Cheap D-Link DFE-910 10/100 Network-In-A-Box with 5 Port Switch (Electronics) (Windows, Windows 2000 Server, Windows XP, Windows Me, Windows NT 5, Windows NT 4) Price

The trouble with home networks is that most people are intimidated by the hardware installation. There are myriad cables, cards, and other equipment to purchase, and you have to make certain it all works well together; plus, you have to factor different speeds, protocols, and manufacturers into the mix. That's why we recommend that beginners buy a network kit, such as D-Link's DFE-910 10/100 five-port Network in a Box, that makes connecting a couple of PCs as easy as flicking on a light switch.

OK, so maybe it isn't that easy, but it's close. The kit comes with everything you'll need to connect a pair of PCs, including two 10/100 Mbps Ethernet Network Interface Cards (NICs), a five-port 10/100 Mbps Ethernet hub, two cables that measure a generous 20 feet each, an AC adapter, and all the software and documentation you need to get everything working.

The NICs come with Wake-on-LAN (WOL) cables for motherboards that support the feature, but we didn't use them, and WOL support certainly isn't a requirement. We just popped a NIC into an empty PCI slot on each PC, inserted the required driver diskette during the boot process, and let Windows 98 take care of the rest. Beyond that, setup required connecting each NIC to the hub using the included cables, powering up the hub, and running through some simple network configuration steps on each PC. The documentation did a good job of guiding us through the process, and the network was fully operational within 30 minutes of taking the hardware out of the box.

Since all the hardware included with the DFE-910 is capable of 100 Mbps speeds, file transfers between connected PCs are fast. 100 Mb per second translates to about 12.5 MB per second, and we saw transfer rates between 2 MBps and 10 MBps in our tests. Needless to say, multiplayer gaming is a blast with this setup.

The hub that comes with this kit is of the switched variety, which means that you can connect more PCs to the network without subdividing the bandwidth and decreasing overall performance. You can connect up to five PCs to this hub; the hub also has an uplink connector if you want to add another hub to the network.

The only thing we didn't like about this kit was the software, which is very old. One CD includes demos for games that are over five years old, and another CD has the outdated Internet Explorer 4.0 and Netscape Communicator 4.0 software. All of this is secondary to the hardware, which works well and is easy to figure out for anyone who has added a component to his or her computer in the past. In fact, our sole gripe with the hardware is the cooling fan in the hub, which could be heard over the whirring from our two caseless test PCs. --T. Byrl Baker

Pros:

• Installation and configuration is simple
• Fast throughput rates
• Kit includes everything you need
• Network was extremely reliable in testing

Cons:

• Software is old
• Hub is noisy