| SMC7004AWBR Barricade Cable/DSL router w/ 3-port 10/100Mbps, Print Server, and 802.11b 11Mbps Access Point |
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Model: SMC7004AWBR
Brand: SMC
Manufacturer: SMC
Average Rating: 
(submit your review here)
Total Reviews: 247
Platforms: Windows NT, Macintosh, Windows 98, Windows 2000, Windows NT 3.5, Windows NT 4, Windows NT 5, PowerMac, Windows Me, Windows XP, Windows 2000 Server, Mac OS X, Mac OS 9 and below, Windows
Form factor: External
Hardware platform: PC
Data link protocol: Ethernet, Fast Ethernet
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| Features: |
Built-in NAT firewall security
Wireless operation at 11, 5.5, 2, or 1 Mbps
Connects to a cable/xDSL modem, dial-up modem, or Ethernet backbone
All-in-one solution provides switching, IP sharing, print server, and firewall security
Platform independent--works with PC or Mac |
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| Description: |
| The Barricade wireless broadband router is the ideal networking solution for home and small business users alike, providing the ultimate in mobility with its wireless operation. The platform-independent multi-functional router is combined with a 3-port 10/100 Mbps dual-speed switch and incorporates both a built-in print server and firewall security against hackers and other intruders. |
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| User Reviews (247 total): |
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Recommend SMC., November 21, 2006
By Brian
sometimes we have to ask ourselves -- is the consumer equipment we buy designed to be run 24/7 weeks on end? My SMC router worked quite well for about 2 yrs. It was mostly used in wired setting and as a consumer unit it worked fine.
After it failed, tech support was patient to troubleshoot the problem. After numerous resetting and troubleshooting -- my unit was replaced.
The lifetime warranty is amazing, generous and should be one of the reasons people should seriously consider SMC. Currently the warranty has been changed for the 'life of the unit' but still it's amazing that there are companies out there such as SMC that stand behind their products like that. When possible, I try to buy SMC.
On practice side -- online setup menu very well designed, ergonomics of the unit, wireless range and power of the signal -- all great. Network Printer port, unlike what I've seen in competing router models -- my SMC built in printer worked like a charm on every PC, even one running Win 98.
SMC doesn't produce millions of models as competition -- but those it does - are quite good and solid.
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A steady performer for many years, November 18, 2005
By Penske Fan (Goochland, VA USA)
While my folks have gone through 3 or 4 routers; this one SMC barricade has served me since 2001 with no complaints.
It is now starting to stop working every so often, so I have to reboot (pull the plug and plug it back in) so I am ready to upgrade.
Signal strength has been great - I can get signal from the far corner of my basement without a problem, anywhere inside the house, and outside as well.
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Scam Warrenty, Zero Tech Support, May 22, 2004
By A Very Unhappy Customer (Austin, TX United States)
SMC's "Lifetime Warrenty" is good for the "Lifetime of the Product", which means that when your product stops working after 1 year (like mine did) they won't fix it. And that's only after you try for days and days to get through to tech support. If you call and they're "busy" you don't even wait on hold, they say "call us back later". And of course, when you call back later, they're still busy. I went through this cycle for days and days until I finally got through and was told my warrenty was worthless.Buy this product at your own peril.
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Good but not great, March 12, 2004
By Maximum Velocity (Columbus, OH)
Had this for more than a year with 4 wireless clients (2 SMCs, 1 Netgear, and 1 Dell TrueMobile). Easy set up (Web interface is decent), great value for the low price I paid (after rebate). I don't use the print server so I can't comment. The only gripe I had is this thing does require occassional resets. I have it connected to a DSL router and this Ethernet interface occasionally get disconnected and the only way to bring it back is to reset the Barricade. The wireless interface stays up, however, so I can reset it via the Web interface and don't have to walk to the Barricade.
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Not as reliable as it should be, February 23, 2004
By unknown
I've had this product over a year and have decided to replace it with the D-LINK 714P+. This product was easy to setup and the print server worked fine (I have one PC connected directly to the router, two notebooks connected wirelessly, and a printer connected to the print server). The wireless range was also much better than the Linksys product I had before. The main problem with this SMC product was that I would have to reboot it every 2-3 weeks. Rebooting it, required that I unplug it for at least 10 seconds and then plug it back in. I've talked to other people who use the SMC7004AWBR and they have experienced the same problem. With these types of products, you should be able to set it up and then forget about it. You can't do that with the SMC7004AWBR but according to people I have talked to, once they set up their D-LINK 714P+, they never had to touch it again.
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Was neat when I first got wireless, January 2, 2004
By unknown
Unfortunately, the print server never worked reliably, and the wireless connection was slow and unreliable. Since switching to an 802.11g netgear router, I have not had any of these problems. I ran the SMC product for two years, tried updating drivers, etc etc etc...
