ASUS WL330GE Wireless pocket access point

by Asus

Product Details

• Product Dimensions: 5.3 x 7.4 x 3.4 inches ; 4 ounces
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• ASIN: B000TPVWX0
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (106 customer reviews)
• Date first available at Amazon.com: July 7, 2004

Product Description

ASUS WL-330gE Wireless Access Point combines 4 wireless functions: Access Point, Ethernet Adapter, Gateway and Universal Repeater, into 1 - providing you with connectivity wherever you are.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

85 of 86 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Decent product with difficult setup and some technical problems, November 28, 2009

By 

Scott "Scott" (Northwest Washington) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: ASUS WL330GE Wireless pocket access point (Electronics)

I bought two of these, one to use as a wireless adapter and one as a repeater. My primary wireless router is a Dlink DIR-622 running the original 1.11 firmware.

Initial setup is fairly easy. The manual is TERRIBLE but you really don't need it for basic setup. Out of the box, or after a hard reset, the device is in "Gateway Mode" with it's DHCP server active and ready to hand out addresses in the 192.168.1 subnet. Connect it to a PC's ethernet port, open your browser to http://192.168.1.220 and you get the configuration screen. From there, it is easy to choose one of the other (3) modes and make a connection to your wireless network.

If you want to make additional configuration changes to other parameters, it gets harder. Once you switch from Gateway mode to one of the other (3), the device no longer acts as a DHCP server for the ethernet port; rather, it effectively becomes a device with a static IP of 192.168.1.220. To make additional configuration changes, you must open your PC's TCP/IP settings and change from DHCP (i.e., "obtain an IP address automatically") to a static address (i.e., "use the following IP address") in the 192.168.1 range. Only then can you again open your browser and use http://192.168.1.220 to access the device.

I setup the first unit in "Adapter mode", configured it for wpa2 and then connected it to my Dish Network 622 dvr. Everything connected and worked perfectly.

I have a large house with my wireless router at the North end, so signal quality at the South end of the house is poor. I configured the second wl-330ge for "Repeater mode" and placed it near the center of my house. Devices in the South end now get excellent signal quality from the centrally located wl-330ge repeater. Devices that used to get 6mbps now hit 35mbps.

Both my units came with firmware 2.0.1.8, but I noticed a newer 2.0.1.9 firmware on the ASUS web site with 11-23-2009 release date. As it mentioned a fix related to Repeater mode, I decided to download it and update both units. I then hard reset and reconfigured them. The one in Adapter mode still worked just fine. The one in Repeater mode ceased to function; devices would connect to it momentarily then lose the connection. After several hard resets and reconfiguration cycles, I gave up and flashed it back to 2.0.1.8, and it immediately started working again. If you are using Repeater mode, I recommend avoiding the 2.0.1.9 firmware.

44 of 44 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A small practical device to expand your wireless network, among others, July 22, 2010

By 

BMJ - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: ASUS WL330GE Wireless pocket access point (Electronics)

My wireless router is in the basement with limited coverage for the 2nd floor and the patio. So my aim was to expand my wireless network coverage. ASUS WL-330gE proved best value and has several functions one of which is to expand the wireless network (labeled as Repeater mode). Now I have an excellent coverage all over my property.
The following are the steps I did to set it up:
1. Power on your WL-330gE through the attached USB power cord.
2. Connect the WL-330gE to your laptop through an Ethernet (RJ45) cable.
3. Disconnect your computer from internet/router. (Wireless off or unplug Ethernet cable)
4. Open the Internet browser in your computer and type in 192.168.1.220 in the
address box. Type admin for ID and admin for password.
5. Select Repeater tab
6. From the available wireless devices select yours enter your password and connect.
7. Click on the advanced setting at the lower left corner and select IP config then select Yes for get IP Automatically.
8. Click apply then logout.
9. Disconnect your ASUS from the computer. Find a central location in your property and connect the device to the power outlet. You do not need to connect it to the net work or a computer

33 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Finally I don't have to worry if it will work with any OS., January 17, 2009

By 

Dearkon (USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: ASUS WL330GE Wireless pocket access point (Electronics)

My main reason for getting this was because I had trouble getting certain devices to work with Vista 64 Bit. I had a USB wifi stick that worked great under XP, but was unstable in Vista. So I didn't want to get another USB device and be disappointed when I upgrade my system again. Well this device does it all and I'd definitely would get more of these if I need to hook it up to anything else.

The coolest part is that you can have it hooked to your computer via ethernet and in the same time allow other devices to piggyback on it via wifi on the same connection. So why would this be useful? Well let's say you are in a hotel and paying for wireless internet service and you could share that connection with your friends or coworkers by connecting to your device. So you can pretty much split the bill amongst each other instead of each of you paying for your own connection. Another way it can be used is to give your home pc a wireless connection and in the same time expand the range of your wifi by becoming a repeater in the same time (hotspot mode).

I do want to note that if you set it to repeater mode only then you can't get internet with ethernet. So if you want a hybrid mode then hotspot mode is the best way to go and plus you don't need to fiddle with ip addresses. You can switch it to bridge mode, but it makes it harder to switch to other networks if your ip changes. The device's ip is 192.168.1.220 and let's say you connect to a host with an ip address of 128.5.6.1. Well what happens is the ip will change in bridge mode (example 128.5.6.34) and you won't be able to connect to the device (current ip of device 192.168.1.220) unless you change the device's ip to match the current ip address range (128.5.6.x). In hotspot mode the ip is assigned to the device only and your ip will remain in the same range as the device (so instead of becoming 128.5.6.134, you would become 192.168.1.220). So hotspot mode makes it easier for you to hop on to other networks without having to reset the box.

The downside of being in hotspot mode vs. bridge mode is that you are sharing your internet connection via wifi, but of course you can password protect it (up to WPA2), mac filter it, and even make the SID invisible. You might also want to disable the firewall in the device if you are already connecting to another router with a firewall already enabled.

It seems to have great network stability and solid bandwidth control. What I mean is that I don't notice and dropped connections and it seems to handle gaming or online videos like if I was hardwired. I can't speak on reliability because I haven't had it long enough, but I can't say I had any problems with other Asus products before.

The device does come with a short ethernet cable and usb cable. The usb cable is used to only power the device instead of using the AC adapter. Why use the USB cable instead of the AC adapter? Well depending on your system the USB power usually gets shut off when you turn the computer off, so the device is only on when your computer is on. Now I have built in USB ports and I also expanded my system using PCI Cards with USB ports. I noticed the PCI USB ports turn off completely while my built in ports stay powered on even though I turned my computer off. So I used a USB extender to reach the PCI card and this way the device turns itself off when not in use. Of course you would only want to do this if you are using it as in bridge mode or hotspot bridge mode. If you need to share your connection at all times then obviously AC adapter would be the best choice.

Once the device is setup then you can hook it up to a PS3 or XBOX360 or any other device that has an ethernet port and make it wireless.

So to sum it all up you can use this as a repeater, gateway, bridge, or hotspot which is like a hybrid bridge with a repeater / gateway compatibility. I was thinking about getting the D-Link DWL-G730AP, but then I saw a rebate for this and took the chance on Asus which I am glad I did and I think it is a very cool device. I'd actually give this 4.5 stars because the manual is very basic and really doesn't cover everything that can be done with this device. It isn't hard to setup and if you have some wireless know how then you can do some complex things with it as well.