Hawking HWREN1 Hi-Gain Wireless-300N Range Extender
by Hawking Technology
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List Price: Our Price: $69.99 You Save: $10.00 (13%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $41.95 (click here) Category: CE See more product details |
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Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Hawking HWREN1 Hi-Gain Wireless-300N Range Extender
Customer Review: Increased our signal!
Summary: 5 Stars
To be quite honest I was a little hesitant on purchasing the Hawking HWREN1 Hi-Gain Wireless-300N Range Extender after reading most of all the reviews. Many have mentioned that the installation process has be be manually inputted and that worried me since I am by far NOT a "techie". I can follow instructions but I can not "dissect" or troubleshoot when an installation goes bad.
I currently use the D-Link Wireless DIR-615 N Router, 4-Port 10/100 Switch, 2 Antennas, Draft 802.11n as my wireless router. I own a two-story level split level home and was not receiving a strong signal in the farthest corner bedrooms. On a good day the signal would be 2 bars. I decided after reading so many reviews on many different wireless extenders, I would bite the bullet and get this one. I prepared myself by printing out several of the reviews which gave step by step explanations how to install it manually. When the unit arrived I just looked at it for several minutes trying to debate if I should try to install it myself or call a professional. I had to give it a shot. I put aside the CD installation software as many suggested and attempted to install it manually. I can not recall why or what I did at the time, but I was only able to connect to the "Local" network and not the internet. I tried to go to the internet login page on my browser but it would not connect. I repeatedly retraced my steps and could not figure out why it would not work. I finally decided to insert the installation CD. IT WORKED! I followed the instructions on the CD very carefully, found my network and it only took about 8 minutes to have the unit up and running. Unplugged it and relocated it to the farthest bedroom in the house and it actually improved the signal to the best possible range...5 bars! The signal is constant and does not drop at all. I also want to add that I did not have to go to the login page to make any changes to the configuration (i.e set channel). Thank goodness I did not have to make any changes, because with my luck I would of changed something and it probably would of stopped working.
Maybe Hawkings realized that there were many problems when the unit first came out and since so many voiced their concerns and opinions, they have updated their installation software to be much more user friendly. I want to thank everyone who wrote very informative and helpful reviews. I am extremely happy with my purchase and would highly recommend it.
Customer Review: Mac Attack
Summary: 4 Stars
My sister-in-law bought this for me to install in her condo, as the complex has free Wi-Fi, but she lives near the end of the property and coverage is spotty. Other people in the complex had had the same problem so we asked the manager what repeater/extender they bought, and he sent us to this page at amazon.
Setup could have been simple but I made it hard for two reasons: (a) I use a Mac and (b) I was determined to set this up without wires from start to finish.
Part (a), using a Mac, was something I didn't believe would be a problem b/c I use VMware to run WinXP on my mac.
Part (b), setting up wirelessly was a shot in the dark. The instructions that come with the extender clearly state that you have to connect to the router you're trying to extend via ethernet cable. I just hoped that somehow by sharing the wifi internet connection through ethernet to the extender I could get things to work, because I wasn't sure the management of the complex would let me waltz in and connect to their main access point.
And to make a long story short, I basically wasted 2 hrs. ignoring the instructions and trying all possible combinations I could think of to get the extender to extend, but didn't get anywhere.
Eventually, I gave up and walked over to the complex office, where it turned out their main router was easily accessible for me to connect however I wanted. Despite having all the connections exactly as shown in the Quick Installation Guide (extender connected to access point via ethernet, computer with install CD connected to access point via another ethernet), I still couldn't get the configuration software to see the extender. "No Device Found". I realized that the only thing I could possibly be doing wrong is running the install CD from a Mac running Windows under VMware, instead of installing from a "real" PC.
FINALLY, I decided to follow the instructions exactly. I abandoned the mac and instead popped the disk into an an actual public PC that was connected to the main router via Ethernet. Once I did this, everything worked flawlessly and I was up and running in 30 seconds. Powered everything down, took the extender back to the condo, powered it back up there and have had no problems for about 3 hours now.
Moral of the story is to RTFM and FOLLOW TFM! You gotta be able to physically connect via ethernet cable to the access point you're wanting to extend, and running Windows on a Mac doesn't appear to work for reasons that escape me. Borrow a PC for the install, then give it back quickly.
Customer Review: Working Well ... ... But
Summary: 4 Stars
Looking for value, we all usually have a sub-conscious mental list du jour of goods & services that get away with atrocious prices, often by lobbying against competition. Telecom services is definitely one such.
I had noticed that my kid never used our Verizon home DSL claiming its not the transmission speed but the constant server delays. Spark Notes and school research is far better on her (open & un-encrypted) school wireless network which I found she could access even at home; her room being school facing even though one suburban block away. Realizing how reliable the school network was, I bought the Hawking WREN1 repeater to enable the rest of the house & yard. Initially I had a hard time configuring it b/c in an effort to be non-technical the documentation does not tell you how to set all IP addresses and configure the device from the internet. Fortunately the support guy in India was great. He knew the product well, spoke good English, was polite, helpful and professional, answered several questions about the product and the WREN has been performing solidly for two weeks now. A good product enhanced by tech support. 5 busy body home users now rely on it. Verizon DSL is powered off for 2 weeks & no one knows. My pilot period ends in 2 more weeks. I think I will save $40 pm for a poky overpriced 3Mbps service and use the 54Mbps FREE tax supported school network. Eureka, maybe I do have an alternative, inspite of the FCC. BTW, $3/month Skype all-U-can-Call within US/Canada phone works great on the internet and the $42 Channelmaster 4221HD antenna on the chimney gets a whole lot of HiDef TV channels for FREE in NJ. The Olympics never looked better last year.