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5435 router hangup problem + V1.42.005 firmware upgrade, November 23, 2003
By unknown
Yes I have one of the dreaded SMC7004AWBR 5435 models
and it has been hanging. Like some of the posts that
follow I have upgraded the firmware from the www.smc.com
website.My router which I imported to Australia from the USA in
March 2003 shipped with V1.41.004. The latest upgrade
at late Nov 2003 is V1.42.005. 1 am hoping this upgrade will fix the hanging problems!
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Not the easiest or most reliable..., September 4, 2003
By JimFrancis (Miami Beach, FL)
Like somebody else said here... I used this for about a year or so thinking it was great but not realizing that it really wasn't. Looking back, many times it needed rebooting and true enough I never got the wireless wep security setting working. So anyone could've hijacked my internet connection and network. Finally it died and I dumped it - got a Siemens SpeedStream model 2624 instead and it works beautifully - much better.
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SMC = POS, August 29, 2003
By gabe sanderson (San Ramon, Ca United States)
I put up with using this device for about 8 months, and had to reboot it an average of once every 5-7 days. The WEP features were problematic, and when I went looking for technical support, I was told to use the router in its default config, which has WEP disabled. No help there. I stuck with it because we found the wireless print server to be a tremendously useful feature, as there aren't many comparable devices on the market. Finally, the thing blew up and died. I quickly replaced it with a Netgear FM114P ~ and came out of the dark ages. My netgear router has a much friendlier interface, more access control features, and has been a solid performer since I installed it. I'll never stray again...
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Good Routher for the money., July 7, 2003
By Zain (USA)
Have been using this router for 3 months now. It did require some tweaking around and a bit of a frustration during the initial setup (that is why 4 instead of 5 stars). Nonetheless, it has worked flawlessly since then. Do expect to see a decrease in speed with 128-bit encryption enabled. Range is great and compared to the comparable Linksys model (which I have also used), this model tends to work better in an environment with numerous walls between the router and the wireless PC card. It Has only required a re-boot once in 3 months of usage. Be sure to upgrade to the latest firmware, though.
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Crashes constantly, May 29, 2003
By unknown
While this router has some nice capabilities it has serious software problems. The router crashes constantly and needs to be rebooted 4-5 times a week. I have updated the firmware several times. Do yourself a favor and get a netgear router instead.
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Fixes for 5435 hangup problems, April 3, 2003
By Michael Kazar (Pittsburgh, PA)
Like many of the reviewers here, I had slow connections and
router hang ups with the 5435 router. However, the very
latest firmware release (1.41.0009) has apparently fixed all
of the problems I've had. Previously, I had to reboot the
router after 2 days of work; now it has been running nearly a
week, with my doing things that always hung the router before.So, if you have an SMC 7004AWBR model 5435, and have been
having hanging or slow connection problems, give firmware 1.41.0009 a shot. It took them forever to get the biggest
problems fixed, but it has made a world of difference to my system.
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CONfFUED? 2 models = One is wonderful, the other is junk!, February 19, 2003
By Leigh F. Ishikawa (MA USA)
I've owned this router for some time, and did tons of research. Granted I am not a typical user, you should be warned with this company's shady business practice. Many of you wonder what's going on with the mixed reviews and here's why...SMC sells this router with 2 models with completely different hardware. One is the 750.5312 model. This is the model that was reviewed and gotten great reviews. Then the other 'shady' model they slipped into the market is the infamous 750.5435 model. This is the 'junk' model that they have not distributed to reviewers. The 5312 model is wonderful piece. If you have it, you'll love it. Every 3 months or so, I will have to power it down, and I am not sure why. Besides that, it's wonderful. The router requires you to 'reboot' almost every time you change something, but it's a minior thing you have to live with.
- SecuRemote worked like a champ with no packet forwarding. The 5435 has tons of problems and they are:
- Inability to handle large files (>100megs). It hands the router. (Supposidly a bad capacitor...)
- Unable to forward UDP packets. Though the router's page claims to work and their idiotic support claims they work, it doesn't. I spent weeks troubleshooting and sniffing the packets and found out it just doesn't foward udp packets.
- Router is flaky in general. I attribute this to combination of router getting confused with 2.4ghz phone nearby and overheating. In short, I had a 5435 and after fighting battles with it and the support for 4 months, I got SMC to replace it with 5312. After a year with 5312, I am very pleased. In short, if you have the 750.5435, it'll work fine for normal web surfing but beyond that, you will soon run into problems mentioned above. Maybe a newer firmware (I never saw one in 4 months), may resolve few things but their support is useless and will give you a run-around. If you have the 750.5312, it's a keeper. I love mine.
