Hawking Tech HBB1 Broadband Booster reviewed

We've heard a lot gripes from people dissatisfied with the quality of their VoIP service, and have been tempted to scream at them, "well what do you expect, when you're downloading a half-dozen torrents, working three video chats, uploading your last vacation's pics to flickr at full rez — and still expect high-quality VoIP over your piddly DSL line?" Well, now we have another alternative, in the form of Hawking Tech's HBB1 Broadband Booster. We took a quick look at this dedicated Quality of Service device a few weeks ago, but Tom's Networking has actually put it through its paces and found that it is capable of prioritizing certain upstream traffic — most notably VoIP and gaming data — using Ubicom's StreamEngine algorithm, which is able to identify packets generated by realtime apps and bump them ahead of,
say, email and file transfers. That differentiates it from more general QoS features built into some routers, which attempt to improve downstream traffic, or divide traffic more equitably among multiple users. Still, if you're tired of repeating yourself on VoIP calls, it could be worth a look. Or we can just scream at you some more.