Alternative router firmwares like DD-WRT and Tomato are known for adding more features to routers. But we tested to see if they also take some features away.

Our short guide will get you up to speed on how WAN acceleration works and what it can do for your network.

We are pleased to announce SmallNetBuilder's Charts and Product Finders for powerline networking products.

Linksys really wants its new network setup tool to be welcomed into your home. But first, it needs to learn some manners.

Internet Protocol version 6, known as IPv6, is an upgrade to the world's most common network addressing scheme, Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4). The purpose of this post is to provide you with some background information on IPv6 and some simple things that you can do to get acquainted with it.

Alternative firmwares can provide lots more features. But neither of the two most popular loads is a clear winner when it comes to improving routing performance.

You can do lots of things to save energy. But buying D-Link's small "green" gigabit switch isn't one of them.

I've covered some of the basic elements of Multicasting, such as IGMP and the Layer 2 switching components in my previous posts (Part 2). This article will go into the technology behind Multicasts at Layer 3 and some of the issues limiting wider use of Multicast technology.

As you recall in my first post, I observed that Yahoo's transmissions of live NHL games would seem to be good candidates for Multicast, yet were being sent as unicast. Then I covered the simple issue of enabling Multicast within a local area network. Coming full circle, here we are diving into Multicast technology to understand why it isn't more widespread.

In my last post, I discussed multicasts and some of the basic concepts. This time, I'm going to discuss technologies used by switches and routers to enable and configure multicasts. Specifically, I'm going to dive into addressing and IGMP. Understanding the details behind multicasts helps understand configuring multicasts as well as the issues limiting the use of multicasts on the web.

With the growth of IPTV and other IP media streaming technologies, applications for multicast technology are increasing. Live Video broadcasts and VoIP applications are viable uses for real time transmissions over an IP network from a single source to multiple recipients.

Most data transmissions are unicasts, which are a one-to-one data stream sent from one device to another device. Email, web surfing, and file downloads are all examples of unicasts, even for the busiest sites or most downloaded files. Although a single web page may be visited thousands of times each day, each time it is viewed it is individually transmitted to the requestor's PC as a unicast.