Price : Too low to display
Unleash your Wireless Network with the Hawking Hi-Gain Outdoor 2.4GHz Wireless-300N Dual Radio Smart Repeater, HOW2R1. The HOW2R1 outdoor smart repeater connects and repeats your existing wireless network with up to 64X the power output and 8X the distance of a standard Wireless-G device. Similar to the Hawking’s HW2R1 Smart Repeater with dual radio design, the HOW2R1 Outdoor Smart Repeater is engineered with two powerful Wi-Fi radios, one radio is dedicated to receiving signals from a wireless source, access point or router, and the other radio is used to rebroadcasting wireless signals throughout your surroundings. To further enhance its wireless range and coverage, the WiFi receiving radio is connected to an 11dBi directional antenna, integrated internally in the HOW2R1. In addition, two external 5dBi antennas are connected to the rebroadcasting WiFi radio to effectively elimnates wireless deadspots inside and outside of your home or office. This powerful repeater is not only robustly design to withstand outdoor environment, it also packed with wireless security features, such as MAC access control, IEEE 802.11x authentication, WPA, WPA2, hidden ESSID, and the basic WEP encryption. With data transfer rate of up to 300Mbps, the HOW2R1 is an ideal solution for High Performance Wireless Solution, extending your wireless signals for your home or your business, or providing wireless access to RV parks or Marine docks. The possibilities are endless.
This review is from : Hawking Hi-Gain Outdoor Wireless-300N Dual Radio Smart Repeater
Good Product / Features for the Price - Be Careful Setting up. . Like others the setup which seemed easy at first really turned out not to be. I suspect that many of the negative reviews are due to complexity issues vs true lemons.
In short this is a good affordable (near industrial) solution, especially considering it is really a full featured router, with 2 High Gain Antennas, Outdoor Enclosure, Mounting Bracket and an included PoE Injector. You get a lot of bang for your $250. I will probably buy a few more for work. (This was for home use)
WARNING - THERE IS NO RESET BUTTON.
My Setup Problems, In case you can learn something from my mistakes.
I followed the Quick Start (not the CD), found and connected to the router and walked through the set up. There is a vague warning that says if you set this up in bridge mode you might not be able to access setup again, but that you can hold reset for 10 seconds. Since bridge mode was what I wanted, I figured what the heck I can always hit reset if I get into trouble.
WARNING - THERE IS NO RESET BUTTON.
I was just playing with the device testing it with one of my home routers, then I was going to make my real production changes later.
WARNING - THERE IS NO RESET BUTTON.
I later decided that Bridge Mode was not meeting my needs. So I wanted to change the SSID and put the HOW2R back into AP mode. But I could not "speak" to the HOW2R. I did not know its IP address and since it was in Bridge Mode, I could not interact with it directly. After hours of looking for a reset switch, taking it apart, pulling off cables trying to reset it, I gave up and called Tech Support (India) Sunday Night. My support person had great English speaking and comprehension skills. What I had to do was to use the installation CD to "Find" the device via wireless and then learn its IP address. Then, in order to "talk" to the device (my idea) I had to manually change my IP address on my Laptop to be on the same subnet (198.162.5.220) and connect to it again with a physical Ethernet cable. Then I was able to "talk" to the device and change all the settings.
With the Device sitting a few feet from my CiscoE2000 I had comparable signal strength out to about 100ft, but then the HOW2R kept going and going out to about 300ft+. In my final setup with the CiscoE2000 inside a sealed metal data cabinet inside a wood shed, and the HOW2R about 10 feet away on an outside wall, I was able to get close to 100% signal from the HOW2R at a distance of 250ft (as far as I needed to go).
Like others have said, bring an expert if you don't know what you are doing. While this is plug and play, by answering a simple question wrong it will kill your day. For those looking to see only a single SSID I did the following. I disabled SSID broadcast on my CiscoE2000 and used the HOW2R for broadcasting its own SSID.
