I recently bought a Sweex Wireless Broadband Router for a friend who wanted to go wireless. They’d been using a wired network, but decided it would be a good time to get themselves in to the 21st century. There was also the fact that they’d bought a laptop and had an iPod touch, both of which have wireless capabilities.

The reason I decided on the Sweex Wireless Broadband Router was simple; price. For under £20 you get a whole lot of router. Some of the specs are:

• Supports: IEEE 803.3 and IEEE 803.3u
• Supports: IEEE 802.11b, IEEE 802.11g
• Maximum wireless data transfer speed: 54Mbps
• Supports: DHCP (dynamic IP), PPTP, Static IP, PPPoE, L2TP
• 1 x WAN, 4 x LAN RJ-45 UTP ports
• Supports: WEP/WPA./WPA2/802.1X data encryption
• Built-in Firewall and Port Forwarding
• Removable reverse SMA Antenna 5 dBi
• 2 to 3 x Extended Range
• Supports: VPN pass through
• Web-based configuration

All of which make the Sweex Wireless Broadband Router ideal for a first time entrant into the wireless world. As always, there are other routers available, but as I said, you won’t get a much better entry level router for this price. All they wanted the router for was to connect wirelessly and easily to the internet, nothing fancy. The Sweex Wireless Broadband Router does the job perfectly for them.