It's 2006. Apple is now using Intel hardware for some of its notebooks. Microsoft is using PowerPC chips for its gaming consoles. Google has found a way to be pro-privacy as well as pro-censorship all in the span of about a week. With so many changes in the last few months effecting the entire industry, I'm surprised to still scratching my head over the pitiful performance of consumer-grade networking hardware.

In the last three months, I've purchased at least 10 different network devices spanning from routers to wireless adapters to switches. Some of these have been for myself and others have been for clients. Out of those, probably seven have had to be returned and the others are simply working—for lack of an even less enthusiastic word—adequately.

The one common factor has been that none of them did what they were supposed to.

Now if I was meaning they didn't support some advanced feature or cutting-edge technology, you would probably consider this a reasonable issue. But I'm not; I'm talking about features that aren't just listed in a manual or on some review site but are written right on the freaking box. Some of them even have stickers proclaiming "Supports VPN!" or "Works with all brands and models of IDE hard drives!" Yet all of them, without exception, are either exaggerating or outright lying in at least one of the features listed.

I had long assumed this to be a phenomenon specific to Linksys since it was the brand I had used the most and had never been totally pleased with. But in the last year I've been trying D-Link, Netgear, and just about anything else I can get my hands on. Hell, I've even tried Microsoft and Belkin on the off chance that, having more to prove in the area of networking, they would perhaps follow through on a few more claims than average.

If nothing else, it would be nice to know if this is intentional or maybe—doubtfully—there is some sort of confusion on the part of these manufacturers. Updating firmware rarely makes a difference, though the documentation will sometimes claim it fixes them. Tech support offers little help, just the continuous assertion that the hardware does what it says it does and that there must be something else at fault. Is this really what it appears to be, a case of manufacturers making false claims, assuming that most customers will never even try use these features?

What's making things even worse is all these ISPs giving out (or worse, selling) DSL and cable modems with integrated routers, switches, and wireless support. Just this morning I spent an hour trying to get port forwarding to work on a Zoom ADSL X6 modem for a client only to determine that many of the settings in the modem do absolutely nothing. As a professional, I can at least troubleshoot the issue, but I wonder how many average people are wasting countless hours trying to get similar hardware working, all the while believing that they are doing something wrong.

There was a time when I assumed that 99% of networking issues were not problems with the hardware itself. While that is a safe assumption in almost every other piece of computing hardware on the market, it clearly doesn't apply to networking equipment targeting the SOHO market.

I still find myself browsing the aisles for networking appliances at Best Buy, Staples, and OfficeMax. I just can't help looking. But for the most part, I'm resolved to building my own when it comes to anything more than a simple switch or hub. Unfortunately, that isn't going to help all the clients and home users who neither want to nor ever will build their own routers or backup devices.

So I guess they'll just keep getting ripped off.