ASUS WL-330gE – Portable Wireless Access Point with 4 functions: Access Point, Ethernet Adapter, Gateway, and Universal Repeater – 802.11b/g

10 Review to this product

• 

  Gadgester
  November 30th, 2010 on 1:39 pm

  Rating

  I bought this to bring wi-fi connectivity to my excellent Panasonic DMP-BD65 Blu-Ray Disc Player (Black) which has an Ethernet port but no built-in wi-fi. In this “Ethernet Adapter” mode, the Asus connects to your existing wireless access point (AP), and acts as an Ethernet router to your Ethernet-only device. By connecting your Ethernet-only device to the Asus via an Ethernet cable (a short one is included in the Asus package), the Ethernet-only device can take advantage of wireless networking! Examples of such devices include printers, all-in-ones, and Blu-ray players.

  Upon unpacking, I connected the Asus to my Sony laptop with the included short Ethernet cable and short USB power cord. (Note: the included USB cable is for power only, not a data cable.) I then booted into the configuration utility by typing 192.168.1.220 into IE, clicked on the Adapter tab at the top (default mode is gateway), connected to my wi-fi router after entering my WPA password, and bingo! everything was set up within 2 minutes. The config utility automatically saves your settings as you change them.

  I then took the Asus to my Panasonic and hooked up the Ethernet cable and included AC adapter. Lo and behold, my Panasonic connected to the Internet prompto and free of problems. I’ve been using this heavy-duty for the last week and everything has been glitch-free.

  The Asus seems pretty sensitive as a wi-fi device, which is a good thing. My entertainment center sits in the furthest corner from my AT&T wireless router and I actually set the router’s power to medium (don’t want to get my kids’ brains fried), and like my PS3, the Asus pulls in a strong signal and operates at full 54G speed.

  Only time will tell if the Asus will be trouble-free for years to come, but at this price, it’s a good buy and an easy way to wi-fi-enable your Ethernet-only gadgets.
• 

  XRADR
  November 30th, 2010 on 5:48 pm

  Rating

  There are four modes this WAP (I needed something simple and effective as a repeater only). This took me about 10 minutes total to setup. It has worked flawlessly for about 10 days and there are no dead zones in my place now (woohoo!). I used this with a Dlink 802.n gaming router. For those needed WAP/Bridge, etc, this likely will work also, but I have not used it for that purpose. I would recommend this product without reservation as a repeater.
• 

  V. Conner
  December 1st, 2010 on 9:08 am

  Rating

  The access point has been performing as advertised. And that makes me very happy! We would buy this again.
• 

  BMJ
  December 1st, 2010 on 11:15 am

  Rating

  My wireless router is in the basement with limited coverage for the 2nd floor and the patio. So my aim was to expand my wireless network coverage. ASUS WL-330gE proved best value and has several functions one of which is to expand the wireless network (labeled as Repeater mode). Now I have an excellent coverage all over my property.
  
  The following are the steps I did to set it up:
  
  1. Power on your WL-330gE through the attached USB power cord.
  
  2. Connect the WL-330gE to your laptop through an Ethernet (RJ45) cable.
  
  3. Disconnect your computer from internet/router. (Wireless off or unplug Ethernet cable)
  
  4. Open the Internet browser in your computer and type in 192.168.1.220 in the
  
  address box. Type admin for ID and admin for password.
  
  5. Select Repeater tab
  
  6. From the available wireless devices select yours enter your password and connect.
  
  7. Click on the advanced setting at the lower left corner and select IP config then select Yes for get IP Automatically.
  
  8. Click apply then logout.
  
  9. Disconnect your ASUS from the computer. Find a central location in your property and connect the device to the power outlet. You do not need to connect it to the net work or a computer
• 

  Conj
  December 2nd, 2010 on 10:54 pm

  Rating

  Used this product to make my BluRay player connect wirelessly… was worried that it was too far from the router to get a good signal, but didn’t want to run ethernet cables throughout my house…. so we tried this. I only tried the one mode, and I love it.

  I was intimidated by the idea of having to configure it… but it was easy. no issues.

  Looks just as easy to use in all its modes.

  it is much smaller than we expected… and it glows an eerie blue when powered.

  The ability to power it using USB means it is only on when the Blu Ray player is on is a nice touch.
• 

  Dearkon
  December 5th, 2010 on 10:16 am

  Rating

  My main reason for getting this was because I had trouble getting certain devices to work with Vista 64 Bit. I had a USB wifi stick that worked great under XP, but was unstable in Vista. So I didn’t want to get another USB device and be disappointed when I upgrade my system again. Well this device does it all and I’d definitely would get more of these if I need to hook it up to anything else.

