Rating: 
Summary: Very easy to setup and it works out of the box
Review: It literally takes me minutes to setup my wireless while the cable guys were here setting up my coax cable internet connection. I decided to run WEP 128bits anyway and it worked. I am streaming internet radio to my laptop and my Desktop PC. Throughout my house, I get at least 80% signal and link strength. I do have both netgear usb and pc cards with the netgear wireless router. I recommend this.
Rating: 
Summary: Switch may be defective
Review: I suffered with this unit for about 2 weeks before I caved and returned it. I replaced it with a FAR more expensive Apple Airport Extreme, which works wonderfully. (I have a mixed Mac/Wintel LAN).I think my unit was defective, probably a defective 10/100 switch. It worked well in wireless mode, with range better than my older SMC (wireless card failed on that one). I really stress my LAN (backups, etc) so I might expose problems others might not notice. I suspect though that this is a true defect that hits some of these devices. I wonder, though, if the MR814 ever works properly with a secondary external switch. When I bought the device it didn't work at all with my Cisco 675 DSL/router, but a firmware update fixed that. Still, a bad sign that out of the box it was DOA on my LAN. Tech support never replied to an email inquiry. If you buy this device, ... DO NOT SEND IN THE REBATE UNTIL YOU'RE SURE YOU WON'T RETURN IT. ...
Rating: 
Summary: Nice, but not scalable
Review: This has a much better configuration interface than the linksys product but it won't talk to other Wireless Access Points. If you're planning to use wireless in a large area, this isn't the one for you. I bought this to add to my existing wireless network, but there's no way for it to acknowledge that another wireless network already exists and join to it. This is per their tech support, who were at least competent and rapid in their response, even if I didn't like the answer.
Rating: 
Summary: GEAR your NETwork presence wirelessly
Review: Context: The Netgear MR814 is used in the home network to distribute the cablemodem (obviously). One desktop (ethernet), 2 laptops (Cisco Aironet) and occasionally another laptop get connected. The Good:
1. No problems since the purchase
2. Sleek design; looks good even in the living room
3. Good product for the price
4. Very easy to use web interface
5. Easy firmware upgrade option
6. Supposedly works great even with Linux (overheard)
7. Not much of interference with cordless phones
8. Cool features like Access list, Dynamic DNS etc
9. And the mail-in rebate check came fast The Bad:
1. No inbuilt firewall
2. Becomes considerably slow with 128 bit encryption
3. Weirdly, it is not possible to reach an Intranet port from inside with port forwarding set, with the outside address And the Ugly:
1. Sometimes doesn't reach across walls and thus practically unreachable
Rating:
Summary: Great Value, but Some Shortcomings for Advanced Users
Review: I purchased a Linksys BEFW11S4 about a year ago and have been pretty happy with it, but when I saw the Netgear MR814 ... I decided to give it a try. The MR814 is about what I expected - a nice sleek design, great extras such as site blocking and Dynamic DNS support, and the ability to assign fixed addresses in the DHCP server. However, it does have some shortcomings when compared to the Linksys. The main problem is any type of configuration change results in the router rebooting, which is quite annoying if you make changes often. The port forwarding is a little confusing because it doesn't differentiate between TCP and UDP, and it lacks support for ranges. The DHCP server is a little limited too - namely there is no field for a WINS server, and no way to change the lease time. In comparison, the Linksys supported all these features, but did not do site blocking or Dynamic DNS. I doubt any of these shortcomings will be a problem for most basic home users, however advanced users may want go with the business-class FVM318, or just check out the Linksys models.
Rating:
Summary: Tech support for Mac is a joke!
Review: I purchased this product to make my Powerboook G4 wireless. I spent 6 hours discussing this problem with NetGear and Apple with no luck. On my final call to NetGear I was told they do not offer tech support to Mac users, which pretty much makes this "plug and play" device worthless to me. I was then hung up on by the man at NetGear tech support. The router works fine when it is plugged directly into the USB port, but when it comes to wireless I would not recommend Mac users buy this product, you will be on your own if it does not work properly.
Rating:
Summary: Want to use VPN with it? Watch out!!
Review: After I received my new laptop with wireless access in the company I work, I figured it was time to upgrade my home network to wireless, and found the price of the Netgear very reasonable. Allright, it was 802.11b just like my laptop. I hooked it up, configured it (took me a couple of hours to figure out how to set up a new network in my laptop though) and voila!! I was up and running, able to access the internet from the laptop. Then I tried to get to my corporate network using the VPN software provided by the company. It connected ok, but then I was unable to browse our intranet or access my e-mail. The problem? After 2 days of researching and finding *very* obscure references in multiple discussion lists, I realized that VPN-encrypted packets are too large for this router. There is a parameter called MTU - Maximum Transmission Unit - in the router that can not be disabled (Linksys routers allow you to disable this "feature") and any packet larger than that will b dropped. You can typically configure this in your VPN software but I didn't have that option either. I had to return it. Recommendation: For home use, it's a very good and inexpensive router. But if you intend to use it with your corporate network with any VPN software, you may want to make sure the software you're using can be configured to small packets of data.
Rating: 
Summary: Range Claims exagerated
Review: I got everything to work right out of the box pretty quickly and easily. Have three computers running through it, one using a standard rj45 cable, which works quite well. The other is using the MA311 PCI wireless card, and a Dell laptop using MA401. At a distance of 80 to 90 feet through the house the MA311 gets a 30% signal at best, and the MA401 gets 0% and will not connect to router. Tech support stepped me though a few things. But ended up telling me it's too far away from the base station, and that it was not really designed to function in a 2-Story Environment. I have limited experience with this type of networking but it seems that with a claim of 500 feet max range, an 80 foot distance should be working much better.
Rating:
Summary: Great Product. Low Price
Review: I'm new in wireless networking. Just got this router today, hooked it up and was online in seconds. Works perfect with my Motorola Surfboard cable modem. Took a little more time to set up wireless access, but now everything is up and running smoothly.
Rating:
Summary: Months of flawless performance with a Mac
Review: The start-up directions are predictably mushy, but it came to life more or less on its own. It has worked flawlessly and uninterupted for about 7 months with a Mac. It is a good alternative to Apple's more expensive product.
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