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MAC address given was B8-9B-C9-D9-5E-00

Using the IEEE data: B8-9B-C9 (hex) SMC Networks Inc
                                                                  B89BC9 (base 16) SMC Networks Inc
                                    20 Mason
                                Irvine CA 92618
                                UNITED STATES

SMC makes cable modems, see http://na.smc.com/

The question is, where is that cable modem and who owned or leased it at that time?

I know these look pricey, but they're worth it (aka: save yourself the trouble of cheap indoor access points in a box). They have everything you need, all in a rugged outdoor enclosure. And yes, they run Linux.

SMC2891W-AG Wireless Outdoor Bridge

Data Sheet

Manual

I know these look pricey, but they're worth it (aka: save yourself the trouble of cheap indoor access points in a box). They have everything you need, all in a rugged outdoor enclosure. And yes, they run Linux.

SMC2891W-AG Wireless Outdoor Bridge

Data Sheet

Manual

"After the initial GPL violation, a flier with the URL for the source was added to the package. The GPL wasn't provided and the court found this insufficient for fulfilling the requirements of the GPL"

I went to the SMC site and it includes the GPL in the firmware section. What exactly is the violation?

Can also check out this link for more info here

On the networking component side, I've had decent luck with SMC switches, though, of course, HP's switches are really nice, too (hence why they cost so much). On the router side, Cisco is great if you can afford it, but for a place with 50 people, it's probably overkill. I've had tolerable luck with Netgear ProSafe firewall/routers, but they can be really simplistic. Sonicwall makes some easy-to-use, versatile firewall/routers, but I'm not a big fan of their per-connection licensing scheme. Fortinet makes some competitively priced mid-range firewall/routers with decent anti-virus scanning abilities, which is nice, and they're incredibly flexible. I've even been able to configure them to connect to Windows servers using LDAP and control user access to the Internet through them, which is pretty nice, and their routers are SIP-aware, which is handy if you plan on doing any in-house VoIP work. However, that flexibility comes at a price - they are REALLY quirky. Be ready for a serious learning curve if you've never dealt with one before.

I remember reading a review on the SMC skype phone (which surprisingly wasn't reviewed here !). It is about the same price as the other Skype phones ($150 dollars) but the main objection against it was that it doesn't have echo cancellation aboard. This will definitely make you hear quality difference between a GSM and this Skype phone. I guess the time-to-market is now more important for a lot of companies than the actual quality of the set.
It is feature-complete, but wifi+skype client is not enough to make a consumer-friendly product imho.

Best option: wait a little while before you buy one.

Actually there are some pretty good alternatives out there.
I have been using and recomending both SMC and Asante products. They work flawlessly and the price is good too.

• Important Stuff

There's an SMC Barricade that does that. It uses an external modem though, which brings the price up a bit. I actually use this in the office right now as my main router, and the software isn't all that great. It will crash randomly, and requires a hard reboot (can't even ping it). It will work fine for a few months, but then it seems to crash about 4 times over a 7 day period, and then it will work for months again.

Otherwise a nice router, but I wouldn't recommend it for unattended site operation.

Compare:
SMC TigerSwitch 8624T
Dell PowerConnect 5224
NetGear GSM7324
DLink DGS-3324SR
Well, that's all of them, except for Linksys, which is just rebranded Cisco equipment.
And of course, they all use COMPLETELY DIFFERENT firmware. Lovely.

I would suggest SMC's 2802W (PCI) and 2835W (PCMCIA). They're reasonably priced, and work flawlessly with the Prism54 driver, which is part of the most recent 2.6 kernels.

Arcnet was a whopping 2.5mbits not 4mbits. I worked on some in the early 90's.

A quick google search for:
arcnet glossary

Arcnet

It really isn't true that anything associated with audio gets an automatic 500% markup.

I recently built a new workstation, and decided to built it in a rackmount case this time. I though it would neaten things up a lot to get my (rackmount) UPS and extra battery, server, switch, and all those pesky little boxes (firewall, cable and DSL modems, etc.) into an enclosed rackmount case. (That way, most of the cable runs are inside of the case...)

After looking at surplus racks and not finding anything that I would have in my home (my office is in my dining room) I decided to splurge and buy a brand-new rack cabinet.