  The coolest part is that you can have it hooked to your computer via ethernet and in the same time allow other devices to piggyback on it via wifi on the same connection. So why would this be useful? Well let’s say you are in a hotel and paying for wireless internet service and you could share that connection with your friends or coworkers by connecting to your device. So you can pretty much split the bill amongst each other instead of each of you paying for your own connection. Another way it can be used is to give your home pc a wireless connection and in the same time expand the range of your wifi by becoming a repeater in the same time (hotspot mode).

  I do want to note that if you set it to repeater mode only then you can’t get internet with ethernet. So if you want a hybrid mode then hotspot mode is the best way to go and plus you don’t need to fiddle with ip addresses. You can switch it to bridge mode, but it makes it harder to switch to other networks if your ip changes. The device’s ip is 192.168.1.220 and let’s say you connect to a host with an ip address of 128.5.6.1. Well what happens is the ip will change in bridge mode (example 128.5.6.34) and you won’t be able to connect to the device (current ip of device 192.168.1.220) unless you change the device’s ip to match the current ip address range (128.5.6.x). In hotspot mode the ip is assigned to the device only and your ip will remain in the same range as the device (so instead of becoming 128.5.6.134, you would become 192.168.1.220). So hotspot mode makes it easier for you to hop on to other networks without having to reset the box.

  The downside of being in hotspot mode vs. bridge mode is that you are sharing your internet connection via wifi, but of course you can password protect it (up to WPA2), mac filter it, and even make the SID invisible. You might also want to disable the firewall in the device if you are already connecting to another router with a firewall already enabled.

  It seems to have great network stability and solid bandwidth control. What I mean is that I don’t notice and dropped connections and it seems to handle gaming or online videos like if I was hardwired. I can’t speak on reliability because I haven’t had it long enough, but I can’t say I had any problems with other Asus products before.

  The device does come with a short ethernet cable and usb cable. The usb cable is used to only power the device instead of using the AC adapter. Why use the USB cable instead of the AC adapter? Well depending on your system the USB power usually gets shut off when you turn the computer off, so the device is only on when your computer is on. Now I have built in USB ports and I also expanded my system using PCI Cards with USB ports. I noticed the PCI USB ports turn off completely while my built in ports stay powered on even though I turned my computer off. So I used a USB extender to reach the PCI card and this way the device turns itself off when not in use. Of course you would only want to do this if you are using it as in bridge mode or hotspot bridge mode. If you need to share your connection at all times then obviously AC adapter would be the best choice.

  Once the device is setup then you can hook it up to a PS3 or XBOX360 or any other device that has an ethernet port and make it wireless.

  So to sum it all up you can use this as a repeater, gateway, bridge, or hotspot which is like a hybrid bridge with a repeater / gateway compatibility. I was thinking about getting the D-Link DWL-G730AP, but then I saw a rebate for this and took the chance on Asus which I am glad I did and I think it is a very cool device. I’d actually give this 4.5 stars because the manual is very basic and really doesn’t cover everything that can be done with this device. It isn’t hard to setup and if you have some wireless know how then you can do some complex things with it as well.
• 

  Philip Debecker
  December 5th, 2010 on 8:07 pm

  Rating

  I bought this to use with my Oppo BDP-83 BluRay player, which has an Ethernet port but no built-in wifi. It was incredibly easy to configure this device: I connected it to my laptop using the included Ethernet and USB power cable and waited for Vista to report that the Ethernet interface was connected. I then opened Firefox and navigated to the device’s IP address, selected Adapter mode, gave it my wifi network’s WEP key, and voila, I was online.

  When I set up the BluRay player, I connected the wireless box to the USB and Ethernet ports on the back of the player just like on the laptop. When I powered the BluRay player on, the wireless box came right up. When I went into the BluRay player’s setup menu, the player had already obtained an IP address from my router and was online.

  Note that this device comes with both a USB power cable and an AC adapter. I chose to use the USB cable just to keep the clutter down in my entertainment center, but you could use the AC cable if the device you are connecting doesn’t have any USB ports available. The good thing about using the USB is that the wifi box is powered down when the BluRay player is turned off. It boots up much faster than my BluRay player so the player never fails to get online.
• 

  William T. Cole Jr.
  December 6th, 2010 on 7:48 am

  Rating

  PORTABLE WIRELESS 4-IN-1 ROUTER….
  
  I won’t get into the technical details of this absolutely amazing little gadget. There are many reviews here at Amazon that can explain the workings (and set-up) of this tiny piece of electronics much better than I can. (Read these carefully..apparently you can do some complex tricks with this thing) Yes it’s tiny alright…about the size of a pack of smokes.
  
