Cheap Router Roundup

9. USR 8004

The USR 8004 from U.S. Robotics is a vanilla router with little in the way of bells and whistles and even less in the way of performance. It has 4 MB of RAM, 1 MB of flash memory, Infineon ADM5120P processor and comes packaged in a curvy modem-like case that matches the rest of USR's consumer networking line.

The USR 8004

Inside the USR 8004 (click image to enlarge)

The administrative interface is very basic and near-identical to the original SMC Barricade series. The logging feature of the router throws system events and traffic logs together in a confusing heap (which cannot be cleared, saved, or emailed for better organization). The poor logging and inability of certain basic functions such as the 'reboot' message to display in Firefox make for a slightly irksome experience when trying to administer the router. It also doesn't help that changes made to the router also require a reboot that takes approximately 20 seconds to complete.

The USR 8004's control panel (click to enlarge)

The router does not support UPnP, so manual port forwarding must be used to connect services to the outside world. Static port forwarding is available for up to 12 port ranges in both (but not either) TCP and UDP, though the device does not support triggered port forwarding.

Front view

Rear view

The firewall is fairly basic, supporting SPI (which can be turned off) and other standard firewall functions. Content filtering in any form is also not available. Up to four MAC addresses may be allowed or denied Internet access, and specific ports can be allowed or denied for up to four IP address groups.