Usage and Conclusion
In useFirst the problems. I found that my Win98 machine would hang when shutting down. After consulting Tiny software’s tech support, they suggested it was the ‘Fast shutdown’ feature of Win98, which you have to disable in msconfig. They said this is a known problem, with some hardware devices on 98 not being happy being used as a router. As both my modem and NIC are 3com, I assume fault lies there somewhere. Apparently some machines with 98SE don’t respond to the disable fast shutdown setting, so be warned. It worked for me though.
The other problem I had was again on the Winroute server machine. Programs that have network status monitors running in the background, such as ICQ, MSN Messenger or Online Call Manager, all started a RAS (dial-up) connection every time they went to check to see if the PC is on the net. The only way round this was to either
a) kill all the netdetect type apps, or
b) disable ‘connect on demand’ on the dial-up settings within Winroute.
In the end Isettled on option ‘a’ as those things annoy the hell outta me anyway. On the plus side, I was able to get a load of software up and running ove the router with no special settings required. On the NT machine I currently have IE5, icq, mirc and my online calll manager program all running quite happily without any special configuration or port mapping. Normally you just need to select the ‘connect over a LAN’ setting in the setup menu of a program, and it works. Napster acted slightly differently: it detected that there was a firewall in place and asked me if I wanted to set up a port to allow it access to the server. I said ‘no’, at which it told me I would not be able to share files with other napster users who are also behind a firewall. This doesn’t noticably reduce the number of files I can get, so I’m happy wth that. Where port mapping is a must is for purely server-type operations, such as WWW or game servers. As there is no machine sending data out, the router cannot tell where to return the replies to, so in this case a mapping must be set. This is done by a fairly simple menu operation, and a friend was able to connect into my server no problem.
I didn’t try it out too much with games, but Quake 3 and Unreal Tournament both seem fine with it. The pdf manual gives instructions on how to assign ports for older games, but in many cases I have found you don’t need to assign the ports it suggests anyway. I suspect it is probably more for troubleshooting purposes or when using the optional proxy server facility.
Summary
In short, an excellent bit of software. I wouldn’t go back to using a proxy setup again after this. There are several versions of the program available, with some more geared more towards home users than this ‘pro’ version.
More information and downloads can be found at www.winroute.com
