Product Reviews

If you're looking to share a broadband connection, you don't need anything quicker than an 802.11g wireless router. Billion's BiPAC 7300G is aimed at this entry-level market, but it's been designed to show that you don't have to give up on features when you opt for a low-price router.

To this end, the BiPAC 7300G is probably the most comprehensive entry-level router that we have reviewed. It has Quality of Service (QoS) built-in, to prevent your connection being flooded by bandwidth-hungry applications, and one of the most comprehensive firewalls you'll see, too. Its configuration isn't for the faint-hearted, and most

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people will be best off leaving the default settings alone.

As a result, it's a little trickier to set up than rival routers from bigger brands. The web configuration page isn't particularly neat and the Quick Start wizard doesn't help you configure wireless settings, just internet settings. Some of the terminology is a little confusing, too. Instead of simply being able to select that your WAN IP address is handled automatically by your ISP, an address of 0.0.0.0 has to be entered. This could be a little too tricky for novice users to deal with.

The wireless settings are comprehensive and the BiPAC 7300G supports WEP, WPA and WPA2 encryption, so you'll be able to protect your network no matter what clients you want to connect to.

Performance was about average for an 802.11g wireless router, although we were pleased that we could get a connection at 25m. With a throughput of 2.67Mbit/s at this range, it's fine for web browsing. The connection remained stable at all times and the connection never dropped.

The BiPAC 7300G is a stable and feature-packed 802.11g wireless router, but it's a little tricky to configure. Enthusiasts that want control over every setting, however, will love it.