Huawei HG523a not very good?

Juzza12

Just received this today as a replacement for a router that was about 3 years old. Trying to find info as the wireless signal is poor and couldn't find much except for for the fact that chinese wholesale sites sell this for as little as $17 a piece.

I'm in the next room to the router and although the list of connection shows the signal strength as excellent it really isn't at times. At one point speed tests showed I was getting 12mbps but later on pages weren't loading.

So, how poor is this router?

Is this one going to be much of an improvement over it? http://www.pcworld.co.uk/gbuk/tp-lin...91896-pdt.html

SilverSmith_2

I know this is an old post but just thought I would contribute my current experience.... even with the latest firmware (version 1.14t) that some have said would reduce the drop-outs, this router is poor.

The features are brilliant but it simply doesn't have sufficient signal strength to work throughout a standard 3-bed brick-built house unless you're happy to tolerate frequent drop-outs (unless you're within about 15 feet of the router and on the same level). OK, we may have five or six devices attached at one time with potentially two of them streaming data, but these days that is pretty average family usage once you include games consoles, PVRs, mobile phones, tablets, laptops and PCs).

So far we have struggled on with this router because it has the potential for downstream throttling (QoS) along with the 802.11N protocol (that should be helping with the data streaming speeds), both of which my older routers lack ... but it's getting to the point where I'll revert purely to gain a reliable connection.