  I was going nuts running a 50 ft ethernet cable from my desktop computer router in one bedroom to my new Panasonic Blu-Ray disk player in another bedroom whenever I wanted to get on the internet through the Blu-Ray player. I knew right away what I needed…a wireless adapter that would plug into the ethernet port on the Blu-Ray unit.
  
  I started searching via Google for such an item without much luck. I did see some fairly expensive routers that could be modified to work as a wireless adapter and some wireless adapters that had USB connectivity but none that would work with an ethernet port. The prices seemed high too. I was getting a little frustrated.
  
  So I modified my search criteria (wording) and lo and behold, several ASUS units popped up, and one, the WL330GE was just exactly what I was looking for. I ordered it from Amazon and it appeared in my mailbox a few days later.
  
  The ASUS packaging is cool. Just below the ASUS logo on the front of the solidly constucted box it says: “Rock Solid . Heart Touching” which slightly amused me. There’s a lot of very interesting information about the product on all six sides of the box so I don’t plan on tossing it. The router specifications are on one side and there’s enough detailed information to warm an electrical engineers heart (maybe that’s what they meant by…”Heart Touching”).
  
  I don’t know diddly squat about setting up wireless adapters, especially when the unit in hand can be used in several other ways (wireless router, wireless access point, universal repeater and, for me, an ethernet adapter).
  
  I followed the simple instructions and within minutes, my adapter was plugged into my Blu-Ray player via the (included) short ethernet cable (I had to use the AC plug for power) and the the three blue lights (one blinking) were operating. My Panasonic disk player and Panasonic 58″ HDTV were on the internet within seconds. NOTE: More and more Blu-Ray players are now coming with built-in wireless, thus making this little device obsolete (as an ethernet adapter anyway) so it might become hard to find in the future…so you may want to consider it .
  
  Nice job, ASUS!
  
• 

  He who spends too much
  December 6th, 2010 on 11:56 am

  Rating

  I have several wireless devices in my apartment. If it requires WiFi access and was released within the past 3 years, chances are; I own it. I’m not bragging – just trying to explain my predicament.

  1x PS3 on 802.11G
  
  1x Xbox 360 on 802.11G
  
  1x Tivo Series2 DVR on 802.11B
  
  1x 2008 Mac Pro workstation on 802.11 Draft-N
  
  1x iBook G4 on 802.11G
  
  1x iPhone on 802.11G
  
  *1x Apple TV on 802.11 Draft-N*

  All was relatively fine and dandy on 2.4Ghz mixed mode 802.11B/G/N until I got the Apple TV. I live in a high rise and, I guess, all the other wireless networks (I’m picking up 25+), telephones, etc, were taking their toll on my poor 2.4Ghz network.So much so that I couldn’t stream movies (and even music) from my Mac Pro to my ATV.

  Switching my AEBS to 5Ghz “N-Only” mode fixed all that instantaneously. Unfortunately, it was at the expense of all of my wireless products that weren’t capable of 802.11N at 5Ghz.

  In comes the Asus pocket WAP.

  I wanted to see if I could set up a 2nd wireless network for my G and B products, though I still wanted them (notably the Tivo, iBook and iPhone) to be able to communicate with my Mac-Pro. After connecting it to my iBook (ethernet and USB), punching the IP in my web browser, switching the Asus to “Access Point”, changing the IP to DHCP and applying the appropriate security settings, I was up and running with a secondary wireless network for my B/G products. Best of all, because it draws power from a USB port, I didn’t lose a power socket. This was a major selling point for me.

  I later connected the Asus to an available port on my AEBS, and the USB power adapter to the AEBS USB port. I’ll later be adding a USB hub to free up the USB port to add more devices.

  PROS:

  -Compact
  
  -Easy setup
  
  -Good, stable connection
  
  -Can draw power from USB or included power adapter.

  CONS:

  -Blue status lights are bright.
  
  -USB power cable could be longer, though that’s nothing a USB hub can’t resolve.

  I’ll try and tack on a setup video to this review, later, if I can.
• 

  Tramelia Bolden
  December 7th, 2010 on 11:46 am

  Rating

  I used this to connect my 50″ Panasonic G10 to my wireless internet. I had a little trouble with the initial configuration, but an email to Asus customer at service Aps_support@asus got me on track. They provided speedy, step-by-step instructions and were very nice. The instructions were also included in the disc. Don’t make my mistake trying to just use the quick start guide. After the correspondence from customer service, I had this working in 5 minutes! Some things have changed since the last reviews. All instructions were in English. I did not have to try to locate English. I would definitely recommend this product to others.