Hotbrick LB-2 Load Balancing router

Networking 64 Page 11 of 11 Published by

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Conclusion

Performance

Interestingly the HotBrick LB-2 comes with two 100MBit WAN ports, this differs from many other SOHO products who ship only 10MBit ports. With broadband speeds increasing all the time, i think that most SOHO routers will go this way as well, so HotBrick is thinking of the future.

On to some of the performance specs. Since this router does download loadbalancing only, there is no point in doing upload checks. Pay a few more hundred dollars and you can get upload balancing too.

In a similar setup to the XinCom tests, two identical files are on two different servers, and both downloads are run at the same time. The traffic is kept internal as we can stress the two 100MBit connections we have to the network.

I wish i had a internet connection this fast.

Average combined download speeds were around the 4.5MByte/sec mark (38MBit/sec). For the price i dont think you can knock this figure. Besides, if you had a network connection this fast, you wouldnt be using a SOHO router!The maximum throughput of the firewall is stated at 55Mbit/sec, so this test is just below that theorectical figure


Almost fully stressed, but still more CPU to play with

HotBrick does give recommendations for the use of the router. 253 clients are supported, but 80 users are recommended, so with just one user and two WAN ports maxed out, the CPU is at approx 60% usage. So again we can see how this fits in with the SOHO message!

Conclusion

square-hotbrick.jpgThe HotBrick LB-2 has many features at a reasonable price. It works out of the box without any security issues i have been able to find, and offers very good performance for the price tag.

If you have two internet connections, then only one of the connections needing MAC address cloning is allowed. The only other thing to mention is the online help on the router, it is excellent to explain most aspects of the configuration pages, however the english of some of the help files could have been better in places.

The XinCom router and the HotBrick router have very little to seperate them. Perhaps the speed of the WAN ports? Or the price? XinCom have end-of-lined the router we reviewed (DPG402) and replaced it with the DPG502 which has virtually the same specifications as the HotBrick but has a higher price tag ($299 compared to the HotBrick at $219). Looking on froogle.com you can buy both routers for almost $200. So in reality there really isnt anything to seperate the two routers.

Its too close to call, so i wont. Both the xincom and the HotBrick have good products for a niche market.

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