Most helpful client reviews
238 of 240 persons found the following review helpful.
Works very well, but is a bit mixing up to setup.
By J. Ferguson
Once you have it setup it works flawlessy. Problem is setting it up for the original time. Documentation is not user friendly to the non-tech savvy. I’m using it as a wireless bridge / access point with my Sony blue-ray player. I already have a Linksys wireless router using WEP encryption (forced to use this because my XBOX 360 doesn’t help WPA). To make it easy for others doing the same thing use the following steps:
1. Change your pc or laptop’s ethernet adapter’s IP address to 192.168.1.3 To do this on Vista or Windows 7 you open you network sharing center then you open your ethernet LAN adapter settings (or manage network connections in Vista). Select the Internet protocol v4 (IPv4) and go into properties. Manually put in the IP address with subnet mask of 255.255.255.0 and don’t worry regarding the gateway address.
2. Connect your WAP3205 to your pc/laptop with the ethernet cable that is provided. Of course make sure you plugged in the power to it or your going nowhere. Open up your preferent browser (IE, firefox, netscape, etc.) and then type in the address bar 192.168.1.2 and now you will be connected to the WAP3205. Type in the default password of 1234, you are now prompted to alter your password to whatsoever you want it to be.
3. Now that your in the WAP3205 click on Expert Mode. When in this mode on the far left you will see Status and beneath it Monitor, Configuration and Maintenance. Click on Maintenance and then hit the plus sign in front of Maintenance once you are in. Go to the last option of Sys OP Mode then select Client Mode and hit apply.
4. Go back to the far left and hit configuration then go to Wireless LAN. You will see tabs for Profile, Site Survey and WPS. Hit the Profile tab and then hit the Add button. Type in your network name / SSID and then select your security drop down box. Select WEP if you have a setup like me with the XBOX 360 or if you don’t care when it comes to security select the no security option. Type in your passphrase that you use for your router’s security or the actual 128 bit security code (or 64 bit if that is what you use) and hit apply. Then select your newly formulated profile and hit the activate button. If it’s setup correctly you will get a green check. Now your done on this end.
5. Disconnect your WAP3205 from your pc/laptop and change your pc or laptop’s ethernet adapter settings back to whatsoever it was before.
6. Go to your blue-ray player and disconnect the power cord for when it comes to a minute or more. Connect the WAP3205 to the blue-ray player with the ethernet connection and power your blue-ray player back on. The blue-ray player will mechanically pick up the network settings from the WAP3205 and you will be done.
Hope this is helpful and if you don’t have an XBOX 360 or if you use WPA for security the set up will have to be easier.
So far so good with the Zyxel WAP3205…I had employed the Linksys WET610N (2 distinguished units) and they both failed. The basi one worked a couple of days before the wireless stopped working and the second one’s wireless failed right out of the box. The WET610N’s are way having little impact to configure but they are too pricey and for me completely unrealiable. The WAP3205 is a steal and worth the venture when you consider the rock solid connection I have now, besides it was less than half the price of the Linksys. It’s not as nice looking as the Linksys that’s for sure but the main thing is it works as described.
72 of 72 people found the following review helpful.
Powerful but poorly documented
By Anonymouse
This is an impressive piece of networking gear, in particular for the price. It has a outstanding deal of functionality, a good deal of of it unusual. However, I have to warn you: the documentation is terrible. When the other reviewers said the documentation is poor, boy, they weren’t kidding.
The Zyxel may be setup to act as an access point, wireless client, or universal repeater. Let me explain these modes:
=> If you already have (wired) Internet access (e.g., DSL or a cable modem), you may connect the Zyxel in access point mode, and then you’ll be competent to connect to the Internet by way of the wireless network from all around your home. This is in all probability the most mutual use of this kind of gear, and for this purpose, the Zyxel will probably do the trick just fine.
=> If you already have a wireless network set up in your home, and you want to connect another device (e.g., a gaming console) to the wireless network, but the other device doesn’t itself have wireless capability, you may use the Zyxel as a wireless client. For instance, imagine you have DSL/cable modem Internet access, connected to a wireless access point, in one room of your house. On the other side of your house, you have a gaming console, and you want to connect it to the Internet, but the gaming solace doesn’t have 802.11 wireless capability. What to do? You may plug the Zyxel into the gaming console by way of Ethernet. The Zyxel will connect wireless to your existent access point, and provide Internet access to your gaming console. See other reviews here for info in regards to how to configure the Zyxel in wireless client mode.
=> If you already have a wireless network set up in your home, but it doesn’t reach all of the rooms in your home, you may use the Zyxel as a universal repeater to extend the range of your existent wireless network. This is now and again also known as a “range extender”. For instance, say you have an existent access point in a room on the north side of your house, but it is signal isn’t powerful sufficient to reach the south side. Stick the Zyxel halfway in the middle and configure it to be a universal repeater. The Zyxel will receive the wireless signal from your existent access point and re-broadcast it, so that you may have wireless connectivity from the south side of your house. (You don’t need to plug the Zyxel into your cable modem or DSL modem; it receives Internet connectivity by way of a wireless connection to your existent access point, and extends the range of your existent network.) This is pretty awesome.
