Rating: Summary: Outstanding Product...Sooo easy! Review: I have both the Netgear WG614 router/access point and WG511 notebook adapter. I was actually stunned by the simple and quick installation. Out of the boxes and up and running within 15 minutes. No snags whatsoever. I'm running ME on the desktop and 2000 on the notebook.Signal strength is fantastic. I get 78% strength in the submerged basement of a three-story 5500 square foot home. This is through multiple walls and floors. Buy this and relax.
Rating: Summary: That's IT? Review: I've gotta say - the router is great. The box it comes in is quite big, and I was worried where I could put this without it being obvious and ugly. But once I actually saw the router, I stopped worrying. This thing is SO small - you could stack two of them beind the new Harry Potter book! And evem if it was large, I wouldn't mind displaying it, it's just so darn cool! Setup was a breeze. I plugged it into the modem and into the first computer, and it installed itself. I was having some trouble accessing it's configuration settings from my main computer, and tech support was NOT helpful with the situation, but if I used Mozilla instead of IE, it worked fine. Oddly enough, I can use IE on any of my other computers to change settings. I currently have three computers hooked up to this, and they can all get on the internet without slowing each other down. I'm using Linksys's PCI 54g card on one desktop, and that computer is having trouble being seen on the rest of the network. It might mean a firmware upgrade on the router, or it may just be because that comp's running Win98, and I'm too lazy to make it work right;) Overall, this router is awesome. Only weak point is customer service, but hey! I can't think of a company that scores highly on this anyway.
Rating: Summary: Great router Review: Pros: Works as advertised, easy to setup Allows the netmask to vary, up to 16 bits Tiny footprint, smallest router I've seen yet Stylish sleek looks Allows MAC based access per machine Cons: Log is simplified, not very useful Cannot distinguish UDP vs TCP when forwarding I'm not a strong believer in WEP. Someone could as realistically tap your phone as capture packets from your network. So I'm going to ignore all the WEP issues. The MAC filter is nice to prevent someone from taking a free ride on the internet tho. I've used other products such as an Apple, Linksys, and Enterasys. This router ranks well, does a good job with hardware interoperability considering 802.11g was only fairly recently adopted. The biggest minus are the logs. Netgear logs more outgoing information than incoming. It might be good for parents, but not for the techies. Even so, the logs are sparse in detail, bloated in entries, and make it nearly useless to figure out...P>Overall, great router for the price.
Rating: Summary: Their products have no warranty. Review: Contrary to their claims, their products have no warranty at all (unless you pay for it). I have a 2 year old gateway router that had a 5 year warranty that stopped working one day so I called their tech support. The tech support person told me that since the product is over 90 days old and they do not manufacture it anymore, then I would have to contact their pay tech support line to get an RMA. If they are able to fix the problem over the phone line, then they will charge me, otherwise they will offer me an RMA number for a return. So basically you have to pay to use their warranty. A friend who is a lawyer is currently handling this situation.
Rating: Summary: Installation and configuration in 5 mins, 54G, good signal Review: I have both Netgear WG614 router/access point and WG511 notebook adapter. Replaced wired network with wireless in ~ 5 minutes. Setup and configuration process is intuitive and is very easy. Router's web interface contains great context-sensitive help; connection wizard is awesome. This router looks great too. Within 50 metres get 90-95% signal strength, with 54Mbps conection. Buy it!
Rating: Summary: Frustrating...... Review: I have this router with 2 Netgear 11g PCI cards, plus a laptop with ethernet connection. It looks great and is incredibly small and unobtrusive. Getting it to work as a router with my Comcast cable service required help from tech support to 'spoof' the MAC address, but no big problem.....until I tried to use the wireless capabilities: I can establish connection but then it drops after anything from 2 minutes to 24 hours. Tech support (level 1 & 2) were useless and I am still waiting for level 3 to call me.....If I get it working, I will update this post, otherwise BUYER BEWARE
Rating: Summary: Works fine after a poor start Review: This systems does everything I need/expected it to, however, I did have a rough start and the manual is poor. The system did not work out of the box despite trying to connect to it via both a PC and a Mac. I tried turning it on and off to no avail. The manual's trouble shooting guide said to hold the test button in for at least 10 seconds and then the unit's 'Test Light' would light and it would reset itself. Nowhere in the manual does it say where the 'test light' is and I never saw anything light despite holding the button for 30 seconds or more. Also, this didn't do anything. Nothing changed and the system still wasn't seen by my computers. I then tried my own thing which wasn't in the manual. I pulled the power and held the test button in while putting power back on. That evidently did something as a bunch of lights started flashing and after it settled down, it worked fine with both the Mac and PC. Anyway, the manual seems out of sync with the actual hardware.
Rating: Summary: So Far, So Good... Review: A couple of weeks ago, I was unable to get a Linksys 54g router and matching 54g pci card to talk to each other, so I took them back. By comparison, this Netgear 54g router and a matching Netgear 54g pci card were a snap. A firmware update took care of the inability to block SSID broadcast talked about in earlier reviews. The only problem I had as a router on my home LAN was the inability for two PCs to see each other. (They both could see the Internet.) Ten minutes on the phone with Netgear tech support tracked down the problem -- the ZoneAlarm software firewall settings on one PC. Getting a Toshiba wireless PDA to work with the router was a much bigger problem, but I'm not sure if the blame lies with Netgear or Toshiba. Their implementations of 128-bit WEP security via an ASCII passphrase differ. Once I figured this out, I used the direct hex input method and they now work well together. All-in-all I am very satisfied with this router.
Rating: Summary: Looks are deceiving Review: I had a Netgear MA314 and it was truly wonderful. Robust, strong signal - what more could I want? So I get the snazzy looking WGR614 and figure the extra "g" speed would be good, but it [stinks]... - signal strength is appalling - unlike the ma314 the build quality (plastic vs. metal in the ma314) is substandard - trying to mask the ssid results in extremely poor connection and dropped signal stays dropped stick to the old style and don't worry about "g" - it's not ready - i'm running "b" now and it's the only way to get a half decent signal
Rating: Summary: Can't get faster than 11mb! Review: Tha main problem I have with this device is that I cannot get any speeds faster than 11mb. This was sold as an 80211G WAP but it can't seem to use anything faster than 80211B. If I were to buy again I would not have spent the extra money for this device I would have stuck with the 80211b version. Also if you want a serious firewall you should look at the PIX501 from Cisco. It's orders of magnitude better than this one.
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