Timothy
Parker Consulting Incorporated
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Sangoma Wanpipe S5141 Several issues ago we looked at WAN
cards, and one that we liked was the Sangoma Wanpipe.
Our primary complaint with the Wanpipe was the Linux drivers.
These have since been improved, so we asked for updated drivers and
retested the card. For those who missed the earlier review,
here’s a quick synopsis. The
Sangoma Wanpipe S5141 is a single-port PCI WAN card designed to support traffic
up to 4Mbps using T1 lines. There
are several versions of the Wanpipe S5141 available which tailor the
connectivity to specific configurations. The
Wanpipe S5141 is an average-length PCI card with an RJ45 connector on the
backplane. An RJ45 cable is
included in the package, as is a .PDF document with installation instructions.
Our updated set of Linux drivers was accompanied by printed
documentation, although this consisted of printouts of the .pdf files that
normally accompany the board on a CD-ROM. Installing the system under Linux yet
again, we used RedHat Linux with a 2.2 kernel version. The driver files have to
be manually extracted using tar, and you need to use makefiles for adding to the
Linux kernel. The process is sure
to confuse anyone not familiar with Linux and kernel compilation, and really
should be automated by Sangoma. There’s a ton of devices that can be probed
for and detected, and you need to confirm each suspected device as the routine
detects it. After rebuilding the
Linux kernel (and updating LILO) you can reboot the machine and try the Sangoma
Wanpipe. In the last review of the Wanpipe we expressed a desire for better
installation and configuration processes, but with this new update of the
drivers they are still lacking. There’s
been no change to the process we could find; only the software driver itself has
been changed. After the hassles of installing and
configuring the Wanpipe S5141, which took almost half an hour on our test system
(and was conducted by a very experience administrator), the product worked well.
In our speed tests, we again couldn’t get 4Mbps out of our connections
to the Wanpipe S5141, but as we noted in the original review of this card, most
installations wouldn’t be able to reach these numbers anyway. We couldn’t
perform segment to segment connections because the Wanpipe S5141 is a single
port card, but we did let it run both as a dedicated router on our network as
well as in conjunction with some other network cards, acting as a bridge between
two segments. In our tests with this recent release of
the drivers we couldn’t find any performance or configuration improvements to
mention. Sangoma claims the new
drivers are more efficient and provide additional functionality, but we
couldn’t back up these claims. Still,
if it makes the Wanpipe more stable in some installations, all the better.
We originally like the Wanpipe for its competitive cost and Linux
support. Linux support is still
there, and the cost is the same, so we can still recommend this card. Sangoma Summary: Reasonably priced single-connector WAN board, ideally designed as a router. Still-awkward installation and configuration routines under Linux despite a new driver release. |
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tparker@tpci.com with
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