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: Amazing device that works as advertised
Summary: 5 Stars
I live in an older apartment building that is made of concrete and steel. I've upgraded my DLink router with external high-gain antennas, and still could not get a decent signal in the bedrooms or the back terrazza.
I received my Hawking Technologies 300N entenders last night. I bought two as I didn't really know what to expect. I followed the instructions in the Quick Guide, told my Blackberry Javelin to hook up with the new network (the 300N provides a new network SSID to connect to) and it immediately failed without getting an IP.
The problem was not with the 300N; my DLink needed a little tweaking. It's an older router and doesn't play well with others.
After about 20 minutes of messing with the DLink, I had a solid connection with the 300N.
I moved around the apartment with my laptop and Blackberry, and found a suitable location in a small office space about halfway from the living room (router location) and the very back of the apartment. I was concerned as there are three walls of concrete and steel between the router and the office space. I plugged the 300N into the wall, and checked the Blackberry - sure enough, the 300N was connected and passing the signal perfectly.
I went to the back terrazza and tried with the laptop (A Vaio Z series), and had no problems connecting with 5 bars. I was pretty ecstatic!
Now, I leave everything connected to the 300N. It covers the entire apartment, and I've not had a single drop in coverage.
This thing rocks! I've connected with the Vaio, the Blackberry, and an old Dell laptop that I've had for years. Everything just plain works.
So far, I've done Wireless-G connections. I'm waiting for a new N router and expect that to work even better.
I gave Tech Support 5 stars. I've not used Tech Support for this product, but I have used Hawking Technology's support in the past, when I needed a little help with a gigabit switch and LAN cards, and they were absolutely superb.
Customer Review: More setup tips (Hawking HWREN1)
Summary: 4 Stars
I initially used the Wizard but ran into problems, and then couldn't access the Hawking's browser interface. Solution was to use the Wizard with a crossover cable to avoid the problems, then access the Hawking's browser interface to confirm the settings.
Problem I found was that if the Hawking was connected to the router (Netgear FVG318) by both cable and wireless, then it would crash the LAN (LAN IP address conflict). I also couldn't get the Wizard to finish rebooting the Hawking with new settings. But, the Wizard requires the router's wireless to be active (visible to the Hawking) in order to complete the configuration, and requires a cable connection to talk to the Hawking...
And after unsuccessfully trying the Wizard, I couldn't communicate with the Hawking via browser (e.g., computer and Hawking both connected by cable to the router, router's wireless capability turned off). It wouldn't respond to the IP addresses I tried. (Maybe the Wizard's unsuccessful reboot of the Hawking changed the default 192.168.1.240 address to something else, I don't know).
So I disconnected the cable between the Hawking and the router and connected the Hawking directly to the computer using a crossover cable, so that the Hawking's only connection to the router was via wireless. That worked - I was able to use the Wizard to assign a specific IP address to the Hawking and the reboot initiated by the Wizard at the end of the process completed successfully. Thereafter I was able to access the Hawking through the crossover cable using the browser and the specific IP address, and confirm settings. After disconnecting the crossover cable, I was also able to access the Hawking wirelessly using a browser and the specific LAN IP address (e.g., directly via a computer with a wireless card, or indirectly via computer connected by cable to the router which talked with the Hawking wirelessly).
The Hawking appears to be working fine, with WPA security. Haven't yet tried WPA2, or WPA and WPA2 mixed.
Customer Review: Had to sweat to make it work
Summary: 4 Stars
So here is the deal. Got it shipped overnight from Amazon for just $4 extra let me share with you my experience. I
I have a Netgear WNR3500 N router with WPA AES setup, I hooked the Hwren1 extender to the router dowloaded the latest version of the install wizard from Hawking went through the set up and clicked OK the extender rebooted I went over to my wireless N laptop did a site survey, well sure enough Hawking Extender shows up, selected it put in the WPA AES code it connected immediately--- but then came the slap in the face: NO INTERNET CONNECTION" so i hooked up the Extender up again with the router and skipped the wizard and went through the 192.168.1.240 web page setup every thing went smoothly.... And.... same damn problem no Internet connection.
So I called the dreaded tech support which btw is very far from where I live (India) well, the guy was speaking from script, I mean "NO CLUE" so I went back to square 1 but to no avail.