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great with 98SE; lousy with XP, February 18, 2003
By unknown
I've had this for over a year and loved it until I upgraded to XP. Now I absolutely can not print to my Z52 anymore. It couldn't handle bidirectional communications with the printer before but I could live with that but now it just won't talk to the printer at all. Customer support stinks if you can manage to get an answer from them at all. They just reiterate what is in the manual. I've been working on this for 3 weeks now and am about to give up on it and try LinkSys.
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Easy setup, but unstable and no uPnP, February 18, 2003
By B. Surkan (Marietta, GA USA)
I was initially so thrilled with this device that I bought my brother one too. The print server in addition to the wired and wireless router functions is of tremendous use to us.Unfortunately instant messaging voice conversations don't work over this device, even when using the DMZ and trying to open holes in the firewall as described by SMC tech support. SMC has also been very latent in getting new firmware out for it. It has also proved unstable and sometimes slow when using the MAC address filtering features. Security is also somewhat flaky. In short, for a basic, unsecured wireless/wired router and print server it is tolerably reliable. If you want voice chats or rock solid reliability, however, I'd look elsewhere. Linksys tends to be more standards compliant.
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Great product concept, but locks up a lot, February 15, 2003
By unknown
Product concept (wireless AP, print server functionality, etc.) is great, but execution falls short. It locked up frequently for me, forcing me to do a power reset about once a day. Updating firmware didn't help at all. If you browse the SMC form ...you'll find plenty of people experiencing the same problem.After weeks of trying to get it to run reliably I gave up and bought Netgear FM114P. What a difference! Whereas I wasn't able to go on for a day without lock-ups, Netgear has been running non-stop for days with no problems. I should have done this long time ago. My recommendation would be to buy Netgear FM114P instead.
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The Router That Couldn't Work With A Cable Modem, January 30, 2003
By Kye (Carlsbad, CA United States)
I bought this router about a year ago. Back then, it cost about 300 dollars. A lot of money by todays standard.At first, I had connected this router to a DSL modem and rarely ever had an issue. Everything was good and I was impressed by the routers reliability and the features it provided. A few months later I moved into a new home where DSL was not available, but rather cable modem service. After hooking up the cable modem to this router I noticed that it began to seize up. Now, I do not mind the occational issue but this thing seizes about once or twice a day. A serious problem considering my wife is a serious War Craft online player. She yelled at me for a good 15 minutes the other day, promting me to search for a new router from a differnt company. I installed the new firmware release that hinted to fix this problem, but again it seized about 10 minutes after the router was up and running again. Oddly, this only happens the to the wireless clients, when I had the clients directly conneted to the router this problem does not seem to occure. The router does not realy seize in the true sense but does not seem to be able to communicate with the cable modem. In any case, I am force to throw up my hands and hope that a new wireless router will give me the stability I need with the cable modem that I own. Oh well, 300 down the drain. Thank god the wireless routers have come way down in price. I am giving this router 3 stars for working well with DSL modems. For everyone else, consider this post a warning to look elsewhere for reliable wireless routing. Kye
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Junk, January 27, 2003
By ganryu (Japan)
Very poor firmware. Router locks up after 3-4 hours of use (even the hub stops working.) Has poor logging facilities with no method for setting the date/time. No ability for log forwarding off the router. Configuration with a dial-up modem requires experience with the AT command set. Web configuration is clunky and sends passwords in clear text. If SMC could clean up the firmware and fix the lock-up problem, it might be a decent product.
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Easy setup, works like a dream, January 12, 2003
By farcha (Boonton Twp, NJ United States)
This is without doubt one of my best investments in PC technology so far. It does everything it promises to do, and very well too. Setup of the router was a breeze, as was the installation of the printer sharing option. Even with only one computer but with an broadband connection, it's wise to install a router to hide your computer from hackers. And with this router, you are definitely ready if and when you want to setup a network. I use the wireless option with only one computer, that's a floor up from the router, and as far away as it gets in my house. The router is hidden half under my monitor, there are at least 3 walls and a floor between it and the wireless USB network card and it still works like a dream, connection speed and quality always between 85 and 100% (and mostly on the upper part of the range...)
So, all in all a great product for a good price. I would definitely buy again - although I bought it far cheaper than it sells for now :)
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If you are a gamer DONT BUY THIS PRODUCT, January 11, 2003
By unknown
Hosting a game in gamespy is nearly impossible with this router. I have opened the proper tcp/udp ports and even gone as far as putting the pc in the DMZ zone. If you are purchasing this router and like to host games i would seriously reconsider. Otherwise this unit blocked all and worked just fine.
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