BILLION recently unveiled its new range of routers due for release in the coming days and I managed to get my hands on the top-end model from the new range – the 7404VNOX – which includes ADSL2+, 3G, 802.11n Wireless, 4 Port Gigabit Ethernet, VPN, Firewall, and Voice over IP support. What a mouthful!
I breathed a sigh of relief when I opened up the box, Billion appears to be shifting away from its somewhat ugly designs. The primary router in my household has been for quite some time a Billion 7401VGP-M, and I’m tempted to hide the thing from view whenever someone visits the house. This time however, it’s a lot more aesthetically pleasing, though a little large, about the same size as an old Telstra Touchfone. The box contains the main unit, power pack, three antennas for the wireless access point, an ethernet cable, serial cable and ADSL line filter.
Setting up the router was far easier than I recall with my old Billion, I plugged it in, punched in the IP address and ran through the Quick Start wizard. My ADSL and Voice over IP services connected immediately, though I had trouble making outbound calls. After about 15 minutes of frustration I learned that I’m not above stupid mistakes, and promptly made a call successfully after plugging the phone into the correct voice port; there’s two of them!
The web interface has also had a work-over since I last used it – it looks a lot fresher – and they’ve separated the basic and advanced settings a little more. Personally, I found this annoying and finicky but I can see the benefits in terms of basic users not complicating things by playing with advanced settings and potentially running into issues.
Sadly, I don’t own any Wireless N equipment to test with the router which I think is going to be the largest hurdle if any with this router’s uptake – it’s ahead of its time almost. The shear amount of features on this router is overwhelming, yet you don’t need a university degree to operate it. That being said, using Wireless G equipment I received slightly better signal strength than my usual router which is handy for me considering the distances apart some of the PC’s here are.
ADSL connection wise, there was no great change in the downstream or upstream rates on my ADSL2+ connection – I still sync up at around 6.5mbit down and 820kbps up. I’ve had no problems at all with dropouts or loss of sync, and the connection overall seems very stable. The Quality of Service built into the router seems to work very well; even if I saturate the connection my call quality on Voice over IP calls remains excellent.
The 7404VNOX has a USB port at the back of the router for a 3G mobile broadband modem, as well as four gigabit ethernet ports which is something rarely found on routers at the moment. One very cool feature on this router is its ability to maintain an always on connection by switching to a 3G connection if your ADSL suddenly becomes unavailable due to an outage someone puts a backhoe through your telephone line.
I’ll be covering the mobile broadband aspects of this router in great detail in an article coming out shortly where I’ll be using this router for evaluation of various mobile broadband offerings. The router is also stocked up with VPN support, and can handle 16 simultaneous IPSec VPN tunnels.
The major downside to this particular model at the moment is its price tag which runs at an RRP of $529, far more than I would have ever previously considered shelling out for a router but considering the sheer feature set and flexibility of the product, seems almost reasonable. If you’re a business or SOHO user, on the road a lot, and have a use for a lot of the features home users don’t, like VPN support, the price tag is probably on the cheap side when compared to other units.
Overall, it’s not a router I’d be buying for my home, but it’s an amazing unit with very real application in a wide range of environments. Luckily, Billion has some other offerings in the same class that have a lighter price tag and remove some of the features you might never use.