Rating: Summary: Terrible router, poor technical support, never again! Review: I've used Netgear products for many years, so when I wanted to upgrade my wireless network, I chose the WGR614. What a mistake! The wireless part of the network just stops after a period of time - when it's running G, sometimes after just a few minutes and never longer than a couple of hours. If I keep it at 802.11b only, it stays for longer, but I didn't need it for 802.11b. How annoying when at the same time, my next door neighbor's Linksys router is sending a nice clear consistent signal. I've tried to work it out with technical support. Once I got through after waiting a very long time, but email support NEVER responds, the knowledgebase is useless, and I don't want to spend my life on hold only to be hung up on again.My advice - find a different router than this one.
Rating: Summary: Terrible router, terrible support, didn't work at all Review: Could not even get it to work with WIRED connections. Could only ping the router haphazardly. Spent hours trying to fix, with and without the "technical support". The technical support came to the conclusion that I just got a bad router and I should return it for a different one. I did this, and all the problems were the same. I've used three other routers in the past year, all worked very well. What a JOKE!
Rating: Summary: very nice Review: got this and it's little companion (WG511) for the laptop. Nice stuff, no problems at all. My environment is a 1500 sq. ft.apartment, 2 networked desktops, 1 laptop, no internet gaming (it would be a waste with the dsl connection I have) and 4-2.4GHZ phones scattered about looking for a signal to interfere with. The router's been sitting on top of one of the desktops, and just purring along.I can get a couple hundred feet outdoors (very nice if you don't want to be stuck inside on a nice day). If ya wanna do some real roaming, get a model that accepts external input and build yourself one of those "coffee can" antennas,(do a goggle search for the info) but I digress. The online documentation has some good tutorial information if you want to learn a bit about networking stuff after you set the thing up, but it's not a pre-requisite.
Rating: Summary: Awesome Review: This is a great router. Easy to set up-- I was up and running within minutes, and the speed and range are excellent. I then set up the 128-bit encryption and turned off SSID broadcast to secure and lock down my wireless connection, and it is working great! (My one comment here is that there were no instructions on setting up encryption-- it was easy enough to figure out but I think it is a common thing to do and should be included in the quickstart guide). The range is great (though I do live in an apartment so that is to be expected) but I get 100% signal no matter which room I am in. It also looks really slick in silver and having it on its side in the supplied stand. Along with the rebates, this is an excellent wireless-G solution at a great price. (I've heard there have been some problems with getting back the rebate checks. I sent mine in last week, will update in a few weeks when I hopefully have those in hand.)
Rating: Summary: In my professional opinion, Junk Review: Brief background... I'm a networking geek. Yup, set up a network with DMZ, many subnets, routers, firewalls, bridges. At uni I was an Network Security professional, I've worked for CISCO, now I work for one of the worlds largest telco's with wireless networks. I bought this device to extend part of my network. Yes, this device is easy to set up. But give it three wireless users authenticated based on MAC and allocated IP addresses, with 128bit WEP, shared key, then apply small ammount of traffic and the wireless connection drops... dead. 100BaseTx users can continue to use the net, but signal strenght on wireless connections drop from 68-84 down to 0 !!! I.e. the wireless connection dies. And tech support can hardly read their script, they are incapable and outright lie about basic network principles when challanged. Quite a few people have written reviews about this same problem, some have even had their routers replaced... but I feel it is my duty to inform you and save you the headache in case you do get one of these faulty routers.
Rating: Summary: Amazing features and ease of use, especially for little $$ Review: I've used virtually all the netgear products, with great success. The WGR614 I setup for a friend, and wow, the range and speed were impressive. I got stong signals upstairs or down, front or back of the house; way better performance than from the older 802.11b-only products. And it was a snap to setup. This is by far one of the most refined, well documented, easy to install netgear models I've used (it looks cool too). And the security features I configured on the wireless, very tight. Also, no performance hit for the compression that I could measure (in 64bit mode; 128 seems like overkill to me, so i did not comare performance with 128 bit). Anyhow, an excellent product all around. As good, or slightly better than the Linksys equivalent, which I have also used. (PS: If you have broadband with no firewall, it's only a matter of time before a worm or hacker gets at you. Buy one, seriously.)
Rating: Summary: WGR614 Review: I HAD THE NETGEAR 80211B ROUTER AND UPGRADED TO THE 802.11G . I FOUND THE SIGNAL WEAKER AND UNABLE TO TRANSMITT FROM MY BASEMENT TO SECOND FLOOR.WHEN I REHOOKED UP THE 802.11B ROUTER I GET AN ADEQAUTE SIGNAL. THE ANTENNA ON THE G IS SHORTER AND NOT AS POWERFULL?
Rating: Summary: Not worth the money Review: Functions offered in the unit is minimum. Although it claims to be wi-fi compliant, it has great problem and difficulty working with other b or g product. When I inspected the package, actually there is no wi-fi certified logo. And support? Forget about it. I am happier using the Buffalo AirStation.
Rating: Summary: goes downhill.... Review: My previous experience with a Netgear Ethernet PC card has been positive. So, I purchased the WGR614 because of its impressive specs. Setup with my DSL modem was straightforward and everything seemed to work well. After a week or so the router began to drop synch, but (usually) was able to reconnect. Performance continued to degrade, however, and within a few days became only rarely usable. After a week of checking out line quality, computer connections, etc., as well as trying to extract some useful diagnostic information from Netgear's minimal online support site, I decided to try a different wireless DSL router. A Linksys WRT54G immediately established a rock solid connection and has performed flawlessly ever since. Sorry, Netgear, my loss is definitely your loss....
Rating: Summary: Would recomend unit to anyone Review: i have 4 computers and one PDA at home. 3 Computers are connected via cable to back of this router and my laptop & pda are connected wireless. have had no trouble and install could not be simpler.
|