Billion BiPAC 6300NXL review

Billion’s chunky business oriented routers aren’t much to look at, but the company has forged a reputation for reliable hardware with all the features you’ll need for a home, small, or mid-sized office. The Billion BiPac 6300NXL is a Gigabit Ethernet Router that can also connect to the internet via a 4G mobile broadband dongle if you connect one. The 6300NXL is described as a fibre router, but note that it doesn’t actually have a built-in modem for this and you’ll still have to connect it to the one supplied by your ISP.

At the back of the router are connectors for its two detachable wireless antennas. All the ports are also at the back: one Gigabit WAN port, four Gigabit LAN ports and two USB3 ports. There’s also a hard power switch, a recessed factory reset button and a WPS button.

The router’s wireless network isn’t password protected by default, so your first move should be to follow the instructions in the supplied quick install manual to secure it. Although Billion’s web interface may at first seem daunting, it’s very clearly laid out and the Quick Start wizard takes you through configuring all critical features, including connecting to mobile broadband. The router supports a wide range of dongles and the connection information required for most of the major UK networks is included in the accompanying manual.

Although Billion’s web interface may at first seem daunting, it’s very clearly laid out

We were very disappointed by the router’s wireless performance. It only supports the 2.4GHz 802.11n standard, but even taking this into account, Wi-Fi transfer speeds were unacceptably slow. Our testing environment is admittedly cluttered by multiple devices using the same frequency band, but other routers, including many from Billion, haven’t shown such poor performance under the circumstances.