WARNING - THERE IS NO RESET BUTTON.
I would probably buy a few more of these.
By the way, all my testing was with wireless-n. Your mileage may vary.
Good Product / Features for the Price - Be Careful Setting up. . Like others the setup which seemed easy at first really turned out not to be. I suspect that many of the negative reviews are due to complexity issues vs true lemons.
In short this is a good affordable (near industrial) solution, especially considering it is really a full featured router, with 2 High Gain Antennas, Outdoor Enclosure, Mounting Bracket and an included PoE Injector. You get a lot of bang for your $250. I will probably buy a few more for work. (This was for home use)
WARNING - THERE IS NO RESET BUTTON.
My Setup Problems, In case you can learn something from my mistakes.
I followed the Quick Start (not the CD), found and connected to the router and walked through the set up. There is a vague warning that says if you set this up in bridge mode you might not be able to access setup again, but that you can hold reset for 10 seconds. Since bridge mode was what I wanted, I figured what the heck I can always hit reset if I get into trouble.
WARNING - THERE IS NO RESET BUTTON.
I was just playing with the device testing it with one of my home routers, then I was going to make my real production changes later.
WARNING - THERE IS NO RESET BUTTON.
I later decided that Bridge Mode was not meeting my needs. So I wanted to change the SSID and put the HOW2R back into AP mode. But I could not "speak" to the HOW2R. I did not know its IP address and since it was in Bridge Mode, I could not interact with it directly. After hours of looking for a reset switch, taking it apart, pulling off cables trying to reset it, I gave up and called Tech Support (India) Sunday Night. My support person had great English speaking and comprehension skills. What I had to do was to use the installation CD to "Find" the device via wireless and then learn its IP address. Then, in order to "talk" to the device (my idea) I had to manually change my IP address on my Laptop to be on the same subnet (198.162.5.220) and connect to it again with a physical Ethernet cable. Then I was able to "talk" to the device and change all the settings.
With the Device sitting a few feet from my CiscoE2000 I had comparable signal strength out to about 100ft, but then the HOW2R kept going and going out to about 300ft+. In my final setup with the CiscoE2000 inside a sealed metal data cabinet inside a wood shed, and the HOW2R about 10 feet away on an outside wall, I was able to get close to 100% signal from the HOW2R at a distance of 250ft (as far as I needed to go).
Like others have said, bring an expert if you don't know what you are doing. While this is plug and play, by answering a simple question wrong it will kill your day. For those looking to see only a single SSID I did the following. I disabled SSID broadcast on my CiscoE2000 and used the HOW2R for broadcasting its own SSID.
WARNING - THERE IS NO RESET BUTTON.
I would probably buy a few more of these.
By the way, all my testing was with wireless-n. Your mileage may vary.
Hawking Hi-Gain Outdoor Wireless-300N Dual Radio Smart Repeater Reviews
Wireless . I have been using this for about 2 weeks now and it works great. I am boosting a signal thats about 200 feet away and its great. I have tried several repeaters and have never been able to get them to connect from this distance.
Wireless . I have been using this for about 2 weeks now and it works great. I am boosting a signal thats about 200 feet away and its great. I have tried several repeaters and have never been able to get them to connect from this distance.
Hawking Hi-Gain Outdoor Wireless-300N Dual Radio Smart Repeater Opinions
Works well installs easily. . We bought this repeater to extend a wireless network to a site about 120 meters away. There was no easy line of sight except a small area further from the source router than from the destination area. As usual with wireless networks there were unique issues only discovered during installation. We purchased a Hawking Tech HAWNR1 Wireless N Router with the repeater so we had equipment from the same manufacturer which if possible is the best situation. (Though any router with compatible specs should work-in theory!) Technical Service at Hawking was a good experience and we installed the equipment they recommended that was said to most likely meet our needs; now I know that I would have bought inadequate equipment that needed upgrading immediately w/o their help.
