Bountiful Router offers plentiful wireless range

The Bountiful WiFi Router's claim to fame is its signal strength. The company's founder, David Egbert, started a company that developed Linksys' Wireless Signal Booster, an item that is very popular (we often use one in our labs). In testing the Bountiful Router, we found a feature set similar to many other business-class Wi-Fi routers.

But unlike other routers we've tested, the Bountiful Router's signal strength (and receiver sensitivity) expand the radius normally thought of for 802.11b/g service. However, the lack of useful documentation, configuration options and potential security issues marred our overall impression of the device.

Bountiful signal

We received two units that look very much like every other Wi-Fi access point/router we've seen - a box with two antennas and ports on the back for additional switched connections. We connected the routers to our Gigabit Ethernet network.

Once installed, a very sensitive radio receiver matched the 1-watt output of the Bountiful Router (through its twin antennas). This means that the strong Wi-Fi signal that the unit generates can be "heard" for a long distance, and the Bountiful Router is still able to hear client signals from comparatively far distances. The added power of the router became very appealing before our radiological testing, and the sensitivity of the receiver means that our axial Wi-Fi range was mightily extended. The router started to interfere with neighborhood access points frequently and demonstrably - we received supplicant association attempts from Wi-Fi clients more than 600 feet away.

We conducted two range tests - a radius comparison with a common access point (the Linksys WRT54g) to judge unobstructed free-air optimized range, and tests using an AirMagnet Wi-Fi Spectrum Analyzer. In the walkabout test, we positioned each access point outdoors at almost 10 feet high. We continued to run a looped FTP script until the operating system reported a disconnection and measured the radius.

The test results indicated that the Bountiful Router exceeded the operational radius of the Linksys router by a considerable and desirable distance. Anecdotally, we found the router to be stronger overall in our multistory facility. Because there's a larger overall operational radius, some of the formulas used to design Wi-Fi router placement will need to be shifted to accommodate the possible problems with the "loud voice" of the Bountiful Router, as co-channel interference in tight quarters with nearby Wi-Fi access points will be higher. We experienced this firsthand, after neighbors complained that their Wi-Fi setup had slowed to a crawl. We discovered their PCs trying to associate with the Bountiful setup we had made.

Not-as-bountiful features

All functions can be controlled through a Web browser to the units, which have very common (and therefore possibly problematic with other units) identical non-routable IP addresses. The units shipped with no user name and reasonably obtuse passwords. Oddly, we couldn't set new user names; we could only change the password, and the system doesn't check to see whether it's a strong password. Only the password-failure timeout feature prevents a dictionary attack on the router.