I received the Cayman several weeks ago and was excited to be testing an 8 port wireless router; During the testing my main router died, so the Cayman 2E-H-W11 took the role of routing my entire home network. Truly a circumstance that I believe worked out for the better in regards to achieving a good grip on what this router can do. Before I go on, let us take a look at the technical specifications and see what this router has to offer:

Features/Specifications

Cayman's 2E-H-W solution enables single or multiple user access to broadband services over today's coaxial cable lines or copper telephone lines - or wirelessly. The 2E-H-W:

LAN Interface: Eight port 10BaseT Ethernet Hub and 802.11b
WAN Interface: One port 10BaseT Ethernet
Supported Protocols: 802.1D Bridging, RIPv1, RIPv2 with MD-5 Authentication, Static Routes,
PPPoE, PPP Subnet Extensions, Ethernet Bridging
LAN Services: DNS Proxy, DHCP Server
WAN Services: NAT, PAP, CHAP, ICMP, DHCP Client, VPN IPSec Pass-through, Pinholes
OAM&P Simplification: Network Address and Port Translation, PAT Application Layer, Gateway,
NAPT default server
Security: User and Admin passwords, Disable Admin Access feature, Firewall (2 levels available),
Port redirect, Port Address Translation, Distributed DOS protection, IP Address Spoofing
protection, Broadcasting amplification protection, MAC address spoofing protection, Inter WAN
routing disable, IPSEC compliant VPN server/client, VPN IPSEC support through NAT, IP
Multicast support through NAT, Instant-on PPP
Configuration/Management: Web browser user interface, Telnet configuration, Local maintenance
port
Dimension: 9" x 8" x 1.65"
Weight: 2 lbs. 8 oz

• True “easy to use, hard to misuse”™ device
• DHCP Client and Server allows true plug-and-play installations
• Network Address Translation (NAT) allows LANs to be served with only one IP address
• “Pinhole” allows hosting of web services while maintaining security in your LAN; Virtual Private Network (VPN) and advanced Firewall upgrades available
• Swift-IP™ provides security and ease-of-use
• No client software required — universal Web browser configuration
• Bandwidth shaping offers carriers and service providers flexibility and convenience
• Software upgrades via web

Pictures of the unit

The design for this router is quirky; not the sleek and futuristic looking design pattern that we have seen lately, this router has a completely symmetrical look to it. The 8 LAN ports are on one side, power, maintenance, and wan on the other. This presented a problem, either all my cat5 cable had to go over or around the router to the front of the router or I could flip it around and have the power and wan coming around the router to the front of it. There is no reset button, only one in the control panel.

This is the router in comparison with a cd, top view.

Bottom close up

Front view

The LED is placed in an odd place.

The back of the router

The ENTIRE hard copy of the user manual. There is more in a .pdf file located on the CD as well.

Setup and Control Panel:

Who said "A picture is worth a thousand words" ?

Here is the login screen; it is very handy that you can access the router via the address http://cayman-2e

This is the home screen in "Novice" Mode

Here is the home screen in expert mode

This is the QuickStart screen, self explanatory.

This is a cool feature, having different level users. Admin and user are the two levels you can choose to give your LAN users access to the router parameters.

Another self explanatory page, software installation.

SNMP

Pinholes let you pass specific types of network traffic through the Cayman router's NAT interfaces. Pinholes allow you to route selected types of network traffic, such as FTP requests or HTTP (Web) connections, to a specific host behind the Cayman device transparently. For example, You have a server located on your LAN with NAT (Network Address Translation) turned on and would like " internet" to have access to it. With NAT on, the only visible IP on your network, is the WAN IP of the Cayman router. This means that all traffic that you would like to reach the server, needs to be directed to the WAN IP of the Cayman router. Then with the Pinhole setup, the Cayman router will forward that traffic to a specified internal address on your LAN. - FAQ

Here is more of the advanced features made available to you; The following screenshot is the router diagnosing all the connections to see where your internet connection may be failing.

Performance Testing

For the speed testing across the LAN I used DU Meter from http://www.dumeter.com. Might I add, DU Meter also has a cool transparency in Windows XP and Windows 2000 :)  I set up two clients and optimized each using the SpeedGuide Registry patches. These are two fresh installs of Windows XP, with the latest critical updates and a recent defragmentation. Tested the network speed by sending large amounts of data between the computers. The two clients are as follow:

Here is the folder on Client 2 that I will be using for testing, 1.97 GB of mp3's.

Here is a screenshot of the data being sent from Client 2 to Client 1. After 20 minutes, I decided to cut the transfer off at at 1.19GB.

Sending the data back to Client 2 yielded about the same speeds, I ran a 5 minute test.

Frankly, I am not happy with the Network performance, due to the 10 Base T speeds; they are about one half the speeds I was getting with the UGate 3200 with much slower storage configurations. After using a 10/100 router Base TX router for so long, operating solely at 10base T across the home network was sluggish while moving large portions of data around. This router is fine for moving small things like word documents, spreadsheets, and the like; however, moving gigs of data is not a treat.

Security Testing

I took the Shields UP test from Steve Gibson's website, here are the results:

The first time I ran this test the router did not fare too well; Telnet and http were wide open. I remedied the problem and ran the test again, producing the output below. You will have to change some of the default settings to make your computer 100% secure.

Conclusion and Rating

I am going to keep this one short and to the point: Cayman is a company that has been comfortable in the business market, and are working on breaking into a SOHO market. With the price tag of $500 it is not one of the cheaper models, its network performance leaves a lot to be desired (I'd much rather prefer a 10/100 switch than the 10 Base T hub it has implemented). I would only suggest investing in the Cayman 2E-H-W11 if you also require the Wireless connection. The good part is that the unit supports multiple wireless connections. You should definitely do some research before looking into buying a wireless router, and remember that for less than $200 you can get a VERY solid 7 port 10/100 router if you don't require wireless routing.

Rating
Price:
Features:
Setup Ease:
Support (phone/web/email):
Reliability:
Management:
Performance (speed/latency):
Wireless Performance:
Security:
Overall Rating: