Billion BiPAC 7300G RA

Billion’s 7300G RA is an example of an ADSL modem/router that’s still current but showing its age in terms of specifications: no 802.11n, no Gigabit Ethernet.

Putting that aside, it does have a reasonable feature set, including an SPI firewall, the ability to send an email notification of intrusion detection or a changed external IP address, QoS, and web filtering by domain or keyword.

The wizard-style Quick Setup item in the web interface helps get you on the air as quickly as possible. That interface is reasonably well organised. If the ADSL modem or connection fails, there’s no provision for connecting any other communications device as a fallback - though that’s not uncommon with combo modem routers.

Is it really too expensive to have manuals edited by native English speakers? “It… must not excess 32 characters” indeed!

The wireless performance of the 7300G RA was a bit of a mystery. At short range, we clocked a rather pokey average of 38 seconds. Moving to the next room gave a significant improvement to a respectable 20 seconds. In both cases the times were consistent across the three trials.

Wireless throughput normally decreases with distance so we repeated the test and got the same outcome. But when we extended the separation for our long-range test we were unable to get a reliable connection.

Given that the 7300G RA is an inexpensive router from a well-regarded manufacturer, it might be worth considering for a small office equipped with older and slower Wi-Fi and Ethernet equipment.

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