X-bit labs

ASUS WL-500G Deluxe Wireless Router Review (page 8)

Category: Other

by Alex Burn & Dr. Awk

[ 06/14/2005 | 01:47 PM ]

Menu Options: Internet Firewall

The Basic Config submenu contains the basic firewall settings: enable/disable firewall, the type of LAN and WAN packets to be logged, accessibility of the router from the WAN, response to ping requests and requests via the LPR protocol from the WAN.

The WAN&LAN Filter submenu helps to set up the packet filtering rules: you can create a table of incoming/outgoing IP addresses (also with a mask) and ports (or a range of ports) and the protocol type. You can define the time and days of week when the filters will be active, set up the handling rules for packets not specified in the table (Allow or Deny).

In the URL Filter submenu you can block a series of URLs and select the time and days of week when this filter is going to be active.

Menu Options: USB Application

The FTP Server submenu contains settings that refer to the use of the integrated FTP server to access USB-interfaced data-storage devices. The manufacturer warns the user that:

• Compatibility is guaranteed only for devices listed on the company’s website
• The WL-500G Deluxe fully supports FAT/FAT32, but can only read in NTFS (compressed and uncompressed files, without encryption)
• If the disk is divided into several partitions, only the super-user and anonymous users will have access to all the partitions; the rest of the users can only access /ftp_pub and /ftp_pvt/username/ in the root directory

The access rights are listed in the table below:

We want to single out the Force to Eject USB Disk option which is the analog of the safe removal of the device in Windows. Then, a script may be run from the root directory on a connection of a USB device, while the Banned IP List can be used to prohibit to some users the access to the files.

The web-camera settings are grouped in the Web Camera submenu. The list of supported cameras and chipsets can also be found at www.asus.com. Besides the settings in the software of the WL-500G Deluxe it may be necessary to set up the client software: if you use Internet Explorer 5.x and higher, make sure it works with ActiveX as required.