Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

3/25/2012 My 802.11n / DSL router is a Actiontec GT784WN. The WiFi range on that device is poor. (the radio is under powered) I use WPA2 AES encyption. I bought the Hi-Gain Wireless-N Dual Radio Smart Repeater Model HW2R1. I ran the quick setup and checked the bridging/passthrough mode checkbox. It connects to my Actiontec via 802.11n WPA2 AES, however it broadcasts 802.11n WPA TKIP by default. Some of my 802.11n adapters (Netgear WMCE2001) actually warn me that the data rate will not exceed 54 Mbps if using WPA TKIP. Other adapters (Cisco-Linksys WEC600N Dual Band Wireless-N Ultra RangePlus Expresscard) don't give me any warning and actually connect to the Hawking HW2R1 repeater (broadcasting 802.11n using WPA TKIP encryption) at 5 bars with 130 Mbps. It's really weird! On the box and on the Hawking website, it says that WPA2 AES is supported, yet by default the repeater is broadcasting WPA TKIP encryption. Also, with bridging/passthrough mode, there's no way to configure the repeater as it "blends" into your existing network so anything that you need to change up must be set up originally in the initial configuration. 3/28/2012 Update This is an amazing product with no instructions! Half the customers who buy this return it due to configuration difficulties. Here's what you need to do: 1. Press the Reset WPS Button for 20 seconds 2. Connect to Wireless Network SSID Smart_Repeater 3. Point your web browser to 192.168.5.200 4. Login using username "admin" and password "1234" 5. Make sure you are on the tab labeled "Quick Setup" and Run the Automatic Setup (Recommended) 6. Check the Bridging/passthrough mode checkbox, auto-detect your wireless network SSID and enter your connection credentials. 7. The wizard will guide you through and at the end it will reboot the repeater. The above steps are just the start. 8. After the repeater reboots, you can connect via the cat5 / ethernet cable provided to fine tune the settings and get more performance out of this wonderful repeater. Connect one end of the ethernet cable to your PC ethernet adapter and the other end to the ethernet/cat5 port labeled WIRED1 on the Hawking HW2R1 repeater. 9. Turn off your wireless connection on your PC or laptop. 10. Turn on your wired connection on your PC or laptop. 11. Download file software_HW2R1.exe from [...] 12. Then, run software_HW2R1.exe. It will detect your Hawking HW2R1 repeater. 13. While software_HW2R1.exe is running and connected to the Hawking HW2R1 repeater, start your web browser and go to to 192.168.5.200 14. You will see the Hawking configuration web page that you originally saw when you connected wirelessly to Wireless Network SSID Smart_Repeater, only this time, your connection is over ethernet/cat5 wire. This is a totally undocumented feature. 15. Login using username "admin" and password "1234" 16. You can now go to the tab labeled "Manual Setup" What you have here by default are the default settings that the repeater was set to during the "Quick Setup" phase (steps 1-7 above) before the reboot. 17. Here you will see left-hand side sub menus with more in-depth customization settings. Navigate through to each screen to see the custom settings pages. Press Apply and then press the Go Back button to avoid rebooting. You'll see that the settings you just Applied are kept. DO NOT reboot after applying each setting. It's all or nothing. Basically, the repeater keeps the settings you've applied in memory until you are ready to apply permanently / reboot, in which case it will write the settings to its permanent flash storage. You accumulate all the settings, THEN you reboot when you're good and ready. This is not documented and probably causes quite a lot of people to return their perfectly working repeater. It also makes it seem as though you need to reboot after changing 1 setting. Too many reboots could end up bricking the repeater. 18. Here, you can change the wireless network security settings to WPA2 AES so you get true 802.11n speed (over 54 Mbps) The most wonderful part of this is that you can go back over and over again to further fine tune your repeater over the ethernet wire connection. So what did I just explain here? A way to setup the device to a default configuration via a wireless connection and then fine tune the default configuration via a wired connection. Another thing to do is to download the Hawking software for this device found at bit.ly/JqjVTb This will scan your network connect to the repeater and tell you what version of the firmware your repeater is running. My repeater is running firmware ver. 1.22 The firmware available on the Hawking support page at [...] index.php products wireless repeaters_&_extenders hw2r1.html is older versions 1.12 and 1.18. Hawking! Get your act together! You're shipping 1.22 firmware product and don't have the latest version firmware up on your web site on the product page. What gives? Hawking should pay me to write their manuals. I'm certain if this was the case, they would have far fewer returns and a lot more satisfied customers!