Rating: Summary: Wow Review: I purchased this to use as an access point on an existing wired network so I could roam around my house with a laptop. I took it out of the box, plugged it in to the outlet and into my wired router and it worked immediately using the default settings with absolutely no configuration whatsoever. Wow. It was actually more difficult to install the wireless card on the laptop than this device. Range seems good all over my house, a two story '20's colonial. Haven't tried the yard yet. I love gadgets, and this is one of the more gratifying gadget experiences I've had. It does look very cool too...
Rating: Summary: Perfect on OSX - A Low-Cost AirPort Alternative Review: Didn't take any thought, plugged it in, powered up, switched my network to AirPort (I had one built into my G4) and I was motoring. I'm no speed freak when it comes to bandwidth, but spend my entire day online and it feels about the same as my wired connection...Maybe it's the new heady freedom of being wireless!I also have a desktop plugged in directly. The DHCP is spot on as well. And's it's silent (some older routers had noisy fans)... Haven't tried all the security items yet, but plan to in the next few days. Needless to say, I'm thrilled. CNET's editor's choice rating was well deserved! And if you get the rebate coupon (expires soon), it becomes the wireless deal supreme!
Rating: Summary: This should have stayed on the drawing board... Review: The wireless connectivity as well as the wired connectivity of this router is as good as any I've ever used. The issue with this router is that it can't seem to handle MANY secure connections. This issue has been confirmed by hundreds of other users on various message boards across the net. Netgear tech support has no idea how to fix this and none of the fixes supplied by the community work either. Until Netgear releases firmware to fix this issue, I'd stay away from it. Here's a small sample of the lost functionality (websites that no longer work through this router): Yahoo! Mail (various issues) Pizzahut.com (customer login) Weather.com (entering zip code) Bellsouth.com (customer login) There are many more, but you get the idea
Rating: Summary: Love it Review: Works great, easy to do (really -- I'm not a techie)
Rating: Summary: easy to set up, easy to modify, and it never goes down! Review: I've used 2 other 802.11b access points (Linksys, D-Link), and this is by far the easiest to set up and use. WEP is a cinch to setup, as is DMZ and port forwarding, all through the web interface. And I've used it and modified settings with both a Sony VAIO laptop with a D-Link wireless card and an Apple Powerbook with an Airport card. Also have a Playstation 2 hooked up one of the ethernet ports and have had no problems playing SOCOM or NFL2K3 online. 802.11b AP's don't get much better than this!
Rating: Summary: Good product for Windows AND Linux with POOR encryption tool Review: I bought this product after returning Linksys and D-Link. D-Link was a bad experience - both the product and the tech support. Linksys & Netgear perform pretty much the same way both in terms of the ease of installation, tech support and link quality etc. After normal windows installation, I tried to turn the 128-bit encryption by using the passphrase option. But on my laptop I couldn't do the same passphrase on it. I get "Frame dropped error" with a yellow colored big "W" symbol over the icon on the system tray. The workaround for that it is to generate the encryption in hex on the router and type the hex values manually on the laptop. On the linux side, although I was absolutely hopeless to make it work, surprisingly there are great forums to make it work. www.....org is the best. There are different success stories to make this work. Overall, I am happy about the product. The tech support is also good. The link/signal quality is averaging 80 percent across the house. In the living room it is only in 70% as it is exactly in the opposite side of where the router is located. In kitchen and other places, it is at its upper 90s. Needless to say, microwaves, cordless phones have greater impact on the wireless connection. So get this and you wont regret. Mahesh
Rating: Summary: Very fast and easy Review: This is one of the slickest setups I have seen. The installation time was mostly determined by how long it took to boot 2 computers and a cable modem. I never even pulled out the CD Rom on the PC hooked to the router via ethernet, and only needed the drivers on the CD Rom for the wireless pc card that went into the laptop. I also implemented the 128 bit wireless security, and limited the wireless connection to known mac addresses on the pc cards. That makes for prety tight security! Anyway I couldn't be happier. It worked right out of the box.
Rating: Summary: Dependable product Review: I bought this because of the endless problems with my Linksys BEFW11P1 (which seems to be discontinued - rightly so). This one worked right out of the box - and never stopped working. The only problem I had was getting my DSL provider to assign it an IP address, because the Linksys has no way of releasing it, only renewing. But the Netgear is great - it allows you to release the IP address and it even let me mimick the MAC address from the Linksys router temporarily, enough to convince my ISP's DHCP server to release the IP address and bind it to the new box's MAC address. Also the signal seems much better than the Linksys's.
Rating: Summary: Solid Router Review: I bought this router at Christmas, 2002 for home use. It was very easy to set up with the default settings, and has been solid. Unlike most gear, it is actually stylish! With the little stand included, you can set it on a shelf on-end and it takes very little room. Range from the second story extends well over 150 ft in some directions but very little in others, apparently due to obstructions, as the antenna is omnidirectional. Wireless is very insecure, so be sure to change the password, set a new group name, turn on encryption, etc. All this is easy with the browser interface. Good stuff!
Rating: Summary: Won't maintain an ssh connection Review: While easy to set up, and otherwise works fine, as a router it leaves something to be desired. I cannot maintain a persistent connection either in or out via this router. If I login to any of my usual working computers using ssh, the connection is dropped and timed out after a few minutes, meaning I have to login again on another shell. This is not an intermittent problem, as when one connection dies, I can immediately open another shell and ping the device or log in again - it just drops the connection. I also plugged my old non-wifi SMC Barricade back in and had none of these problems, so I know it isn't me. I tried to email customer service and got no reply. I called customer service and got a fellow who didn't know what ssh is, and whose only solution was to reload the driver from the (very slow) website. So I'm returning this device and getting something else. Probably a wifi SMC Barricade.
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