Setup was simple using their quick setup function (from any computer with compatible wireless capabilities). The web-based general installation also seems comprehensive and well explained (at least if you know wireless basica; just use the quick setup if not and then learn more after it works!)
One BIG complaint: that non-existent RESET BUTTON said to exist on the repeater but doesn't! (At least they didn't have a diagram pointing it...though that itself wasted more time searching for nothing. I wonder how much combined time people have spent looking for that button!)
But all in all, installation and setup (I gave up only to return the next day and find it working; failure was on my end!) It's sturdy and of a quality that should last a long time. I always suspect "best price" info that from a product's service rep but an extensive search turned up no one with a lower price...and with excellant service too!
I'm very happy with what I recieved and the service from the people I dealt with at every point. Well,except for that MISSING BUTTON!!
Works well installs easily. . We bought this repeater to extend a wireless network to a site about 120 meters away. There was no easy line of sight except a small area further from the source router than from the destination area. As usual with wireless networks there were unique issues only discovered during installation. We purchased a Hawking Tech HAWNR1 Wireless N Router with the repeater so we had equipment from the same manufacturer which if possible is the best situation. (Though any router with compatible specs should work-in theory!) Technical Service at Hawking was a good experience and we installed the equipment they recommended that was said to most likely meet our needs; now I know that I would have bought inadequate equipment that needed upgrading immediately w/o their help.
Setup was simple using their quick setup function (from any computer with compatible wireless capabilities). The web-based general installation also seems comprehensive and well explained (at least if you know wireless basica; just use the quick setup if not and then learn more after it works!)
One BIG complaint: that non-existent RESET BUTTON said to exist on the repeater but doesn't! (At least they didn't have a diagram pointing it...though that itself wasted more time searching for nothing. I wonder how much combined time people have spent looking for that button!)
But all in all, installation and setup (I gave up only to return the next day and find it working; failure was on my end!) It's sturdy and of a quality that should last a long time. I always suspect "best price" info that from a product's service rep but an extensive search turned up no one with a lower price...and with excellant service too!
I'm very happy with what I recieved and the service from the people I dealt with at every point. Well,except for that MISSING BUTTON!!
Hawking HOW R2 . Easy to set up and works quite well. Was up and going with the first setup. The POE is a great feature making this item more usable. But transmission speeds are slow, as they are with any repeated signal. Would recommend the product to anyone considering extending their network range outdoors.
CHOCK FULL OF WIRELESS GOODNESS . I set this unit up for an RV park who had no wireless internet and it was easy and worked very well.
The setup took all of 20 minutes from unpacking the box to surfing the net. The wireless signals range is 300 feet easy - covered the whole RV park with one unit. The unit casing is tough plastic and waterproof, the Power over Ethernet was plug and play, and worked very well. I am not only completely satisfied with this product, I am awed by its awesomeness - it worked so well.
I was looking at units in the $600 price range when I stumbled on this one. Not being familiar with the Brand or the unit I asked around...no one else had any info either, but with Amazon's return policy I didn't worry about it. Turns out this has most of the features of the really expensive repeaters/routers for less than half the price.
This unit has full routing functions as well as repeating - it is in fact a router, just turn on DHCP.
If you need to set up an outdoor wireless network I would strongly recommend this to you, look no further and just buy it.
The setup took all of 20 minutes from unpacking the box to surfing the net. The wireless signals range is 300 feet easy - covered the whole RV park with one unit. The unit casing is tough plastic and waterproof, the Power over Ethernet was plug and play, and worked very well. I am not only completely satisfied with this product, I am awed by its awesomeness - it worked so well.
I was looking at units in the $600 price range when I stumbled on this one. Not being familiar with the Brand or the unit I asked around...no one else had any info either, but with Amazon's return policy I didn't worry about it. Turns out this has most of the features of the really expensive repeaters/routers for less than half the price.
This unit has full routing functions as well as repeating - it is in fact a router, just turn on DHCP.
