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Billion BiPAC 6300NXL review

Our Rating :
Price when reviewed : £80
inc VAT

This business oriented router has lots of features that an SMB might need but is held back by poor wireless performance

Specifications

802.11n, 4x 10/100/1000Mbit/s Ethernet ports

http://www.ilgs.co.uk
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Testing with our Centrino 2 laptop’s integrated wireless adaptor, we got transfer speeds of 18.9Mbit/s at 1m, 19.5Mbit/s at 10m and 7.9Mbit/s at 20m. Billion’s own BiPac 3010ND adaptor fared even worse: 18.7Mbit/s at 1m, 14.9Mbit/s at 10m and 7.1Mbit/s at 20m. It’s worth noting that these were the best results we were able to obtain after significant trial and error using different channels. The router’s ineffective automatic channel detection always defaulted to channel 11, which proved to be cluttered and slow in our labs.

Billion BiPAC 6300NXL

If wireless isn’t very important to you, then this £80 router is otherwise well equipped with features. You can set up your 3G connection as a backup option should your main internet connection fail, isolate different Ethernet ports from one another to create separate virtual networks and set port ranges or IP addresses for QoS traffic prioritization. Unlike more home-oriented hardware, you have to configure this manually rather than use pull-down menus that let you choose popular programs or types of traffic to prioritise, but this also gives you a great deal more control over what gets dibs on your net connection.

However, no concessions are made to those who aren’t very comfortable with networking or prepared to read through all the necessary documentation, even for something that’s usually as simple as plugging in an external USB drive and making it accessible to the network. Even if you are a fan of Billion’s no-nonsense interface, £70 is a lot to pay given this router’s failings. We prefer the similarly priced Tenda W1800R, which supports the latest 802.11ac Wi-Fi standard.

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Basic Specifications

Rating**
Modem typenone
802.11b supportyes
802.11g supportyes
Draft 802.11n supportyes
Draft 802.11n 5GHz supportno
MIMOyes
Turbo modechannel-bonding
Stated speed300Mbit/s

Security

WPAPSK (TKIP, AES)
WPA2yes
Firewallyes
MAC address filteringyes
DMZyes

Physical

Size37x230x155mm
Antennas3
Internal/external antennasexternal
Upgradeable antennayes
Number of WAN ports1
Ethernet ports4
Ethernet connection speed10/100/1000Mbit/s
Other ports2x USB
Wall mountableyes
Power consumption on3W

Other Features

Dynamic DNSyes
Universal Plug and Play supportyes
DHCP serveryes
MAC spoofingyes
Port forwardingyes
WDS Supportyes
USB device supportyes
QoSyes

Buying Information

Price£80
Warrantytwo years RTB
Supplierhttp://www.ilgs.co.uk
Detailshttp://www.billion.uk.com/