The higher the specification of the Macintosh computer acting as your SoftRouter, the less likely you will have performance restrictions. The performance when acting as a SoftRouter is, however, determined by a number of factors over and above simple CPU speed, including such things as its serial port speed (if using a modem), which type of LAN is being used, number of simultaneous users, etc. Accordingly a high specification Macintosh is not necessarily required since the specification will depend on your particular configuration and use.

Serial ports on some older or lower performance Macintosh models do not work well with speeds above 9,600 bps. Serial port speed limitations can be resolved by using a separate serial card such as the NuBus "Hurdler" card from Creative Solutions or the PCI "Smart Serial 6" card from Keyspan.

Using LocalTalk will adversely affect serial port performance. This is because LocalTalk is driven by the same chip as the serial port. Any LocalTalk activity interferes with reception of incoming data via the serial port. A separate serial card also alleviates this restriction.

Please note that high performance Macintosh models do not usually have the above restrictions.

The more users connected to the Vicomsoft SoftRouter Plus computer, the more processor time the SoftRouter Plus software will require. A balance needs to be struck between the requirements of the SoftRouter Plus software and any other software running on the same computer. In particular, we recommend that File Sharing is turned off. Any other processor-intensive or network-intensive task, such as a FTP server, will slow down the SoftRouter.

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