3. Setup and Administration

TIP: You can check out the 9000VPN's Admin interface yourself by using OvisLink's on-line demo.

The 9000VPN comes set to 192.168.1.254as its factory default, its built-in DHCP server enabled and WAN connection type set to Static. Once you enter the default password, you'll be sent to the Quick Setup page (Figure 2).

Figure 2: Quick Setup page

The router supports a number of WAN connection types, including common and not-so-common ones:

Static DHCP (with Host Name option) PPTP - DHCP and Static Big Pond Cable L2TP - DHCP and Static

Figure 3: L2TP WAN setup

Since the L2TP option isn't so common, Figure 3 shows you what the setup is like - pretty much the same as a PPTP connection. Note that MTU adjustment and changing the WAN MAC address are supported for all connection types. I used the DHCP option for my testing and had no problems with the router acquiring IP address info from my LAN's main DHCP server.

The browser interface is pretty responsive and saving changes made on each page is relatively quick. But there isn't a prompt to remind you to click the Save Changes menu link to store the changes to non-volatile RAM. So it took me awhile to figure out why my changes would go away each time I power-cycled or rebooted the router.

I had no problems using either IE or Mozilla (OvisLink lists Mozilla 1.0, Netscape 7.0 and IE 6.0 as supported right on the log in page) but you'll need to enable cookies and Javascript.

Multiple admin logins are allowed, with no warning given when more than one admin logs on. Once you're logged in, you'll be automatically logged out after a 10 minute timeout, which you can adjust from 3-35791 (!) minutes on the Maintenance > System Management Setting page. You can also use the logout button or simply close your browser when you're done.

The System Management Setting page also has controls for changing the Admin server's port from the default of 80 and enabling secure (HTTPS) management. I feel the latter feature should be supported on any product that provides web-based administration, so OvisLink gets points for including it. The 9000VPN also lets you create a list of single IP addresses or address ranges that are allowed or denied remote administration privileges.

Rather than bury them in the usual set of nested menus, OvisLink chose to put buttons for its unique "multimedia" features in a button bar that sits at the top of every Admin server page. I'll attempt to hit the highlights of each of the Video, FTP, Printer, QoS and VPN buttons next.