FritzBox FON WLAN 7270

If you’ve got broadband, you may have considered getting a router in order to share your internet connection around your house. A standard router is perfectly adequate for the job but you could be missing out on some interesting extras. Despite its unassuming looks, the FritzBox 7270 is crammed with features that will appeal to anyone looking for top-quality networking and internet telephony.

Features:
On the networking side, the device has four Ethernet ports for connecting PCs and other equipment with wires. It also works as an 802.11n Wi-Fi router, so you can connect wirelessly if you wish. Its USB port can be used to turn USB memory or hard disks into network storage, or for hooking up a printer or other basic USB device for sharing across the network. If your USB storage has music on it, you can even set the router up as a UPnP music streamer.

On the telephony side, you can plug your phone line into the unit alongside the broadband cable and use it as a sort of mini telephone exchange. Digital cordless phones that use the GAP standard (which covers most DECT models) can be configured to use the router as their base-station, and the device also has a built-in answerphone. You can configure it to use VoIP internet telephony software, as long as you’re happy using the open standard SIP system (try www.sipgate.co.uk or www.draytel.org) rather than Skype’s proprietary software. This should be of particular interest to anyone with relatives or other contacts abroad, looking to save money on calls.

Performance:
The device performed well, as expected. The wireless networking is perfectly satisfactory, especially when using the compatible Fritz WLAN USB Stick N, though you can also connect to the router with older standard networking devices compatible with 802.11b/g. The telephony function also worked well – routing a standard phone through the device gives an array of extra functionality. The web-based configuration software has some interesting extra features we haven’t seen before. There’s a handy graph of Wi-Fi channel use in your area, which can advise you which channels might perform best on your own Wi-Fi, and some power-saving settings that can be tweaked to conserve energy.

ase of use:
Setting up the product is a little tricky. The initial set-up is different to the norm because anyone looking to use the telephony options will be wanting to feed the phone cable into the router as well as the ADSL cable. You’ll also need to gather some information from your ISP as there are only a handful of pre-defined ISPs from the UK configured into the device. Once up and running though, there’s little to stand in your way.

Value for money:
Because of all the telephony extras and other bits and bobs, this is one of the most expensive routers we’ve seen for a while. As a result, you’ve got to be sure you want to pay for those features, since you can easily find a more basic model for less than half the price. On the flip side, we’ve never seen a router with quite so many extra features, but they don’t come cheap.