Hawking HWUR54G Wireless-G Range Extender
posted April 15th 2005 3:31AM
The Hawking HWUR54G aims to tackle those dead spots in your home or office wireless network. It works as a range extender to amplify the signal from your existing wireless access point, effectively doubling its range. It's compatible with both 802.11g and 802.11b networks, thus avoiding compatibility issues — the device claims to work to extend any 802.11b/g network whatsoever. It's also billed as having a very simple setup process involving nothing more than entering the ID of your current wireless network. We've been promised a lot of things in the wireless world, and we sincerely hope the Hawking HWUR54G lives up to its goal of painless, hassle-free range extension. We should be able to find out in short order, as it's shipping now for an estimated retail price of $99.
Sadly, it doesn't provide any WPA support :(
The Linksys WRT54G, which you can pick up for about $50 at most places, is based on a version of embedded Linux. This means it was easy to modify, and people have done so. By flashing some of this modified firmware to the device, it becomes an uber-router capable of almost anything, and many people use them as range extenders. Cheaper and more powerful? Sounds good to me.
Seems expensive to me. You can pick up the new Netgear MIMO router , the WPN 824 http://www.connectedinternet.co.uk/blog/_archives/2005/3/16/441214.html, for $20 more. This not only gives you 108Mbps but MIMO will make range issues a thing of the past.
Picked one up today at BB with a $20 rebate. Still don't have it set up, took 4 hrs to get a voice at tech support... config software has a glitch... support emailed a new version that still displays double image but seems to work. Tried several config setups and haven't got it working yet! (simple my butt)
I bought a Hawking HWUR54G wireless extender and can't get it running. Errors in the setup program and IP address is not accessable. Tech support did not return my email so far. Going to resend again next week
Bought a HWUR54G. Got it working, through hooking it to a router. However I get IP address conflicts, and the setup wizard bombs if I hook it directly to a PC. Tech no-support either doesn't answer the phone or it is busy. Email only begot an auto-reply.
I bought one before reading reviews. Same well-documented problems with setup. Since I have a Netgear router, I gave up after ~3 hours. Took it back
Well, just another vote for NOT working. Tried to configure with a PC and won't recognize. Thinking that they changed the IP address on the actual product. Not very impressive.
Setup software does not work. Tried on 3 differnt computers. Default ip address does not connect. Tried everything & every configuration I could think of to connect - no luck. Support is always busy so I put phone on autoredial, but they hang up when it rings. Don't wast your time.
I previously panned this device and I must return to correct my bad review because I have to say that this is really an excellent piece of hardware, but I can only recommend it for experts in networking with a good understanding of IP addressing. You must configure your adapter (wireless or nic if using an ethernet cable) that you are interfacing with to be within the range of the default address of the expander in order to communicate with it. You must know how to do this and understand IP addressing. Forget the installation software that comes with it. After establishing communication you can now change the expanders' IP addy to be withing the gateways router pool and your good to go.
Once you can get it operational it is great for expanding any wireless network, inclucing one that is not your own!
Be aware that any expander will reduce your bandwith by 1/2. This is the nature of the beast. If you are getting 1.5 megs thru-put from a hot spot and you use an expander to increase the range, you will now get about 750K. This is of course true if you are expanding your own network as well.
Well this product is great worked 'almost' like they said. First off I would like to say that their technical support can go to ****. They dont return phone calles, emails, or answer their phones. So in light of that ill tell everyone how to set it up, its actually simple.
Step 1: Connect & Power up
Step 2: Connect to the !!!!EXPANDER!!!! NETWORK(very important) not your original network it will show up in your list of connections when its plugged in and on.
