Rating: 
Summary: Good Router
Review: Last week I bought NETGET MR814 router. I never used LinkSys and DLink routers. I have a desktop with XP and a Laptop with 2000. The installation of MR814 is relatively easy. The installation instructions were clear and a new user shouldn't have any problems in understanding the instructions. I also bought MA401 card for the laptop. I have Comcast Cable Modem for internet connection.As many reviews indicated, you really want to change lots of default settings to setup a secure network. Under the Wireless settings, change SSID, set up the Wireless card Access List, Enable WEP security encryption (and rotate the passphrases). Change the default password (and keep changing it once in a while). Under LANIPSetup, assign static IP addresses to all the PCs and laptops. The only problem I faced with this router is I can't connect to the laptop directly from desktop (and viceversa) unless I disable the software firewall on both the machines. Called Netgear Tech support and they told me to disable the software firewall (I have Zone Alarm installed on once and Black Ice on the other) to connect from one machine is another machine. It is a pain. Once I disabled the firewall, I can share files and printer without any problem. The wireless connection through the PCMCIA card is very good. I get very good (above 90% signal strength) signal all around my home including patio. If your primary objective is to share the internet connection among multiple computers, MR814 is a very good router and you don't have a pay a lot too.
Rating: 
Summary: Difficult to configure
Review: I found the documentation that came with this router (even what was on the CD) was poor, and I was unable to configure it to support even one wired PC without calling Tech Support. The wait was 20 minutes, but the person who answered was professional and useful. After about 40 minutes of work, the router worked, and then connecting up my laptop wirelessly was easy. I had quite a bit more trouble getting WEP working to my home desktop. That required another > 1 hour call to tech support. This is my first experience with 802.11b, but I have to say I was not satisfied with Netgear. I would try another brand if I were buying another LAN.
Rating: 
Summary: Unstable firmware finally resolved. It's OK now.
Review: This is my 2nd wireless router, (I am not counting my access points). I'm a tester in a network company, so I've done sone detailed observation. Pros:
Netgear did an awesome job by making this 'slick' looking router with nice lights. There's even a sticker which explains what each lights are for. Setup is straight forward. For most people, they will only need to stick with first 2 pages (and sub-pages of those) to get everything done. The ugly:
First-You'll start to get into some hairy stuff with the wifi page. When you set the 'country' and 'channel', you will notice that after refresh it disappears. Sometimes it sticks, but most of the time, you have to do this several times. Not only that, the help tab does not show up until you've made a change. Obviously a bug.
Second-The port forwarding on the older firmware is flaky. You will need to upgrade your firmware to the latest released, which was in May. The really UGLY stuff.
My SMC router was working fine in an urban environment. If I sniff the air, I see 5 other routers. So, I plug this thing in, put it on the same channel as SMC and it just flaked out. This router can not be trusted to be up 24x7 yet. Occasionally it will just die, and require a hard boot. After the firmware upgrade, router seems to have stabilized, but prior to this, it would die every other day from who-knows-what. In short, this router is pretty nice looking, and seems to have stabilized with '4.11' firmware revision. The new firmware has only been out for couple of weeks, and I've only had to reboot once. After you upgrade the firmware, I recommend that you hard reset it via the button on the unit. For now, I can not recommend this product. I've tested it with ISO downloads with the new firmware (Redhat 9, 3 iso's each with ~700megs) and the thing stayed up. Prior to that, this thing would hang. If you are going to power this thing on and off every day, then it's a good deal But if you want something you want to configure once, and deal with it maybe 4x a year, this unit has not proven itself to me. The new firmware seems to be great, but it's only been 2 weeks since it's release (installed the day after it was released), and it took them 3 months to release it. Then again, I can not recommend SMC either. If you have the money, and are willing to pay for stability, Linksys seems to be the choice. BTW: There's a 2nd version of this router, and it's supposidly smaller, and no longer has the 'detachable' antenna.
Rating: 
Summary: True Plug and Play
Review: I have dealt with many different home routers in the past 3 years (Linksys, D-Link, etc) and this is by far the best. I just plugged it in and then all 6 of our computers were connected to the internet (4 wired, 2 wireless). And two of the computers are Apple iBooks running AirPort. Appearance-wise the router is attractive, comes with its own stand (will keep it cooler than when touching the floor) and just flat out works. The best 802.11b router you'll find at the price. Netgear and Linksys are really good, but I've had so many problems with D-Link. If you need a wireless router for around fifty dollars, this is the way to go.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent buy, easy setup
Review: I read lot of reviews and finally decided to buy this and it's been an excellent buy for me. Easy setup, any one can do it and good range too. I bought Orinoco Gold card along with this and it is really a great product.
Rating:
Summary: Best value!!!
Review: This is the best piece of equipment for the price. Easy, extremely easy to install. If you follow the instructions you should not have any inconvenient. The signal strength had me worried at first, then I read a review that suggested trying different channels. Guess what??
The default channel is 11, I then tried channel 1, and the signal strength is really strong. Very good product.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent wireless router - very impressed
Review: Excellent router. Very impressed with the design and simplicity of the product. They even included an ethernet cable which is a big plus. I set it up and in 15 minutes was cruising the internet. At first I couldn't get on the internet. So I checked the settings and realized I haven't added to the list of wireless nodes that is accessing the router. After that no problemo. Just be sure to read some of the tips provided by the readers below and above as I learned a few things I wouldn't have by looking at the instruction manual. The biggest tip I learned was the idle time disconnection parameter. Someone posted recommending you put in 0 and that is a big tip to keep in mind. There are a few others so it's worthwhile to browse for these. Also I had no problems with SSH despite what one of the readers said below. I use SSH as a major component of my work and no problems here. Overall I highly recommend this one.
Rating:
Summary: My money on this, any Day.
Review: Had a SMC Barricade/Wireless before. It was nothing short of horrible. Too weak wireless signals, religiously booted it every day. Very soon I was searching for a better one. Netgear was the answer! Installed it two months before. Since then, I have completely forgotten about it till I saw this again on this site (amazon). Must say, Netgear really takes the prize! My suggestion: Use a netgear router with a belkin pc card. I found this to be the best combination. Tried multiple other cards - Netgear, etc. This is the best combo.
Rating:
Summary: great product
Review: Innitially i had some problems setting up the device because i was not able to get in to config. menue, which is done by entering http://192.168.0.1, but the problem was not related to the device itself. Once I was able to do that, the config. was amazingly simple, I can also say the same thing about the wireless card made by the same manufacturer. Man I just love the features and ease of use, this product works and looks great.
I very good quality product I highly recommend it.
Wireless is geat
Rating:
Summary: Bad router, bad support
Review: I bought this wireless router last year before Christmass. I always likes Netgear products, - they are solid, well designed and performed very well. But this MR814 wireless router is something outstanding. First off all it's a big. Do not trust the picture on the web site. The MR814 is much bigger than can you expect. Second, the 802.11b wireless power is not good enough to cover my 3 levels home, so I made pair CAT5 ethernet cables to move the router into another location. Third, the software is very bad. The DynDNS auto update feature is broken. No way to hide SSID or limit connections from wireless devices. No telnet server. And finally, there is an terrible bug which can make anyone crazy. When I'm downloading something over the net and opening many TCP sessions the router simple died. Only one way to restore internet connection is Power OFF/ON cycle. I was trying to report this problem to Netgear. No luck. Now I'm looking for any other, not Netgear, WAP. Hope that will help.
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