I wound-up with a Middle Atlantic Products WRK-24MDK "presentation enclosure system" which is a 30" deep 24U enclosed cabinet.

At about $800, it was less than similar products designed for the server market. (Which, IMO, has by far the highest markups!)

There are somewhat more affordable choices available from Middle Atlantic, if is doesn't have to be quite so pretty. Particularly if you want a full-size cabinet. They also make some pretty nifty cabinets intended for in-wall roll-out installations, which are popular in home theatre applications.

One thing you have to watch-out for with audio racks is depth. Most audio equipment is not very deep, and most enclosed racks for the audio market are not going to be deep enough for most servers.

The cheapest way to go, if you are handy, or having custom furniture built anyway, is to just buy rackrails for a few dollars and build them into something.

The next-cheapest is to use an open rack rather than an enclosed rack. These are commonly used in corporate server rooms where individual-cabinet security is not needed. Severs typically sit on center-mounted shelves rather than actually being mounted from the ears.

And, yes, you can pretty easily find full-size and smaller racks on the surplus market (I found several locally) but they can be rough.

Keep in mind that 1U servers are VERY noisy! (The smaller the fan diameter, the more the noise, for the same volume of air moved.) This is a consideration if this is in your home or even in your office if it is in a work area. If you are a build-it-yourself type, get 4U enclosures and add your own motherboard.

I used a Chenbro RM412 case, which comes with a hot-swap SCSI backplane, and takes extended ATX mother boards.

I added a 4U shelf for all of the little boxes, and got a new low-cost rack-mount gigabit switch. (An SMC 8508T)

Boy this turned into a bit of a tome.

For a switch I went with an 8 port SMC EZSwitch 8508T. I chose it since:
1. It supports jumbo frames. According to my testing it will pass ethernet packets up to 9212 bytes which should correspond to a 9198 byte MTU.
2. It doesn't have a cooling fan. A definate plus since in my experience the little fans in switches such as this can become quite annoying as they age.
3. It comes with rack mount ears.
4. It's affordable. I purchased it from Securemart.com for $139.31 shipped. Ordered it Thursday or Friday, it arrived Monday or Tuesday.

As to NICs, one of my PCs already had an Intel gigabit port on the motherboard. In addition I purchased 4 more Intel Pro 1000/MT Desktop Adapters. Since:
1. They have good driver support on both Linux and Windows.
2. They support jumbo frames. Supposedly up to around 16000 bytes.
3. They're supposed to be pretty fast/efficient. It's kind of dated but you can find a comparison of some 32-bit gigabit NICs here.
4. They'll do 66Mhz if your motherboard supports it and of my systems does.
5. They have DOS NDIS2 drivers so I can use Ghost to make/restore images over the network.

One I purchased through Intel's evaluation program for $35.31 shipped. As I recall it took over a week to show up. The other three I ordered from OnlineMicro for $28 each plus $11.32 shipping. Be sure to change the shipping option from ground to 2 day air if you order more than 1, it's cheaper. They shipped them out the day of my order and they arrived on time.

One of the Intel NICs died about 4 hours after I installed it. I swapped it with another and the replacement has been working fine for a few weeks now. I ran the diagnostics on it and other all but the link test passed. When the OS is booted up the switch shows no link lights but sometimes when the PC is off the link lights do come on. I've also tried it in another PC where it exhibits similar symptoms. I haven't yet contacted Intel about getting it replaced.

I spent a lot of time tweaking various things. Some findings:
1. With default SO_RCVBUF sizes a MTU in the neighborhood of 4000 or so bytes seems to get about the best network/application wide throughput. Specifically the otherwise fast NF7-S system below would lose almost 50% throughput with 9000 byte MTUs with the default SO_RCVBUF size. Linux to Linux lost around 30% as I recall.

In theory you can change the default SO_RCVBUF size on linux by echoing appropriate values to:
/proc/sys/net/ipv4/tcp_rmem
Other than that you appear to have to change this setting in each individual application. One application of note that allows you to easily make this change is samba. See your: /etc/samba/smb.conf

2. If you crank the SO_RCVBUF size up to 200ish k or more then a 9000ish byte MTU can eek out another 5ish percent more bandwidth. Thus for the moment I've decided to just stick with 4076.

