Buy Hawking Broadband Booster (HBB1)Hawking Broadband Booster (HBB1) Product Description:
- Broadband booster
- Eliminate Internet lag
- High-speed performance
- Plug and play installation
- Two year warranty
Product Description
BROADBAND BOOSTER
Customer Reviews
Most helpful customer reviews
27 of 28 people found the following review helpful.
Some reviewers are being too harsh - this thing is great!
By J. Privatt
Pros: Works as advertised - makes better use of limited upstream bandwidth.Cons: A bit black-boxy. Not a whole lot of info out there on how it works - some reviewers test it all wrong.Despite the lack of solid information, I took the plunge and got one - and I'm glad I did. In my opinion, this is the most innovative home networking product I've seen since the first broadband router came out.Installation was a breeze - all you do is hook it up. It is the size of a deck of cards with 3 connections (network in, network out and a tiny transformer). Plug it in and it tests your upstream line speed. About 30 seconds later, the 4 lights come on and the thing is up and running.One thing Hawking did which is really nice, is the last LED goes from green (indicating standard traffic) to bright, super intense blue when the booster does something to optimize the network traffic. Let me tell you, once it is plugged in, you'd be surprised how much that light stays blue.What this thing does is to prioritize outgoing traffic. Outgoing, you say. Who cares, right? That's what I said until I hooked this thing up. The small, outgoing broadband upstream pipe (usually 128k - 384k) is pretty overloaded with all the Internet-aware applications we're all running these days, and the pipe gets used pretty inefficiently.The official press states that the booster prioritizes the traffic, so more "time sensitive" requests such as voice-over-IP, gaming and certain UDP packets are sent out first. Bumped to the bottom are the HTTP web page requests, FTP traffic and so forth. This is seems to do as advertised.What was not advertised (and was quite surprising) is what happened when only ONE machine is on the network. We turned on my wife's computer and she connected to work via a Citrix connection - which is always extremely slow even when noone else is on the network. I shut down all the other machines on the network to ensure it was as slow as normal, then I installed the booster. When she reconnected, the booster's little blue light came on and hardly went out. The remote session became as responsive as working with a non-remote machine! Three days later, she is still happy. Now I'm just guessing, but it seems as if the booster is not only prioritizing, but is actually combining the barrage of small, outgoing packets of data into larger ones.I didn't go crazy and bog down the network with a ton of artificial activity - plenty of other folks have tried that. I did fire up two more machines with browsers and my XBox Live. They had no effect on the Citrix session and my XBox Live session (voice and gaming) seemed a bit more zippy than normal.A friend at work did some similar tests on his network and was equally blown away by the results.Bottom line... I'd whole-heartily recommend this to anyone who:1. Has more than one machine running on their home network. I'm guessing it would help a lot if you had kids doing any sort of file sharing.2. Has a single machine performing a lot of Internet-related activity that you want prioritized (e.g. FTP's to the back of the line).3. Anyone who runs remote connections a lot - I will definitely be recommending this to folks at work that complain about slow Citrix and Remote Desktop connections.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful.
Improvements when using multiple computers or applications
By U. Weigl
I have seen some improvements, but not the maximum 400% quoted. For example, VoIP quality is maintained, even while uploading or downloading files (before, VoIP would really suffer when sending out large email attachments for example).The same goes for gaming, latency stays low even while doing file transfers. Don't expect it to do miracles, but especially when you have a network with several computers or you are using several applications at the same time (e.g. VoIP, gaming and file transfers), it will make things run a lot more smoothly than before.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful.Money Well Spent!
By MonsDomain
I have a 1.5 mbps DSL connection and use Skype as my primary home phone. When my kids are on the internet viewing websites with a lot of Macroflash video, playing games or downloading music, my VOiP quality simply goes down the tubes. Lags, echoes, choppiness, you name it. I tried adjusting the QoS on my router but that didn't really do much. So I tried looking for something to solve my problem and that's when I stumbled across this excellent product by Hawking Technologies. It pretty much does what routers with built in QoS does, only 100x better. It utilizes a proprietary chip called StreamEngine that is dedicated to streamlining and prioritizing the packets sent by all of your internet applications with a focus on real time applications such as VOiP and Games. The key word here is "sent" because it does nothing to your download stream. The result is a much improved internet experience for the whole family!I've had the HBB1 for about a month now and it did more than just solve my problem! My VOiP quality improved significantly even with all 3 computers simultaneously connected to the internet. It may not have "boosted" my uplink speed by 400% as advertised but it did what I needed it to do. It's cool when callers comment how clear we sound, especially for a free VOiP service like Skype. I also noticed that my other internet applications run smoother. Set up was fool proof and literally took no more than 5 min to get it up and running. The bright blue LED confirms that the unit is connected correctly and packet management is working. Although no adjustment is necessary right out of the box, the GUI was a nice option to have as it shows your up/down stream speed, modem and router IP addresses and it gives you access to a few other manual adjustments. An average user wouldn't have to mess with it though.As I opened the box, I was greeted by an impressive packaging that complimented the product very well. Hawking included everything you need for a plug and play set up. Heck, they even included a 3 inch converter cable allowing you to plug in the AC adapter to a regular power strip without blocking the socket next to it. Although its a little tough keeping the unit in place because of the power cord and 2 ethernet cables connected at both ends, the added weight was a nice touch. All things considered, I would highly recommend this product to anyone who has more than 1 computer on their network that engages in a lot of internet activity. Thanks Hawking for a wonderful product! System set up: 1.5 Mbps connection Linksys WRT54G Wireless Router Actiontec DSL Modem 10/100 Network Card Internet Explorer 7
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