If you need to set up an outdoor wireless network I would strongly recommend this to you, look no further and just buy it.
Just what I needed for my motel . I have to admit that I was a bit skeptical about this product at first after reading some of the reviews on here. I received the first one and set it up in under 10 minutes and then noticed that it just stopped working. I returned the first one through Amazon and they shipped out the new one immediately. I set up the second one and it has been going strong since day one. I'm very impressed with the range and speed of this device. If anything the range is a bit too much as I can still gain access to the repeater a few houses away. I highly recommend setting up security on this device as it has some really good range.
It does the impossible . I figured our wi-fi project was hopeless, but 5 minutes after unboxing the HOW2R1 we had established a stable wi-fi connection 1500ft from a conventional access point. I was shocked by our success! The remote access point is an unremarkable consumer-grade device that we had pretty good line of sight to. The 2r1 site survey found the network right away and speedtest.net reports 2Mb down and 1Mb up. All this without boosting the source! I don't think the configuration was difficult; it is certainly much simpler than dd-wrt. You have to understand that you are effectively configuring two AP's in one device-- if you find that confusing, bring some geeky help.
Cons Review
Powerful signal but configuration difficult . I bought this hoping to expand wireless coverage at my church. We currently have a single Netopia 3347 DSL modem that has okay range. I was looking for a product that would provide much more range and coverage and work with the existing setup.
After opening the package and following the quick-start instructions, I was able to get the Hawking Smart Repeater to "see" the existing wifi connection. It was able to connect quite easily. This is where things got tricky ... the Hawking Smart Repeater then proceeded to create its own separate wifi connection with a different SSID, a different encryption method, and a different subnet.
The end result was that my laptop would see two different wifi SSID connections - the original connection to the Internet, and the repeated one. This configuration technically worked, but it wasn't what I wanted. What I wanted was one seamless area of strong wifi coverage.
So on the Hawking device, I tried changing the SSID and encryption of the repeated wireless connection to match the original connection. And that's where things got really ugly. The Hawking Smart Repeater still tried to act as a DHCP host on its own subnet. I tried disabling the DHCP, activating bridge mode, and putting it on the same subnet. The Hawking Smart Repeater then failed to connect to the Internet. It could still see the original wifi network, but was unable to access the Internet. I tried making a few more changes, and all of them were unsuccessful. Most frustrating however, was that after activating bridge mode, it became nearly impossible to access the web configuration page. Nearly all attempts to access it via the repeater's local ip address ended in errors, but it would sporadically let me see the page. This would get my hopes up that I could make changes, but when I clicked the 'submit' button, it would disappear again.
Even worse, because it was built for the outdoors, there was NO Reset button. The instruction manual said a hard reset could be performed by holding the reset button down for 10 seconds, but doesn't indicate where this button may be located. I think they used the same instruction manual from an indoor version of the smart repeater.
Anyway, I gave up and decided to send it back to Amazon.
Pros:
-STRONG wireless antennae. While I had the internet connection working with two separate SSIDs, my laptop could see and communicate with the box from good distances and through walls.
-Tough exterior box. It says it's built for the Outdoors and it's true. The housing seems to be pretty robust.
Cons:
-Creates a separate wifi network. Attempts to make one seamless network were unsuccessful.
-Expensive.
-NO RESET Button. VERY FRUSTRATING.
I can see this device working well if two neighbors wanted to share one internet connection. One neighbor would host the internet connection, and the second one could use this device to pick up the signal and create his own separate network.
The back of the box also showed other possible uses: sharing/rebroadcasting an internet connection at an RV park, and also for sharing/rebroadcasting internet for boats in a harbor.
For those situations, this device would be great. If you're trying to expand the coverage of your current network and have the same settings across, this is not the device to buy.
