Hawking HWUR54G Wireless G Universal Range Extender

by Hawking Technology

Product Details

• Item Weight: 3 pounds
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S.
• ASIN: B0007POMKM
• Item model number: HWUR54G
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (28 customer reviews)
• Date first available at Amazon.com: February 6, 2005

Product Description

From the Manufacturer

The Hawking Wireless G Universal Range Extender effectively doubles the operating distance of your entire wireless network. Whether it's an area in your home that has limited or no wireless coverage, or a warehouse in your office, this extender takes the signal from your wireless access point and retransmits it at a higher rate.

The Hawking Wireless-G Range Extender is placed halfway between your Wireless Access Point and wireless trouble spot. It is the only wireless repeater on the market that supports all wireless 802.11b/g networks so you never have to worry whether the wireless network you have at your home or office will work with the Range Extender. The Range Extender will Extend any 802.11b/g network. The HWUR54G also features a hassle-free installation. All you have to do is enter in the ID of your wireless network and you’re ready to go!

Unlike previously released repeaters on the market, this repeater has a very simple setup and works with most brands of access points and wireless networks.

Features:

• Doubles the range of your wireless network
• The only repeater that works with most 802.11b/g networks and devices
• Easy set up means you're up and running in one minute
• Eliminate any wireless dead spot in your home or office

Product Description

Hawking Technologies (HWUR54G) RANGE EXTENDER 802.11G 2.4GHZ

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Beware - this product gives you a 2nd SSID, September 11, 2005

By 

John Britton Jr. "mrbritton" (Longmont, CO USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Hawking HWUR54G Wireless G Universal Range Extender (Personal Computers)

This extender ends up as a SECOND wireless network, with a different SSID than the network you're extending. This wasn't obvious (at least to me) from either the product descriptions or the the documentation. Hawking should be more clear - it's as simple as stating "this product works by creating another wireless network in your home, and that network has a different SSID". Why does this matter? Because I am unable to get either my laptop, running Windows XP Pro, or my PDA, running Windows Mobile 2003, to smoothly transition from one network to another when moved about the house. In both cases manual intervention is required, and in the case of the PDA I actually have to delete the network settings I don't want to connect to and add new settings for the one I do. Perhaps there's a better way to configure these devices, but I haven't found it. If you end up connecting only to the extender you should be fine, but I find that if I'm too close to either the WAP or the extender, I have to connect to a different SSID for reliable communications.

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great repeater once configured, May 18, 2005

By 

M. Brooks "raleigh1208" (Raleigh, NC United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

= Fun:4.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: Hawking HWUR54G Wireless G Universal Range Extender (Personal Computers)

I purchased this range extender for my home network. I've got a Linksys router on one side of my house, upstairs, and I always got a low signal on the other end of my house, downstairs. The Linksys range extender did not work with my older Linksys router, and the dLink would work, but you had to do a lot of configurations to get it working.

Therefore, the fact that the new Hawking range extender could be used for every type of network was a big selling point. The box and documents say all you have to to do is configure the range extender by entering your SSID and channel from your wireless network, put the range extender within your wireless network coverage, and plug it in. The range extender will pick up your existing network and extend it within an area of coverage for the range extender.

The problem I had was configuring the range extender. You first connect a network cable between the range extender and any computer you want to use to configure the range extender. I first had a problem with keeping a network connection. Then I had a problem getting the configuration site to pop up. I worked and worked with no success. Finally I tried it using the Internet Explorer browser rather than my AOL browser. When I did that, it worked, I configured the range extender in a few minutes, and was up and running. Once you get the configuration screen, all you do, as advertised, is enter the SSID and channel for your network, and the range extender extends it.

Once I got it configured, the range extender has worked like a charm. It sits unobtrusively on one of my tables, and the wireless signal strength has always been excellent since I started using it. So I've gone from a low signal to an excellent signal.

So I'm very happy with the product; once configured, it works as advertised. The wireless card in my laptop picks up both my wireless network and the range extender network. Since the range extender network has such a stronger signal, my laptop locks onto its signal and I cruise away in the wireless world.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars HWUR54G Works fine but understand what it is, December 5, 2005

By 

Perry Donham - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Hawking HWUR54G Wireless G Universal Range Extender (Personal Computers)

I bought and set up a HWUR54G in order to take care of some dead spots in my wireless coverage. It works fine, however I feel that the packaging is misleading.

The unit is not just a repeater, it's a repeater coupled with an access point. There doesn't appear to be a way to turn off the AP and just use the unit as a repeater. This means that you will essentially set up a second wireless network, with a different name, and you wireless devices will have to choose which network, your original or the new, to connect to.

If you are willing to live with this limitation, then it isn't a bad unit. Throughput seems fine, and signal strength is good. It took about ten minutes to set up from a Linux laptop; I did not use the setup wizard but instead opened the web-based setup page directly.

It does help to have some knowledge of networking to set the unit up. The documentation is pretty sparse and oversimplifies things to the point where you have to rely on your own experience.