Hawking Technologies HBB1

The majority of UK broadband users are still stuck at a relatively slow upstream of 256Kbits/sec. Although this doesn’t matter when downloading music and video, outbound services such as VoIP and online gaming have to fight over what little bandwidth there is.

With few budget routers offering QoS (quality of service) to ensure urgent packets get priority over others, performance can suffer. You’ll notice this in the form of lag during online gaming and poor-quality VoIP calls.

The HBB1 is a compact device that sits between your Ethernet modem and router. It inspects each outbound packet that passes through, prioritising those such as VoIP and online gaming, while pushing the likes of ftp uploads and email to the back of the queue.

There’s very little user involvement in the process. You plug it in and a series of LEDs tells you it’s working. A basic web-based interface can be accessed, but there are few settings to play with.

We tested the HBB1 with positive results. While uploading an FTP file, we monitored VoIP quality using Testyourvoip's service.

Through our standard connection we achieved a poor score of 2. When the HBB1 was hooked up, we got a far more impressive score of 4.4. Lag caused by outbound services during online gaming was similarly reduced.

If you use an integrated ADSL Broadband router you will need to buy extra kit, such as a switch to sit between the HBB1 and your ADSL router. For a PC to benefit from the HBB1 it must be physically wired to the switch and not bypass it by connecting wirelessly to the router.

QoS such as this is not new, and some routers offer it as standard. Its HBB1 is also rather expensive, but if your broadband setup allows it, the HBB1 will do a great job of optmising your connection.