Signal Regeneration Ensures Data Integrity
* Free Technical Support
* 5-Year Limited Warranty

We don't do much copying of large files or playing of fast 3D games over our LAN so we obtained the switch largely to see how 100baseTX ethernet compares with 10baseT in a small SOHO network. The switch is small, some 3.5" by 4.5" as compared with the LINKSYS router reported on Tuesday which is 6" x 7.5", but with the same form and color. It has 6 ports (1 an uplink) but only 5 may be used at a time. With the router input and an uplink to a 5-port 10baseT hub using 2 ports, there are only 3 ports available for devices. Those 3 ports were filled with connections to a Power Mac G4 sawtooth, a blue & white G3 and a PowerPrint print server, all with 100baseT capability.

How well does the switch work at 100baseT? We conducted a simple throughput test by timing the transfer of a 161.3MB file from the G3 to the G4 through our Macsense 10baseT hub and the new LINKSYS 10/100baseTX switch using FileSharing over AppleTalk. Of course, transfers using the TCP/IP protocol rather than the much slower Appletalk/FileSharing protocol would be much faster. It took 9.77 minutes (2.2 Mbps) through the Macsense 10baseT hub and 1.43 minutes (15 Mbps) through the LINKSYS 10/100baseTX switch, nearly 7 times faster. Since 100baseT switches are getting nearly as cheap as 10baseT hubs, they are probably the best option especially if one frequently transfers large files over a LAN.