3. MTUs that are not of a size of the form 8x+4 cause Linux to behave oddly when it performs path MTU discovery. Namely for jumbo sizes that don't fit that form the discovery decides that the PMTU is 1492. You can read more detail about it in a Usenet post I made here. I still don't have a good picture of what'

A friend of mine just went nuts when he found out about a new switch from SMC, the SMC8508T. While it's unmanaged, it offers non-blocking architecture across the entire line as well as support of jumbo frames up to 9K, which is extremely unusual for SOHO stuff. Not even a lot of expensive Cisco stuff does jumbo frames. And he paid $150 for it.

Why should you care about jumbo frames? I found this nice guide about that here.

Cisco has declared the 675 router dead, and stopped supporting it. Before they declared it dead, there were frequent security upgrades, giving the impression that it might not be secure now. Cisco had bought the 675 technology from another company; it was not designed as a Cisco product.

So, maybe it would be sensible to buy a new router, and maybe that router would have load balancing. SMC seems to be a reputable company, but I don't see any SMC routers with balancing.

One model of SMC Barricade

Froogle results: SMC SMC2804WBR Cable/DSL RTR 802.11GW/Switch

"This latest Barricade g Wireless Cable/DSL Broadband Router provides hacker prevention and logging functionalities. For example, when a hacker attempts to access your network, the Barricade g can alert you via email so you can take appropriate action."

Anyone should gladly pay a little more for a good firewall.

For example: I spent a day and a half trying to upgrade the firmware on an otherwise useless SMC "PCI" NIC, the SMC EZ Connect 802.11b 2602W v.1, not to be confused with the v.2 or v.3 models with completely different chipsets. I say "PCI" because the NIC is actually the 2632W v.1 PCMCIA NIC in a PLX "riser."

Thanks only to Jun Sun's mini-HOWTO and "unofficial" firmware caches on the Web, I was able to upgrade the station firmware. Unfortunately, this did not result in the features I needed.

If vendors begin requiring consumers to flash firmware regularly, it needs to come out of the "underground" and be explained by the vendors. I'd also like to see DOS boot-disk-based firmware upgrade tools, like Dell's BIOS flash disks. I didn't like turning to Windows to run SMC's update program. (Linux and DOS attempts failed with this particular NIC.)

Thanks to the openap-ct project's Linux floppy I was able to use prism2_srec to flash a different NIC, though.

Helevius

This was only posted by one AC earlier, but he had a good point: the device on the left appears to be SMC's Wireless Multimedia Receiver http://www.smc.com/index.cfm?sec=Products&pg=Produ ct-Details&prod=308&site=c

Heh, it even says "SMC" on it.

The device on the left is almost certainly the recently released SMC Wireless Multimedia Receiver, another Prismiq-esque device.

I think Winnipeg got a bad batch. I bought mine in Toronna, and it seems to be working fine. Did you download and install the updated firmware? That was the first thing I did, and I have had no reliability problems. Anyway, for $14.99 I am extremely happy with this thing for what I need.

SMC Barricade Matrix

SMC7004ABR is the one with the RS232 port. ($85 at CDW)

Downside is you'll need an external modem ($40-$75), RS232 cable and a bit of setup time.

Definitely not as easy as broadband routers, but a possible solution for dial-up folks.

SMC Barricade Matrix

SMC7004ABR is the one with the RS232 port. ($85 at CDW)

Downside is you'll need an external modem ($40-$75), RS232 cable and a bit of setup time.

Definitely not as easy as broadband routers, but a possible solution for dial-up folks.

This would probably be what you want. Stick an 56k modem on it, set it to keep the line open, and you can keep your IM's and whatnot open. Of course, without high speed, you can't listen to any good radio stations (I've, as of late, been listening to frequence3), but what do you expect for 56k? Hehehe.. I was using the 8 port version of this untill it died. I got hold of a discontinued D-Link DI-704, but the SMC will do exactly what you want, without high-speed.

Hope that helps.. =]

Heh, I know exactly what to do... wait for my SMC Barricade to realize the drop and dial out on the modem fallover line.

Behold the power of technology.

(Yes, I did RTFA, I know it's not serious... but I wanted to brag. ^_^)

It should be available in about a week.