I was ready to throw the p o s out the window.
Outta frustration decided to call tech support again and let them have it.
But the nice Indian lady asked me in a thick accent- Sur did you set the channel???
That was my light at the end of the tunnel. Since Netgear N routers have a setting "300 Mbps" and when you select that you cannot select a fixed channel it only goes from 1-5 6-7 8-11. So that was the reason the Hwren1 could not get an Internet connection. So i lowered it to 145 and selected channel 11 and behold---- I was surfing the world wide web with ease!
After it was all set and done my 2 story house dosnt have an inch of dead spot.
And btw it DOES work with WPA AES!!!!
Lucky me I didn't give up on the darn thing.
I gave it 4 stars because of the hell it gave me to set up, but as far as operational it deserves 10 stars.
Remember this device WILL work for you if you don't give up like I was about to do
Cheers. AMAZON ROCKS!
Customer Review: Solved a Problem -- I Think
Summary: 5 Stars
My WiFi router is upstairs in a two-story house. I installed a Roku box downstairs to stream movies to my HD TV. The wireless signal strength was just not enough to maintain uninterrupted streaming so I decided to try a wireless repeater/extender and the Hawkins HWREN1 Range Extender seemed to staisfy my requiremnents without complicating things with a bunch of other "features" I didn't need -- and the price was right. I initialized the Hawkins Range Extender following the Installation Guide and using the Setup CD with the Hawkins unit connected directly to my Netgear WNR3500v2 (802.11n) Router via the Ethernet cable that came with the range extender. I did not use the WiFi Protected Setup (WPS) even though my router supports WPS -- I've always found WPS to be more trouble than it's worth. I then disconnected the extender from my PC/Router and moved it downstairs about 20 feet away from the Roku box but in line-of-sight view. The Roku box recognized both the extender and the router but the signal strength from the extender was significantly greater than that from the router. I couldn't get the Roku box onto my LAN or the Internet until I "rebooted" (i.e., unplugged/re-plugged) the router. I had no similar problem with my iPad although both devices -- Ipad and Roku box -- required that I type in the WPA2 security passphrase for the router in order to access the extender. Interestingly, the extender was assigned an IP address during initialization when connected directly to the router but does not show up with an IP address when it's disconnected and I look at the "Attached Devices" log of the router, which usually shows all devices using the router both Ethernet and WiFi connected. Similarly, none of the devices connected "through" the extender seem to be assigned IP addresses -- it's either an anomaly or a great secondary firewall -- whichever it is, everything seems to be working just fine with little hassle. If the extender fails prematurely, I'll update this review.Customer Review: Hawking HWREN1 300N did not work
Summary: 1 Stars
My Linksys range extender broke. After a good bit of research on reviews I selected the Hawking HWREN1 300N to replace it. As usual Amazon did a great job on ordering and shipping.
The Hawking Range Extender is another matter. I first configured it with the Wizard software provided by Hawking. That appeared to work but I could not connect to the Range Extender or the Internet.
I then tried configuring it through the Web Browser interface. That seemed to work, initially. After a short time the Hawking would drop the link to my D-Link DIR-615 WAP/Router. None of my experiments with configuration worked so I called Tech Support. To be fair, although they seemed to be in another country I could understand the Tech, he was polite, and he tried to step me thorough a number of configurations. None of them worked. Any time a wireless computer connected to the Hawking it could not get through to my home network or the Internet.
At that point the Tech had exhausted his options and told me that after looking up information on my router that I had to call D-Link and find out how to disable MAC Address filtering. We ended the conversation there. The total time on the phone was about 1 hour. As I suspected, when I checked my WAP/Router, MAC address filtering was NOT enabled.
I tried both WEP and WPA encryption with no change in the symptoms. Once a computer connected to the Hawking it lost connection to my home network and the Internet.
I was about to call Tech Support back and decided that I had wasted enough time on the problem. Instead I have contacted Amazon to return the HWREN1 as defective. As usual again, Amazon made the process easy.
I would advise anyone who purchases this extender to try it right away and be prepared to return it. The reviews were generally good but unfortunately my experience was the same as the seeming minority of negative reviews.