PS 6-23-09: U live & learn. The school changed B'cast channel on its WiFi signal and the HWREN1 conked out. It can't keep track of channel changes. Called help again and he set it right. I'm impressed with tech support. VERY good English, crisp, to the point. Technically very comfortable. Reason to buy Hawking products. Some tech inclined customers may claim poor tech support ... I've been in Hitech long enough (R&D and Prod.Mgmt.) to know product support (especially consumer type) is not a design engineer. Although I am impressed with Hawking so far, truth be told - if your application is like mine (no routers, no fixed line service) U live with manual channel resetting each time. A little IP knowledge will let u do it yourself. Alternately Hawkings advises an adapter (tracks channel changes) for each home pc with a good external antenna to pick up distant weak WiFi (HWUN1 + Antenna).
Customer Review: With wireless channel... it's great
Summary: 3 Stars
--It doesn't have auto-scan, so you'll have to choose a channel for your Wireless AP--
I finally decided to spend some more time on troubleshooting. I found out what causes it to lose its connection to the internet. If you have devices connecting to your Hawking, but still don't have an internet connection, then check the device and see if the wireless indicator on the device is off. If so, unplug the power and plug it back in. You'll see the wireless light on for a bit, then it times out after 15-30 seconds or so. It loses a connection to my wireless access point because of the Wireless Channel. When I ran the CD software, it scanned all channels and found my wireless device on Channel 5. It worked great in the house for an hour or so, then it stopped working. I checked the wireless access point, and now it was on Channel 6! My wireless access point has a feature called "Auto-scan" which tries other channels to offer the best connection. I simply changed it from Auto-scan to "5", and my Hawking could now connect and repeat my internet connection again! So the Hawking doesn't have the feature that every other wireless client has: "scanning for wireless access points". The "scan" happens from the CD, and the device expects it to never change. It would have been great to add this information to the manual!
--Fixed IP for MAC address--
I don't know if this will help anybody, because I never confirmed whether DHCP was a problem with this device. I took the time to set up a fixed IP address for the "secret" MAC address that is one higher than the MAC printed on the device. It's not actually secret... a wireless repeater needs two network devices, each with their own MAC address: one to receive requests from your devices, and another to send it to your wireless access point. The MAC printed underneath is the device that your computer will connect to, so if you want your wireless access point to give a fixed IP address, you'll want to assign it to the "backend" device, so add one to the MAC number. For example, if the last four digits are "9614", you'd add "000E3B0F9615".
---Original review---
I've owned this product for 3 months. I can get the whole thing set up, and it works as advertised. Then, a couple of weeks later, it can't connect to my wireless router, and everything loses internet connectivity. Power cycling doesn't get it to renew its lease. I have to hard reset the device and reconfigure it from scratch. It may be something I'm doing wrong, but I can't figure out why it is so hard to reset.
Customer Review: Works great once you get the settings right
Summary: 4 Stars
Having read many reviews on this product I went ahead and purchased. Although reading lots of information about not using the wizard, I decided to try it. I was able to complete set up in less than 5 minutes. As part of the wizard set up, it does provide you with an IP address, which the instructions say you should write down - THIS IS IMPORTANT. I did set up the SSID for the extender to be the same as my home router - the instructions do not tell you to do that.. Anyway, after setting up per instructions, I placed the unit in my house and my previous connection issue was immediately resolved!! However, what I found was that I could not keep a connection for more than a day, and when it wasn't working, NONE of my computers could access the internet. If I shut the extender off, cycled my home router and then turned the extender back on, all would work again, but only for no more than a day before I had to repeat.
So after reading more reviews it seemed that the key ingredients were to set the SSID to be the same as your home router, which I had done, but also to set the channels to be the same. So I hard wired the extender to my home router again and proceeded to try to get the channel set up. This is where the IP address from above comes into play. Most of the reviews I read indicated the IP address to use to logon to the extender to set up manually - 192.168.1.240. My extender, having been set up initially via the wizard, was assigned a different IP - 192.168.1.10, so that is what I needed to use to access the setup. When I tried to change the channel and save the settings I started getting pop up errors indicating an IP address conflict on my network.... Not sure what ws going on there, but was able to set a channel on the extender. I then went to my home router and found its channel setting was on "automatic". I believe this is where my issues were coming from initially with lost internet connectivity. I then set my home router on the same channel as the extender, then set everything back up. It has now been 2 weeks and the device has worked flawlessly - not a single drop of connectivity and signal stength at the far end of my home is now excellent. So getting the SSID and Channels set to the same values on both home router and extender seemed to be the ticket for me. For the record, I only run WEP, so not sure if this matters, but hope this might help anyone who has struggled with getting this extender to work. I was about ready to send it back but am now very pleased with how it is working.