Nexland SOHO Internet Sharing Box

As routers go, the Nexland SOHO is a good performer and has a straightforward setup. I have a PPPoE DSL connection and had no issues with setting the router to PPPoE support and obtaining a reliable connection. The router the SOHO replaced, an SMC Barricade 7004ABR, had become somewhat unreliable after a year or so and begun dropping the modem connection and slowing appreciably during use. It had become a normal course to reboot the SMC router several times per day to alleviate the dropped connection and annoying slowdowns. In looking at replacements for the SMC, I read reviews of most routers in the under $200 range and the SOHO seemed to be what I wanted. With an ARM7 50mhz Processor and the "Over 8mb Bi-Directional Throughout" it appeared to be well qualified performance wise.

Thus far, the SOHO has indeed performed reliably (with one exception) and, based on slightly improved ping times, is somewhat faster then the SMC router it replaced. There is an issue with VPN support, however, that has been very disappointing. First of all, the SOHO can support only one VPN connection at a time, unlike the more expensive Nexland models. That fact is openly displayed on the box and I certainly knew about it prior to purchase. The major failing, however, is that it does not allow for automatic MTU negotiation through a combination of MTU Discovery and Black Hole Detection within the VPN session. The primary VPN use I have is performing work from home as I seldom have to go into the office anymore. I do need to connect to a number of INTRANET applications via VPN and that's where I ran into the only major problem with the SOHO. I found that I could not reach the internal Lotus Notes servers nor could I access some of the in-house INTRANET applications such as the timekeeping. Other INTRANET applications such as accessing internal mainframe sessions did work but the problematic ones are very critical. When trying to connect to those applications such as Lotus Notes, the server connection would fail and eventually time-out (after a frustratingly long period of time). Removing the SOHO and going back to the SMC router or bypassing the router entirely by connecting the PC directly to the modem allowed all the applications to work without problem so the issue was within the SOHO itself. A call to Nexland support got me confirmation that this is a "known issue with all Nexland routers" and the only way around it is to manually lower the MTU on the PC until the sessions can be established. The problem with manually lowering the MTU, however, is that it affects all applications by reducing the maximum MTU size. I found that I had to lower mine from the default 1500 down to 1400 before I could connect with all my VPN applications. Needless to say, this is not really a "solution" and I am greatly disappointed. Had I known about this earlier on, I would not have purchased the Nexland at all. As a final blow to my plans, the "30 Day Money-Back Guarantee" on the Nexland box apparently refers only to those routers purchased directly from Nexland, which mine was not. And, to add salt to the wound, the vendor I did purchase the router from doesn't allow refunds on routers at all.