BT Home Hub 2.0 review

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Verdict:

Smart and easy to use, with good range, only lacking QoS.

Review Date: 13 Feb 2009

Price when reviewed: £90

Supplier: http://www.shop.bt.com

Reviewed By: Orestis Bastounis

Our Rating 4 stars out of 5

Review
Specs

The Home Hub 2.0 is now available as part of BT's Total Broadband packages or as a standalone product.

If you have a BT account, some unique features are enabled. For example, with a BT Broadband Talk package you can use your router to make and receive Internet calls using VoIP.

The back of the device has four 10/100 Ethernet ports, an RJ11 port for your broadband connection, and a socket to connect a standard telephone. The router is securely configured when you take it out of the box, with the wireless access key provided on a reference card. The Home Hub can be set to switch into a power saving mode at certain times of day if you know when you won't need it.

The Home Hub user interface is clean and friendly. Common options are easily accessible, with the full configuration options in an Advanced section. Here there are parental controls and a firewall, but no QoS. If you connect storage or a printer to the router's USB port, it gets its own IP address and can be accessed via the network.

BT didn't supply a matching WiFi adapter, so we could only test with the built-in adapter in our Centrino laptop. At short distances performance didn't match other routers, but the Home Hub was good at longer range. At 15 metres it managed 39Mbit/sec, and at 25 metres exceeded 12Mbit.

The Home Hub 2.0 is an excellent bonus for BT broadband users, and worth considering for others.

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