Equipment Support > Hardware By Brand > Other Manufacturers > [Nexland] New Firmware

reply to J D McDorce

Re: [Nexland] New Firmware

what these things have been lacking, at least in my case, is a multi-NAT translations. I have two dsl connections at home, one dynamic, another 5-static IPs. None of these dual WAN routers allow me translate all 5 IPs on one of the WANs... Just a wishful thinking here .
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Bush told us he would create jobs - he just didn't tell us they would be in China, India and the Philippines.

I believe my Xincom 502 can translate them to the DMZ. I didn't see any way to get them onto the LAN. But then, I may have missed something.

I suspect that you would need a command language router, such as the Zyxel 35 or 70 or various Cisco offerings. Unfortunately, they cost a bunch more than a 502.

You may want to ask the question in the Networking forum.

kirby

reply to Peterg1
Funny, it looks just like a Xincom 502 and even the config menus are almost the same. Now who is building it and who is re-branding it only?

Yeah, I kind of noticed that too when I saw screen shots of one of Hotbrick’s firmware posted on other web site. (»johram.blogdns.com/networkpics/n···ics.html) It does bare a striking resemblance to Xincom’s firmware interface (or vice versa). As for who’s doing the re-branding of these dual WAN routers, I don’t know for certain but I did make a curious observation when checking out Hotbrick’s website. Privacy Policies stated on web sites normally provide a company’s mailing address and Hotbrick states on theirs that they are a division of Telecom Logix Inc. I tried searching that through Google to find their web site to see what they are all about but all I got was a search result to the Miami FL superpages. There is a Telecom Logix Inc listed but comes up as a plastic scrap company of a sort. What a plastic scrap company and Hotbrick have in common, I haven’t a clue but it was really strange that both shared the exact address in Miami FL.

reply to danweber

I sent an e-mail to Hotbrick and they responded by saying it is the same box as Xincom. They also said that THEY employ engineers that build products but the english in the e-mail was pretty bad so I am not sure if I should assume now that they manufacture the unit for Xincom as well.

I wonder if the Hotbrick firmware can be loaded onto a Xincom box, hmm, need to try that.

Heh. Maybe they are engineers employed to repaint Xincom's boxes red.

I expect that to hit a wholesale price point that allows Provantage to sell a Xincom 502 at $190, the fabrication has to be performed outside the US. Unless Hot Brick's street prices are as low as Xincom's, I would not assume that the true source is Hot Brick.

kirby

Interesting thread. What i'm curious about is the difference between the hotbrick lb-2 firewall dual wan loadbalancer (apparently the same box as xincom 502) that retails for around $200, and their $300 lb-2vpn, which is everything the lb-2 is plus vpn endpoint capabilities. A closer look at specs reveals that these seem to be exactly the same box with the same architecture. I'm curious as to whether the cheaper model can somehow be easily hacked to take the firmware of the vpn+ model. It can't be as easy as just loading the lb-2vpn firmware onto the plain lb-2, but I would bet there is a workable solution to getting around whatever they did to lock out the vpn endpoint capabilities of the lb-2 since they are the same box.

The Xincom VPN counterpart to the 502 is the 503, which is about $73 more expensive than the 502 at Provantage. If you were to buy a 502 from scratch, the effort of software hacking to get to the 503 configuration would surely exceed this difference in cost. I don't recall whether Xincom offers an upgrade to bring the 502 to the 503 configuration. If so, it would answer the question of whether adding vpn is purely a software function.

kirby

reply to danweber
I have never played with the HotBrick, but heard good things about it.
What is disheartening is that if it looks and feels like a Xincom; I own 4 Xincoms 502's and 503's I have had a lot of trouble with them. From unexplained spontaneous reboots several times a day, to freeze ups, to web interface lockdowns to wan connectivity drops, etc. Firmware upgrades resets them to default (forcing you to travel on site to upgrade them!!). Tech support is not that helpful. etc etc.
I recently upgraded one of these Xincoms with a Zywall 70 which is a bit more expensive but definetly worth the money. So far it has worked out pretty well.
My five cents.

AJ

reply to Peterg1
Dealing with my troubles with the Xincom, at one point I had email contact with the manufacturer/designer and it was definetly in Taiwan. Furthermore When I sent my config file to them (for a 503) I stripped the passwords from the VPN configuration but left the IP's for the endpoints. The following day my routers here all started complaining about failed logins from 2 different IPs in Taiwan. I assume that they loaded my config for testing, and their test router tried to establish the VPN sessions from there.

AJ

I should try to flash my XC-DPG503 with the Hotbrick Firewall LB2 VPN and see what happens.
May be my flakiness is due to buggy firmware.
I will post my results if I feel brave enough to try it (hopefully Hotbrick's is not as bad).

AJ

reply to Peterg1

reply to Kirby Smith

Sorry, perhaps my economic comment was unclear. To be more specific, if the difference in cost between the two units divided by your pay rate is less than the time it takes to get into the unit and change the software -- a process that might require figuring out some software edits to be made with a hex editor as have been found to be needed to make Symmantec software work on some Nexland units -- then the effort is not cost effective. If you are convinced that you can make the changes in relatively little time, or your time has low per-hour value, then I certainly support your contention.

kirby

reply to yezusuq