Step 3: Put in CD
Step 4 Follow Prompts up till you have to enter in ip stuff
Step 5: Select Manual Option
Step 6: Change Last Value to a number between 100-200
Step 7: Enter Correct Submask should be something like (255.255.0.0) but can be different
Step 8: Continue Through Prompts
Step 9: It should open the IE window with user promt enter in the information according to the manual but if it dosent youll have to type in the number you entered for the ip in step 6(all 4 boxes with .'s in between (ex: 192.168.1.193)
Step 10: On the Main Page enter the ssid of the network that you want to expand. then select the correct frequency, then select the correct channel
Step 11: Enter a new SSID for the expander
Step 12: Click the Config button and your done!
You can now disconnect the Ethernet cabel and store it somewhere and unplug the expander and place it anywhere within your network range to expand it.
Tips:
Remember to change the admin password in after changing the expander settings.
Remember in order to config you must be connected to the EXPANDER not your network
OK now my explanation of the rating. I rated this a 4 not a 5 simply because the technical support did not help at all and i got no response on their end. Otherwise this is a great product place it where you get about 20-30% of you network and it will expand perfectly. I hope this help a lot of people as your ordering off the internet and if you get something that you can't set up returns can be costly.
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This unit simply does not work as advertised - it does not repeat anything, at all. It works fine as a wired access point, but then, that is not what it is bought for. My test access point: Belkin Pre-N Router.
Even with extensive networking knowledge and experience, and following the procedure exactly in the manual and having the IPs, SSIDs, netmask, gateway all set correctly, you can not get the unit to relay signals from the main access point. Anyone who is absolutely sure they have done so, needs to post a comprehensive report on what Access Point they got it to work with, and what were their exact settings on their access point and the range extender so that it can be tested and verified.
My main beef with the unit (other than it doesnt work at all) is that there is no clear way to tell when the unit is connected to the main access point or not. The units webpage says "connected", but obviously it is not connected when you can not ping your main access point.
Most likely I am going back to my own homebrew repeater, which worked. It consisted of an old pc (preferably a laptop), with two NIC connections (one wifi card and one ethernet card). Install XP on it, connect to your main access point with the WIFI card, then enable Internet Connection Sharing on it. DELETE any bridge that XP creates automatically for you, because the Windows Bridging feature DOES NOT WORK period. Then plug any WIFI ACCESS POINT or WIFI ROUTER configured as simply an ACCESS POINT into the ethernet jack, and voila. You have a repeater, albeit a power sucking one. Put it on a UPS definatly to keep it running regardless of spikes. I built mine for outdoors by putting the whole thing in an upsidedown rubbermaid trashcan, with a hole cut to vent hot air from the PC powersupply, and ran it for months. Not the most elegant solution but it worked.
Some much more elegant solution could be done with an old Pentium 133 laptop with 128mb running XP internet connection sharing, or if you could find a WIFI card ShareTheNet worked with, you could run it on an old 486 laptop off a floppy with only 8mb of RAM.
The other option being trying to get your hands on an old Linksys router and installing OpenWRT and trying to slug through configuring WDS on it.
I gave up on the Hawking, and instead bought two Dlink DWL-2100AP's and use them as a bridge between two Beklin Pre-N units, and the DWL-2100's work like a charm.
The best part is, you can even connect to them and you are conencted to the itnernet... so I don't even need the second Pre-N unit. Also the unit features multipoint bridging, and can as 2 point p2p bridging, and even as a dumb repeater (which is what the hawking is suppose to do). I'm using mine as a p2p bridge. They can be had for $52 each from justdeals.com, about the same you can pick them up on ebay for.
This little units rock for bridging anyway you want. Multipoint bridging supports up to 8 mac address devices.
The only feature they lack is a built in router, because they darn well do everything else like a jacknife. I imagine dlink left out the router code or they'd cut into their other products market share. Maybe they do do it, a DHCP client is in firmware, but disabled by default (as well it should be for this unit).
Save yourelf a ton of headaches trying to bridge with Hawkings, or Belkins, or Linksys boxes, and get you this little babies. If you need help setting them up just email me. Change the default IPs on them, set them to the same channel, and away you go.