Yup. Cisco's LRE is great technology. But you can save yerself a fortune using SMC's Extended Ethernet. Both are VDSL implementations, SMC just doesn't carry the premium that Cisco's brand demands.

I just bought an SMC Barricade and I'm pretty happy with it... it has stateful packet inspection and a few other nice features.

1. "Take an old PC and...": Folks in dorm-rooms don't need an additionial clunker PC taking up room, pumping out heat, adding to the din, etc. While lots of geeks may appreciate living in the equivalent of a hardware cave most dorm rooms I've ever seen barely qualify as a decent closet much less a hardware bay.

2. Yes there are good low-cost 10/100 routers out there. I use a SMC Barricade 7004ABR which offers 4 10/100 LAN ports as well as a simple firewall, print-server, backup modem connection, etc. Some folks have trouble configuring it with a browser other then WinIE, if so just make friends with a Wintel laptop owner down the hall.

3. Watch for deals. I got my router for $50 after refund (check took a month to arrive, not bad.) Another buddy just bought his for $50 direct. My favorite source for good prices is dealnews networking. They've got a couple of good sub-US$100 listings right now.

According to the instructions, you can set the modem to be the sole WAN connection, or you can have it only dial up when the broadband WAN goes down. Of course, you can also define basic PPP settings and modem init string.

As for the MAC address lock, SMC allows you to configure your router to show a MAC address of your choice to the outside world, all the while NAT is running on the other side ... PLUS most people know how to spoof a MAC address anyway, regardless of the OS they're using. Cheers!

The manual seemed fine, but I've been a sysadmin for around a decade, so I'm probably not the audience they were writing for. The SMC manual is about as ``windows centric'' as the Linksys was, if not more so. They occasionally mention Unix, but assume the user knows how to set up lpr printing. As you noted, there are some websites that fill the gap for Mac users.

The documentation included with the SMC is a quick start guide and a CDROM with a PDF version of the compelete manual. Both of those are available on-line on the drivers and downloads page for the 7004AWBR, so it's easy enough to compre for yourself.

The only things that I would consider ``difficult for the average user'' was getting lpr printing to work under MacOS 9 and WEP. Printing is point and shoot for MacOSX, but under 9 you'll need to use the desktop printer utility, not the chooser. Under windows you'd need to install a driver, but I have an MS-free household so I can't comment on that process.

Getting WEP to work under MacOS (any flavor) depends requires knowing that MacOS Airport stuff uses the password you enter to generate a WEP key. If you want to enter a WEP key directly as a hexdec number, you'll need to prefix it with a $ in the MacOS dialog and without the $ in the SMC setup.

I've installed one with 2 macs and three pc's. It's got a built in serial port to share and external modem and a parallel port to share a printer. You can find it here.

-ted

I owned the linksys BEFW11S4 for about a week , after which I traded it in for the SMC Barricade 7004AWBR . The SMC is a far nicer product.

Issues with the linksys hub were (in no particular order):

• http interface did not work correctly under Netscape or other non-IE browsers.
• 802.3 and SNAP headers?? Sorry, I don't own any HP equipment....
• Big honkin security hole in the web interface that exposes the router and ISP passwords in cleartext should anyone wish to drive by with an access point....

In addition to having none of the above problems, the SMC also provides a parallel port with an lpr print server (which works fine for my environment of IRIX, Linux, and MacOSX boxen). Upgrades to the SMC work fine via ftp and http from any of the above operating systems and have added additional features (restricting access to specific MAC addresses, supporting appletalk from wire to wireless, etc).

In short, I found the SMC superior to linksys and the Apple AP, and I'm not alone. After sending a note about my experiences to the author of this review...well, just read the Final update at the end of the page. Several other sysadmins at my site have also purchased the SMC and have similar praise for the unit.

I was looking around SMC's site a few weeks ago and they had already released an 802.11a wireless access point.

I was looking around SMC's site a few weeks ago and they had already released an 802.11a wireless access point.

Speaking of 802.11 antenna's, my friends and i at one point had a plan to get an uncapped ("business class") cable modem, and to share it out w/ wireless

The antenna we decided on was the SMCANT-DI135 (warning PDF). It has a 4.5 mile signal thru a 45 degree arc, 7 mile point to point, is 10 inches long, and weighs less than 20oz. We figured it could be put on the side of a house and hidden from view fairly easily, and with 3 of them, we could have wireless access throughout most of our city (it wasn't that big)

Course we never did it, i moved to college, and we're lacking money, but...

