Senao NET-EL-ECB-8610 review

Senao's NET-EL-ECB-8610 is designed to be either a wireless access point, adding wireless access to an existing wired network, or a wireless bridge, turning a wired client into a wireless one.

It can also be used in a wireless distribution system (WDS) to increase the range of an existing network. It supports 802.11b/g and 802.11a (5GHz), which is less prone to interference.

The product is set up as a wireless bridge out of the box, where it needs configuring to join an existing wireless network. This is done through the web-based management page. A status page displays a list of the wireless networks it could connect to, but there's no way to select which one to join. Instead, you have to note the SSID and enter this manually on a separate page. A friendlier interface would have made it much easier to configure.

If you want to use the NET-EL-ECB-8610 as a wireless access point, you have to click the button to switch it to this mode. This has the slightly confusing effect of changing the default web-management IP address from 192.168.1.1 to 192.168.1.2. We're not exactly sure why this is necessary.

Configuration of the access point is simple, but there's no wizard to take you through configuring the SSID and security settings, so you need to do this manually. The NET-EL-ECB-8610 supports WEP, WPA and WPA2, so you can match your security to the devices that you're going to connect to your network.

We tested performance using the product in access point mode using 802.11g and a Centrino notebook. The results at near and far range were average for a standard 54Mbit/s 80211.g access point; the throughput of 2.42Mbit/s at 25m is fine for web browsing but not for anything more bandwidth-intensive.

The NET-EL-ECB-8610 isn't a bad product, and it's flexible in the types of network it can connect to, but it's expensive and confusing to configure, making it hard to recommend.