Cheap Router Roundup

8. Trendnet TW100-S4W1CA

Resembling a smoke stack on a cruise ship more than it resembles a router, the tall blue TW100-S4W1CA is Trendnet's budget router. It offers 8 MB of RAM and 1 MB of flash memory, connected to a Marvell 88E6218 processor.

The Trendnet TW100-S4W1CA

It comes with many of the same features offered by the other routers in the roundup, with little flair or fanfare outside of its case design. (If vertical mounting isn't your style, the TW100 can be laid on its side, too.)

Inside the TW100-S4W1CA (click image to enlarge)

The administrative panel offers no surprises, and comes with all of the standard options for a control panel. There is a bug that appears in the tested firmware version (V 2.00.0248) when the panel is accessed after an idle logout. The panel simply gives a 'The page cannot be displayed' error message with no further explanation of the problem or any redirect to the login page. Fortunately, simply re-entering the base URL (http://192.168.1.1) will restore access.

The TW100-S4W1CA's control panel (click image to enlarge)

The device also supports dynamic DNS servers such as dyndns.org and dtdns.net. To help support this, moderate port forwarding capabilities are included - though no support for UPnP was found within the administrative panel interface, again despite Trendnet's claims on their website.

Up to 10 single TCP and UDP ports (not ranges) can be statically forwarded through the router to hosts on the other side. Triggered port forwarding supports port ranges however and unlike with static forwarding. the port protocol may be selected.

Rear view

The TW100-S4W1CA allows for content, port, and traffic filtering. The device's port filtering options are fairly robust, allowing up to 32 MAC addresses to be denied or allowed Internet access and up to 10 rulesets to be applied to a range of IP addresses and ports in order to control access (with an option to date range of the access control). Content can be filtered with up to 10 keywords, though this is not time-enabled. SPI is similarly included in the firewall, though it cannot be disabled.