ASUS WL-330gE wireless router portabil acces point hot spot gateway repeater

The Asus can function in four modes and some submodes:

1. Wireless adapter (or Ethernet Adapter, EA mode). This means that on e.g., a notebook w/o wifi but with RJ45 LAN connection you can simply connect the Asus to that RJ45 port to have wifi on your notebook.
2. AP (Access Point). If you have a non-wifi router, you simply connect the Asus (after initial setup) to a (or, as in my case, the) RJ45 LAN port of your ADSL modem and you have a wifi in your home. Now watch out because in this mode the Asus relies on your ADSL modem to function as a router; it won't use it's built-in functions to do this. It just translates the wired packets into wifi packets, much like in EA mode.
3. Gateway (or wifi router). In this mode, it adds a router function to the AP function. It can do this in two submodes:
   1. Plain wifi router. Just like it says, it accepts a LAN cable on one side and translates this into wifi access for multiple clients on the other "side". The minimum you'll need on the "one" side is apparently an ADSL modem.
   2. "Hot Spot" mode. It this mode it picks up a wifi connection on one "side" and translates this into wifi access for multiple clients on the other "side" in a different (E)SSID. Consider a scenario in which you've bought a few hours of wifi access on some airport. Now you can redistribute this wifi access to all your friends and relatives. (Now IANAL, but this scenario might not be the intention of the original wifi provider; it might even be plain illegal.......)
4. Wireless repeater. In this mode it can be used to extend the coverage of your (or someone else's) wifi coverage to a wider area (and/or to create an ESSID, Extended Service Set IDentifier ...).

The little box that is the Asus WL-330gE hosts a lot of functionality, a.o.:

• EA (ethernet adapter) or AP (access point) in infrastructure (plain wifi LAN) or ad-hoc (peer-to-peer) mode
• Guest account for wifi access with optional restrictions alongside your regular WLAN (works only in Home Gateway mode though the router itself tells you differently)
• Router
• Wireless repeater
• 801.2b and g (11 & 54 Mbit/s), in theory of course
• WEP (64 & 128 bit)
• WPA & WPA2, -personal (home LAN) and -enterprise (w. Radius server authentication), TKIP and AES
• MAC address access controls
• SSID broadcast or suppressed
• AP isolation (so that different associated clients can't see each other)
• Virtual Server
• Virtual DMZ
• UPnP
• NNTP time synchronisation
• DDNS
• Port trigger
• Firewall with optional access time restrictions
• URL filter
• Saving settings to your hard disk
• Port forwarding
• Extensive system logs
• Firmware upgrade
• Options for repairing firmware (using a PC program) if upgrading failed for some reason

  Continut

  • The Asus WL-330gE pocket AP / router
  • A short (maybe 15 cm) LAN RJ45 cable
  • A mains (5V 1A) power adaptor (mine was made for Hong Kong or UK wall outlets rather than the NZ/Oz type; generally a thing to keep in mind when you purchase such things through Internet)
  • Multilingual hard copies of a Quick Start guide and a Hot Spot mode instruction
  • A CD-ROM with digital manuals, some programs, and the source code of the built-in software
  • A carrying case that is -mildly put- not quite oversized but managed to accomodate the Asus + peripherals, after some clever squeezing.