After opening the package and following the quick-start instructions, I was able to get the Hawking Smart Repeater to "see" the existing wifi connection. It was able to connect quite easily. This is where things got tricky ... the Hawking Smart Repeater then proceeded to create its own separate wifi connection with a different SSID, a different encryption method, and a different subnet.
The end result was that my laptop would see two different wifi SSID connections - the original connection to the Internet, and the repeated one. This configuration technically worked, but it wasn't what I wanted. What I wanted was one seamless area of strong wifi coverage.
So on the Hawking device, I tried changing the SSID and encryption of the repeated wireless connection to match the original connection. And that's where things got really ugly. The Hawking Smart Repeater still tried to act as a DHCP host on its own subnet. I tried disabling the DHCP, activating bridge mode, and putting it on the same subnet. The Hawking Smart Repeater then failed to connect to the Internet. It could still see the original wifi network, but was unable to access the Internet. I tried making a few more changes, and all of them were unsuccessful. Most frustrating however, was that after activating bridge mode, it became nearly impossible to access the web configuration page. Nearly all attempts to access it via the repeater's local ip address ended in errors, but it would sporadically let me see the page. This would get my hopes up that I could make changes, but when I clicked the 'submit' button, it would disappear again.
Even worse, because it was built for the outdoors, there was NO Reset button. The instruction manual said a hard reset could be performed by holding the reset button down for 10 seconds, but doesn't indicate where this button may be located. I think they used the same instruction manual from an indoor version of the smart repeater.
Anyway, I gave up and decided to send it back to Amazon.
Pros:
-STRONG wireless antennae. While I had the internet connection working with two separate SSIDs, my laptop could see and communicate with the box from good distances and through walls.
-Tough exterior box. It says it's built for the Outdoors and it's true. The housing seems to be pretty robust.
Cons:
-Creates a separate wifi network. Attempts to make one seamless network were unsuccessful.
-Expensive.
-NO RESET Button. VERY FRUSTRATING.
I can see this device working well if two neighbors wanted to share one internet connection. One neighbor would host the internet connection, and the second one could use this device to pick up the signal and create his own separate network.
The back of the box also showed other possible uses: sharing/rebroadcasting an internet connection at an RV park, and also for sharing/rebroadcasting internet for boats in a harbor.
For those situations, this device would be great. If you're trying to expand the coverage of your current network and have the same settings across, this is not the device to buy.
CAG . Easy enough to set up but the dowload speeds are incredibly poor. Customer service is brutal to understand and provided little or no help. I in fact was told that they had not more solutions for me and hung up. The unit is being returned.
Hawking Hi-Gain Repeater isn't worth your hassle . I would not advise anybody to even try this model. The links that you are given to help with the installation process are non-existant. If you call customer service and receive a recording (every time) you are put on hold and nobody will answer. If you leave a phone number nobody returns the call. I was unable to install this item even with the help of an experienced IT friend.
Product Image
Feature Hawking Hi-Gain Outdoor Wireless-300N Dual Radio Smart Repeater
- Connects and repeats any 2.4GHz 802.11b/g/n Wireless Network
- Eliminate Wireless Dead Spots inside and outside your Home or Office with high power output of up to 200mW
- Increase your wireless distance of up to 8X and power output of up to 64X compared to a standard wireless 802.11g network*
- Engineered with two WiFi radios - one receiving radio and one rebroadcasting radio
- Easy Setup: Install and Configure in less than 1 Minute
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Switch
Product Details
EAN : 0603992506866UPC : 603992506866
MPN : HOW2R1
Brand : Hawking Technology
Color : White
Weight : 5 pounds
Height : 4 inches
Length : 12 inches
Width : 10 inches
Binding : Personal Computers
Manufacturer : Hawking Technology
Model : HOW2R1
Publisher : Hawking Technology
SKU : 603992506866
Studio : Hawking Technology
Where To Buy
You can buy Hawking Hi-Gain Outdoor Wireless-300N Dual Radio Smart Repeater on Amazon . Click here to Read More
