Once considered the ultimate sign of geekiness, the home network is now becoming commonplace, driven in part by the slow but steady increase in the availability of broadband Internet connections.

Given this increasing prevalence of both networking and Internet connection sharing, it is surprising that networking is still seen as something of a black art. However, things are starting to change and the snappily-named SMC Barricade 4-Port Wireless Broadband Router (or SMC7004AWBR if you want to be informal), makes things a whole lot simpler.

Housed in a slimline, compact little box, the SMC Barricade is a functional piece of kit. In addition to the 802.11b wireless access point, it incorporates three RJ45 10/100Mbps LAN connections, a firewall, a print server, a serial port and the WAN connection to the Internet via a cable modem or other device. The surprising thing is that not only does it work, but it works well and configuration is a breeze.

The lack of a decent-sized manual was slightly disconcerting at first. Given the different functions on offer, and previous experience with networking kit, it was hard to believe that the tiny 17-page installation guide would be enough to get the box hooked up and working.

However, installation was simple. Lacking a Broadband connection was not an issue as the box includes a serial connection that can be used to connect a 56Kbps modem and phone line. Setting this up via the browser-based configuration and management application took just a couple of minutes; entering the ISP details, phone numbers and so on. Once configured it was simply a case of cabling up the nearest machine and the shared Internet connection was up and running.

On the PC and laptop side of things, configuration is also very straightforward. The SMC box acts as a DHCP server, issuing IP addresses to all machines on the network. This means that all machines have to be configured to obtain an IP address automatically. Connection to the internet is on-demand - if no connection is present the box initiates the connection automatically.

Wireless connections are also straightforward, and again it was gratifying to see how easy it was to set up a wireless connection and hence share the internet connection, swap files between machines and so on.

The print server is a nice feature which makes it possible to share a major resource across the network. The printer connects to the SMC box via a parallel port connection. Each machine must then install drivers for that printer and the output port is set to a shared port rather than to an LPT port. Again, it took a matter of minutes to connect, configure and share the printer across the network.

There are other nice touches. You can, for example, save the configuration of the box to one of the attached PCs, which makes it useful for backup purposes. If you have both a Broadband connection and a 56Kbps modem then both can be set up, with the modem being used as a backup in case of failure on the broadband connection. It's not exactly state of the art network redundancy but it's a good idea nevertheless.

Where network equipment is concerned, it's increasingly the case that there is no greater accolade than saying that a piece of hardware 'does what it says on the tin'. The SMC Barricade does it in spades.