ZyXEL HomeSafe HS-100W Parental Control Gateway Router

Good if used with care

By INZ  Jun 8, 2007

Pros: Very easy to use, sets up in minutes, applies changes on the fly

Cons: Will deny service if overloaded

I've had one of these for two years now. It is a nice looking, easy to configure, full of features appliance. I had its firmware updated to the last version (6.30) the minute I bought it. It does have parental control features, which I never u...sed: what I needed was basically a WiFi router. In times, I had connected up to 4 computers to it and it did work OK. The problem only showed up when copying large files (like on the half gigabyte plus side). It consistently broke up WiFi, denying service from then on, until turned off and on again. So I bought a pendrive to do that work (moving large files) and couldn't care less about the fault. But then came the time to setup an asterisk PBX at home and oh boy that was it between the device and me! When overloaded with UDP packets, and we're talking here the wired interfaces too, not only the WiFi part, the router starts to lose track of TCP packets, even after the overload has passed. When in that mode, it consistently loses the second/third packet of any TCP connection so if you go for instance for a Web page, it'd download the title correctly and a few of the smallest images. Worst thing, it keeps on this mode even after re-plugged. The only way out is using the RESET button, which loses any and all of your configuration efforts! So, it is likely that in a household where large files are moved through alternate mediums and no UDP frantic software is installed, Home will be Safe. Not otherwise. Read more Less