~z

My SMC Barricade (SMC7004AWBR) is a godsend. It does FireWall, print server, 3-port 10/100 Mbps dual-speed switch, and 802.11b (AirPort) wireless access point. And you can find it online for around $220-$240 (Buy.com, Amazon.com, etc). I have never had a problem with it and have been using it for over 4 months. The interface is HTML. A $25 rebate for it currently exists until the end of the month.

I do not have any servers, but this works well and has the following features...

- DHCP server
- NAT
- RJ-45 for connection to Cable/DSL and a DB-9 for connection to a modem.

I particularly like the fact that it can do Cable/DSL and Dial-up. Since I am moving a lot, I never know what is going to be available. You can even use the dial-up as a backup, should the Cable/DSL fail. Web based administration is straightforward. But I can't comment on that beyond the basics.

Power consumption is low (22W I think) and it is a lot quieter and much smaller than a PC.

It is good for my simple needs, but you may need more for your servers.

Here is a link to the product page. You can download the product brochure and check it out for yourself.

While a Cisco Aironet would be nice, $1400 is a bit steep.

The issue is, with all these current 802.11b security issues and the probable introduction of new security features, what are good products to use and steps take? It's one thing to point out the flaws in the system; another entirely to show how to fix (or at least avoid) them.

I detect an "Ask Slashdot" here....

While a Cisco Aironet would be nice, $1400 is a bit steep.

The issue is, with all these current 802.11b security issues and the probable introduction of new security features, what are good products to use and steps take? It's one thing to point out the flaws in the system; another entirely to show how to fix (or at least avoid) them.

I detect an "Ask Slashdot" here....

I just got one a few days ago. It's working fine as a router for my cable modem, but the wireless card I bought for my laptop came with drivers that windows won't even recognize as valid drivers. I had to return it, and Fry's didn't have any other choices for PC cards. So I don't know how well the wireless works yet.

http://www.smc.com/smc/drivers/manuals/wireless/26 32.pdf

Typically other companies like Lucent charge extra for the 128 bit cards. SMC's access point (as you would guess) also supports 128 bit.

Actually, how does D-Link's 40 bit WEP work with other products? I'm accustomed to Orinoco Silver cards which support 64 bit WEP. Can other products use weaker keys to match what the D-Link is capable of or can the D-Link onlly use its WEP with other products that support specifically 40 bit keys? I suspect the latter. That would be important if WEP is required in an environment.

I'm looking around at both cards and access points with linux compatibility, here's what I've found. It seems 802.11b wireless networking is definitely getting cheaper and a number of decent products have been showing up at half previous typical prices. D-Link and SMC are leading the low end of the market with decent quality products and at least stated linux support and Orinico/Lucent and Aironet/Cisco are the leaders if you want a more robust feature set for your access point (in particular, support for external antennas).

PCMCIA Cards

• For cards, the cheapest decent card I've been able to find is the D-Link DWL-650, which can be had for around $120 from a reputable web retailer. However, while D-Link claims linux support in their FAQ, I can't find a driver to download from their FTP and a google search didn't reveal anything elsewhere. Haven't really looked hard, but dubious with that in mind. I should also note that the D-Link claims shorter ranges (1,000 ft. v. 1,500) than most of the other cards/access points, but I suspect that has little real world relevance.
• The next best option seems to be the SMC 2632W, which has linux drivers available for download (haven't tried them out, though). It tends to run about $20-30 more from similar sources, but looks like a good product and appears to have better support.
• After that, its a tossup in the $200-300 range from the major networking manufacturers. I don't see a clear advantage of any of them over the cheaper products, but haven't looked at power consumption levels and comparison tests from major publications aren't new enough to include these products (that I've seen).

Access Points

For those who are also interested in what's going on with access points, including linux support on configuration:

• Currently thinking about the D-Link DWL-1000AP which goes for a little under $300 if you look around for a good web retailer. Main downside is a lack of linux support in configuration software (needed to set static IPs by address), though this isn't a big deal for me as I run a mixed network. Too bad it doesn't have a nice mini-web server for management like my HP printer (LaserJet 2100NT). They list telnet support in the data sheet, but its not clear to me if you can telnet to the hub to make changes ...
• Another potentially good and cheap model is the SMC 2652W, but supply seems to be limited on this right now. Again, no linux configuration utilities, but you can console connect via RS-232, which the D-Link doesn't have. SMC has linux drivers available for its PCMCIA card now.

