The Billion BiPAC 7300G is a conventional ADSL 2+ router, with the usual elements – a four port Fast Ethernet switch, SPI firewall and Wi-Fi access port.
Billion may be a late entrant to the UK networking market but elsewhere in the world (the antipodes in particular) it's a well-known and respected brand. The Billion BiPAC 7300G has advanced ADSL2+ capabilities, with a downstream rate of up to 24Mbps. The router supports something called Easy Sign-On (EZSO), which is nothing more than a web-based wizard designed to simplify connecting for the first time.
If you're looking for anything out of the ordinary on the Billion BiPAC 7300G, you'll be out of luck – while you do get WPA2 encryption and QoS support (important for streaming services such as VoIP or gaming), there's little sign of such exotica as one-touch encryption setup, VPN support, VoIP and Draft N support.
The Billion BiPAC 7300G actually has a little runt of a Wi-Fi antenna and we didn't get great broadcast coverage from it – for close and medium use it's fine. If you do want to expand your broadcast coverage, the 7300G's built-in Wireless Distribution System (WDS) repeater function allows you to expand the wireless network without using wires.
Configuring the Billion BiPAC 7300G was quite straightforward, although having to save changes was a slow not to say irritating process. The Billion BiPAC 7300G is highly configurable (although it lacks any online help) and supports SNMP management, too. Pay a visit to shadow.sentry.org for a useful free management tool for this router - handy if you've got a capped download connection.
The Billion BiPAC 7300G generally proved more than adequate in use. It's unexceptional (although very much on a par with its rivals), although it did fare better in one particular area – connect speed. For some years now we've relied on a Netgear router here. And despite having an 'up to 8Mbps' connection and being about a mile from our exchange, the router has never managed to connect at more than 5 or 6Mbps.
The Billion BiPAC 7300G had no problem connecting at a respectable 7.6Mbps, which gave us an immediate bandwidth boost of about 25 percent - not bad eh?
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