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Address Translation Lacking Another weakness we discovered while testing the PACESETTER was its lack of support for NAT and DHCP to the local workstations. The cost of extra IP addresses for ISP-centric remote networks and the headache of dealing with the extra IP maintenance on the corporate site can quickly outweigh the cost of an inexpensive router that doesn't offer these services. The PACESETTER and SBE's net Xpand ROUTEMAN XL don't offer DHCP services to its clients.

Additionally, this version of the PACESETTER supports only IP-to-IP address translations, and addresses can be mapped only on a one-to-one basis. ADC Kentrox says it plans to offer multiple-to-one IP address translation in future firmware.

Of the three routers in our test that provide POTS support, only the PACESETTER was able to sound a mechanical-ring on a standard Bell Touch-Tone telephone. On the other hand, the PACESETTER didn't let us program the prioritization of voice channels. The priority was fixed so that incoming and outgoing voice calls automatically borrow B channels for telephone usage, dropping any data connection that might be open.

Bumping channels used for data transfer is the most commonly used scenario, but sites that are data-centric and prefer voice to be blocked or transferred to unused B channels would not benefit from the fixed nature of the PACESETTER. Aside from the rou ter failing to bump data calls for incoming voice calls, we would get busy signals when the channels were in use. The Cisco 776 was the only router with POTS interfaces that could bump data calls for incoming voice in our tests.

The PACESETTER also claims to support the recently finalized Bandwidth Allocation Control Protocol (BACP), as well as X.25 routing over both the D channel and single B channels. X.25 is slated to be the standard for the "always on D channel" initiative (AO/DI.) We'll test these features in future reviews.

Ramp Networks WebRamp Entré
Ramp Networks' WebRamp Entré offers network administrators a comprehensive GUI and solid ease of use when compared to the rest of the ISDN router field. But the product's lack of SNMP support and weak compression place it at a disadvantage.

Matched only by the similar SBE's netXpand ROUTEMAN XL Workshop configuration utility, the WebRamp Configuration Wizard made router configuration a snap. Using the Configuration Wizard on our Windows NT 4.0 workstation, we were able to configure the router for IP access in just a few minutes.

Missing Features The management and monitoring interface was powerful enough to enable us to fine-tune our connection by filtering by packet type and source/destination addresses with a "point and click/fill in the blank" interface. But what places the WebRamp behind the ROUTEMAN XL and the NetRouter 1040 for management features is its lack of SNMP support.

Another weakness of the WebRamp is its lack of compression support. It was the only router not to offer any compression other than VJ header compression, which doesn't provide significant transfer improvements compared to the standard Stac LZS algorithm. This is a typical performance booster as well as a cost-saving feature in ISDN routers because it reduces the amount of time that the line has to be up to transfer data.

Similar to the Cisco 776, the WebRamp offers two POTS ports, providing a degree of programmabi lity over the handling of incom ing and outgoing calls during open channel data transfers. It is supposedly possible to specify if an open B channel is to be dropped or rerouted to another channel upon receiving a ring signal, or if the incoming call is blocked. However, we couldn't get the call bumping to work. As with ADC Kentrox's PACESETTER SOHO Access Router, incoming calls signaled busy during data transfers.