US Robotics ADSL2+ Starter Kit review

The US Robotics ADSL2+ Starter Kit comes with everything you'll need to set up a wireless network.

The router has a single Ethernet port on the back, as well as a standard phone socket for plugging directly into your broadband connection. It also works with the fledgling, much faster, ADSL2 specification - so upgrading will be easy when ADSL2 is widely available. And because you get a USB wireless dongle you're spared the expense of buying a separate Wi-Fi PC adapter.

The router offers a comprehensive selection of services and features to allow you to securely and safely share your internet connection. It offers both WEP and WPA encryption allowing you to password protect your network, while MAC address filtering lets you can specify precisely which computers can connect. URL blocking lets you stop users looking at undesirable web pages. There's also a built-in firewall to protect against hackers.

We tested the router with both the USB dongle and the built-in Wi-Fi you'll find in all Centrino laptops. From around 25 feet away with no obstructions, the devices copied 100MB of files in around 60 seconds. When we move the router 30 feet away and closed a pair of doors, however, the internal adapter was faster, taking 90 seconds to copy the files, compared to a sluggish four and a half minutes for the USB dongle.

The USB Robotics Starter Kit isn't bad value, but both router and dongle are just standard Wi-Fi devices. Performance is ok but not great, particularly compared to the Netgear RangeMax MIMO router which costs less than £10 more.

This is an average router, it's not bad but it doesn't offer any exta features - and the wireless dongle is more an added convenience than something that beginners must have.

Author: Dave Stephenson