That’s the positive. The negative is that the Zyxel is hard to configure, and the documentation is lousy. The manual that comes with the Zyxel is exceedingly sparse and doesn’t describe how to use most of the device’s functionality. The manufacturer has been spamming the remarks section of other reviews to say they’ve fixed this with a new version of the manual, but that’s a bit misleading. The printed manual you receive with the Zyxel still sucks. If you recognise the special URL, you may download the online version of the manual, which is better, but you have to recognise where to get it (see the remarks division of other reviews), and it is only available online. Why couldn’t the manufacturer at least include a reference to it in the printed manual that comes with the Zyxel? Sheesh.
As a result, to use the progressed functionality (e.g., client mode and the universal repeater), you in all probability need to have a good deal of psychological result of perception learning and reasoning of networking and a bit of goodnatured tolerance — other than as supposed or expected you may be in for a discouraging and hindering experience.
Even with the extended manual available online, configuring the thing is a bit tricky. Other reviews have described how to configure it in client mode; I’ll explain how to configure it in universal repeater mode:
1. You’ll need to know what channel your existent 802.11 access point is using. Find out, e.g., from it is web configuration interface (you’ll have to see the documentation of your existent access point; that’ll depend up on the access point). Jot down the SSID and wireless channel. If you use WEP or WPA or WPA2, jot down the key and which of those you use.
2. Power up the Zyxel. Connect a laptop to the Zyxel by way of Ethernet cable. Manually set the IP address of your laptop to a static IP address 192.168.1.3. (See other reviews for details of how to do this, if you don’t know.) Fire up your browser and go to [...]. Enter in the default password (1234).
3. In the Zyxel’s web configuration interface, click on “expert mode”. Click on the icon for Maintenance on the left, go to Sys OP Mode, alter to universal repeater mode, and click “apply”. Wait for it to reboot.
4. Connect to the Zyxel’s web configuration interface again. Click on the icon for Configuration on the left, click on Wireless LAN, then go to the tab for Universal Repeater. Enter in the universal repeater parameters: tick the checkbox to enable universal repeater. Enter in the SSID of your existent access point (which you cited in step 1 above). Enter in the key and security mode, if it uses WEP/WPA/WPA2 (make sure to match what is listed in your existent access point). Don’t bother filling in the MAC address; it’s not needed. Click “apply”.
5. Now go to the General tab. Fill in the SSID field with the SSID of your existent access point (the default is “Zyxel”; modify that to match your existent access point). Untick the checkbox for automatic channel assignment, and manually pick a channel from the dropdown to the left of the checkbox — use the same channel as your existent access point is using (which you jotted down in step 1). Click “apply”.
6. If your existent access point uses WEP/WPA/WPA2 security, go to the Security tab and fill it in with the same parameters as your existent access point. (I verified that the Zyxel does work with WPA2-PSK AES.) Click “apply”.
7. Now it must be working. Disconnect the Ethernet cable, clear the static IP address, and undertake connecting to the wireless network to see if it works. Hopefully it works on the primary try!
(It’s crazy that it takes this a good deal of steps to configure universal repeater mode — you’re stuck entering in all kinds of data that the Zyxel could have inferred — but that’s how it is. Ease of configuration is not one of the intensities of the Zyxel.)
After using the Zyxel for a while, I’m not altogether satisfied with it. I’ve been using it as a universal repeater, and it does extend the range of my existent wireless network significantly (once I got it set up and working). However, it makes my entire wireless network a bit flaky: once each few hours, it kicks my laptop off the wireless network (even when the laptop is completely within range of my initial wireless access point, so that it would have had access even without the Zyxel). I’ve found this annoying sufficient that I’ve turned off the Zyxel and given up on the extra range. However I haven’t tried to troubleshoot this to determine if it is specific to my wireless configuration (I use a WPA2 encrypted network) or my laptop (which is an old Windows XP SP2 machine), so I don’t recognise whether it will affect others.
I may say this: if it does work for you without the reliability glitches, I think you’ll be happy with it. If you feel comfortable with simple networking and want to extend the range of an existent wireless network, it might be worth a undertake to see if it works well for you.
35 of 35 people found the following review helpful.
Broad functionality, low cost, difficult to set up
By Boulder Buyer
Great router for the price. I purchased this to install a wireless bridge to my kids XBOX 360 in the basement (I chose to stay clear from the wiring). The router is roughly 1/2 the price of the XBOX 360 wireless receiver, and has extra ports to grant future elaboration for things like Blu-Ray or other devices. I also figured I could use the universal repeater mode to extend our wireless signal further all around the house. The setup was difficult though. All computers in my home are wireless, which meant that the ethernet ports that the router required were on a dissimilar IP / subnet than expected by the router for original setup. In the end, I had to disable my wireless card on an XP machine, set the IP address / subnet of the ethernet card by hand to 192.168.1.3 / 255.255.255.0 to be capable to talk to the router (note – the how-to on this IS in the documentation). Once I was capable to “log onto” the router, I used the documentation to set it up in “client mode” (wireless bridge mode). I then had to set my ethernet card back to “obtain an IP address automatically” in order to get the internet up and running on my computer. I then unplugged the device and hooked it up to the XBOX 360 for a successful XBOX Live session.
In the end, this device is very competent and genuinely inexpensive. Hopefully, my notes above will aid you get through the procedure a little faster. I have not braved the universal repeater mode yet. One other note – one buyer indicated that they had to permanently set their IP addresses. I only had to do that to talk to the router on setup, after that, all IP addresses were automatic.
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