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Nexland WaveBase

I looked at the WaveBase from a gamers point of view, so these two Features really got my attention. I didn't know that GameSpy was Crashing other Services. I tend to not use GameSpy anyway, mostly because it's another damn thing I have to register to use. I suppose as a service, it works fine, but I'll never remember what password I used.

Anyway, it's good to see a company catering to the ultimate power user: the gamer.

The WaveBase does your basic Internet connection sharing by providing NAT and DHCP features. It will handle all of the different types of broadband connections you'll encounter. This is one of its best feautres. I had no trouble plugging it into my static IP'd DSL connection as well as two other networks that assign IP's with DHCP. The WaveBase didn't hiccup once.

Speaking of DHCP, the WaveBase also allows you to reserve specific IP addresses for computers that always have specific servers running on them. This is also a great feature in that you don't have to worry about a server (or service) going down because DHCP doled out the wrong IP address. That's fancy.

The firewall features are many, with lots of business-oriented features like VPN with IPsec, and game-related port triggering/forwarding and virtual servers (one at a time, however), and a nifty dynamic DNS feature. The Analog/ISDN fail-over feature is an interesting feature. In the event that your broadband service packs up, the WaveBase will automatically 'dial-in' to a backup service. Now, not all broadband providers provide you with a secondary dial-up account.

Most of the functions are logged inside the router, too.

To Configure - The toughest thing about using the WaveBase is getting the thing out of it's cellophane wrapper, without tearing it first.

The WaveBase comes standard with DHCP enabled. This is what most folks are using, except for the hardcore performance junkies who prefer static IP's in their LAN. No matter. You'll absolutely need to configure you're PC to DHCP to get things rolling. All you have to do, however, is just to 'obtain IP addresses automatically' and then do the release and renew routine in your Windows winipcfg. You just might have to reboot.

For Win2K and XP, you have the Command Line Interface, or the CLI. Back in the day we called it DOS. If you're a Linux fan, you called it DOG. From a command prompt, just type ifconfig /release and then ifconfig /renew. Done. No need to reboot.

I've been using Mandrake Linux 8.0 for about a year now, and I can say I like it. No, I love it. I don't have to reboot for anything. Nothing. Zip, nada. Just install a program, and it works. No rebooting. Zero downtime. So, why does Windows make you reboot so much? Is it the registry? Windows architecture? Is Windows just stupid? I try as much as possible not to reboot my WinXP system, even though it's a very fast system. Almost all installation programs still require me to reboot the machine. Some install programs, as an extra bonus service to the user, will reboot for you. That drives me nuts.

Well, I'm too stoopid to get Linux and ifconfig to release and renew. So I just reboot.

With all of that ranting, most changes in the WaveBase's configuration will cause it to restart itself. This is a fairly fast process, however, taking less than 4 seconds to do a full restart. And you can happily surf on while it does its business, none-the-less affected.