Unfortunately, neither of these have the antenna adapter that some of the Lucent Orinoco (formerly WaveLAN) access points feature, but they also don't cost $700+ (its more for the 2 radio model). Not really much of an issue for household use (unless you have a multilevel apartment with concrete flooring), but if you want to cover multiple houses, roam around farther outdoors, or set up a free wireless LAN (slashdot discussion) for people in the area [SF for me] (I could run a really popular access point, living across the street from Moscone). There are a number of other good access points from Cisco/Aironet, HP, Intel, etc., but these are the standouts for price/performance in my research.

Regards, RJS

I'm looking around at both cards and access points with linux compatibility, here's what I've found. It seems 802.11b wireless networking is definitely getting cheaper and a number of decent products have been showing up at half previous typical prices. D-Link and SMC are leading the low end of the market with decent quality products and at least stated linux support and Orinico/Lucent and Aironet/Cisco are the leaders if you want a more robust feature set for your access point (in particular, support for external antennas).

PCMCIA Cards

• For cards, the cheapest decent card I've been able to find is the D-Link DWL-650, which can be had for around $120 from a reputable web retailer. However, while D-Link claims linux support in their FAQ, I can't find a driver to download from their FTP and a google search didn't reveal anything elsewhere. Haven't really looked hard, but dubious with that in mind. I should also note that the D-Link claims shorter ranges (1,000 ft. v. 1,500) than most of the other cards/access points, but I suspect that has little real world relevance.
• The next best option seems to be the SMC 2632W, which has linux drivers available for download (haven't tried them out, though). It tends to run about $20-30 more from similar sources, but looks like a good product and appears to have better support.
• After that, its a tossup in the $200-300 range from the major networking manufacturers. I don't see a clear advantage of any of them over the cheaper products, but haven't looked at power consumption levels and comparison tests from major publications aren't new enough to include these products (that I've seen).

Access Points

For those who are also interested in what's going on with access points, including linux support on configuration:

• Currently thinking about the D-Link DWL-1000AP which goes for a little under $300 if you look around for a good web retailer. Main downside is a lack of linux support in configuration software (needed to set static IPs by address), though this isn't a big deal for me as I run a mixed network. Too bad it doesn't have a nice mini-web server for management like my HP printer (LaserJet 2100NT). They list telnet support in the data sheet, but its not clear to me if you can telnet to the hub to make changes ...
• Another potentially good and cheap model is the SMC 2652W, but supply seems to be limited on this right now. Again, no linux configuration utilities, but you can console connect via RS-232, which the D-Link doesn't have. SMC has linux drivers available for its PCMCIA card now.

Unfortunately, neither of these have the antenna adapter that some of the Lucent Orinoco (formerly WaveLAN) access points feature, but they also don't cost $700+ (its more for the 2 radio model). Not really much of an issue for household use (unless you have a multilevel apartment with concrete flooring), but if you want to cover multiple houses, roam around farther outdoors, or set up a free wireless LAN (slashdot discussion) for people in the area [SF for me] (I could run a really popular access point, living across the street from Moscone). There are a number of other good access points from Cisco/Aironet, HP, Intel, etc., but these are the standouts for price/performance in my research.

Regards, RJS

If I had a network card that wasn't supported in linux, I could:

a) Install Windows

b) Get a network card that is supported

c) Read the documentation and find out that it really is supported.

http://www.smc.co m/smc/drivers/Legacy/8216/smc-ultra.c-1.2.13.txt

Yes, that says 1.2.13, you can find it in your 2.2.14 kernel as CONFIG_ULTRA in the 10/100 Ethernet card section for SMC cards.

I can't help with your opinion of Netscape however.

For what it's worth, the card cost $15, and there was a $29 TurboLinux about an aisle away at the CompUSA. I still like my Debian & FreeBSD, but it was a neat gimmick. And since the DE4x5 chipset wasn't listed on the box, it was a convincing cue that there'd be driver support for the card.