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Macsense Xrouter MIH-130 Pro

The MIH-130 Pro Boxshot

The Macsense MIH-130 Pro is the second broadband gateway that Macsense has released in the last year, the former having been the single port 10mb MIH-120. This is a new incarnation that adds new features such as PPPoE support, and access control, on top of the obvious built in 4-port switched 10/100 hub.

The MIH-130 is physically identical to its predecessor, save for the 4 switched 10/100 ports on the back and the 4 pairs of diag LEDs on the front panel. Of all the routers in the roundup, it is the bulkiest, and has as simple a design as the Cnet router. Installation of the router is no more difficult than that of any of the other routers. A handy browser based admin system lets you control all aspects of the router. It’s the ugliest of the interfaces thus far, but it gets the job done.

Angled view of the Macsense

The admin interface is functionally similar to the Linksys router, which is one of the earliest consumer broadband gateway routers. The main configuration page allows you to make all the settings changes such as assigning IP, netmask, and DNS information, and PPPoE info as needed. If your DSL or cable service supports DHCP remote configuration, the MIH-130 will grab its settings remotely, so that aspect of installation is even more simplified.

The “virtual server” settings page is an advanced port forwarding feature that lets you choose between UDP, TCP or both protocols, and I found it worked flawlessly with our internal test server, which is set up to do email, ftp, and serve webpages. The more aggressive DMZ is also standard on this router.

Some enhanced features like RIP routing protocol support let you configure the RIP transfer and receive protocols to maximize performance with other hubs/switches on the internet. Another advanced feature, static routing, lets you have two different network segments that can interact with one another. It’s a nice bonus feature, but I don’t see it being very useful for home, and most small businesses would opt to keep all their computers on the same segment.

Front view of the Macsense

Access control on the MIH-130 is excellent and very powerful. While the Linksys router only allows you to select certain IPs to lock out from the internet, Macsense takes Access Control to a whole new level. First there are the URL controls. You can do a Gestapo style lock out which disables ALL internet access except for sites that are specified in the URL setup screen. Or you can enable access to all websites EXCEPT for any sites that are listed in the URL setup screen. Regardless of which of the above two you choose, you have a limit of 20 URLs to either lock out or allow. The router also allows port based access control, whereby you can set blocks of IPs and determine which ports or which port ranges should be locked out. For instance, you can lock out an entire subsection of your network from using upper ports that you may want to restrict (let’s say, to disable ICQ, for instance). Or maybe you want to isolate the network so that a certain group of people can use FTP but the rest of the users cannot even access that port. All in all, the combination of URL and port based access control gives you a very tight control over net access, which could be a great boon to many small offices, or could even be a boon for the home network.

Rear view of the Macsense

The router also has a nifty feature which allows you to remotely administer the settings. This is somewhat of a security risk, however, so it isn’t highly recommended unless you have a very secure admin password. One last thing that I found highly impressive was the URL log that the router keeps. This feature logs the last 100 URLs requested by users through the router, and logs the IP requesting the URL, plus whether or not they were actually given access to that URL.

I found the setup of the router to be extremely smooth and easy. Although the admin interface isn’t much to look at, it is very well laid out and I could easily make changes to anything with very little problems. In spite of its appearances, and the somewhat primitive looking admin interface, this is a high quality product with advanced features not found in some of the other routers we’ve rounded up.

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