Rating: 
Summary: Would not recommend
Review: The router was simple enough to set up and use, and the feature set is attractive. I purchased this for my parents' home, in which they have 2 PCs and a Playstation 2. Wireless features work very well around the two story house. The problem lies in attempting to play PS2 games. No matter what game is played, after almost exactly 20 minutes, the PS2 is disconnected by the router. I know it is the router, because the previous network setup at the house did not do this. This is a very odd issue. (...) Now I have to deal with trying to RMA it w/ netgear tech support. BTW, it is hardware version 3 of the router, if that helps at all.
Rating:
Summary: Did not like this product, will use Linksys next time
Review: I bought a Netgear rp614 awhile back to upgrade from my old Siemans router. I was very impressed with the ease of the routers administration and all, and would rate that router a 4.5/5.0 or 5.0/5.0 it's a damn good router all around, network transfers, stability and gaming.However, this wireless router I bought to conjoin with my old network and server as a WAP was horrible. It was very unstable and had several bugs working as a WAP which it is capable of doing, but very poorly. I highly recommend to buy a Linksys over the Netgear here, even though Linksys routers are a bit inferior wired for gaming, their wireless ones far exceed Netgear.
Rating: 
Summary: Fine for the price
Review: Now that I have this router and my wireless connection working, life is fine, but I found the directions to not be the best. I have an XP operating system and even though they had XP directions, their directions didn't always match what I was seeing on the screen. Also, I wanted to set up encryption for my wireless connection. The directions for that were also too vague. If you have basic computer knowledge, then you can work your way through this. If you have no computer know how and just want everything to magically work (and be encrypted) once you plug in the CD, then this product is not for you. Of course, I don't know if the other manufacturers are any better in the directions, so for the price maybe you should choose this. Side note: why can't encryption setup be automatic?
Rating: 
Summary: Worst product I have ever used
Review: The network is hard to config, I have to reboot many times to get a connection. It is such a piece of crap, I am giving up on this company forever!
Rating: 
Summary: No problems whatsoever
Review: I bought this item a year ago and it has caused me no problems/ technical difficulties to speak of. The signal reaches through 3 levels, and it still has an average speed of about 48 mbps out of a total 54 mbps. It thus has plenty of power. It also interoperates with my 802.11b wireless card and works seamlessly with Windows XP Pro. Bottom line: After almost a year of near flawless service, I am completely satisfied with this product.
Rating:
Summary: Easy Going
Review: This was an easy setup, and even with my software firewall, it was easy to configure. Signal strength is great, and I am going to buy another for my daughter. Barely needed to look at the directions.
Rating:
Summary: Great Device... Just Not That Way Out Of The Box
Review: Well, I finally decided to go out and purchase a wireless router. Being that I did not want to spend very much, I opted for this one. This router provides a great list of features, just not out of the box. Size:
Unlike Linksys or Microsoft routers which are larger and bulky, this router is small. It measures about 3 1/2" long by 2 1/2" wide by 1/2" high. It's not something that I would put into a server case, but it is something that can be mounted on a wall or tucked away out of site very easily. Speed:
With this router, I normally get anywhere between 48Mb to 54Mb connections throughout my entire home and even outside, with throughput being somewhere between 35-45Mb (most wireless routers average out about about 30 so this one is pretty good). The signal strength from the router is fairly strong and I have only dropped my signal once (see notes below). I use a Xterasys brand PCMCIA card on my PC Laptop, Apple eXtreme G PC Cards on my G4 iMac and G5, and an Xterasys PCI card on my PC Desktop. All of them are 802.11G. Security:
Out of the box, the device supports up to 128bit WEP encryption and has support for MAC Layer Address control. A New beta firmware out allows for WPA encryption. On the firewall side, the router uses the basic firewalls: NAT Translation and SPI. Reliability:
After getting pass what is noted below, my router is very reliable. I have never experienced any kind of malfuntions or problems. My previous Linksys router may have locked up once every year. I have not had this router for a year yet, but I am expecting around the same. Ease of Use:
Unlike a few control panels that I have seen, this router is much easier to use. Wireless encyption happens easily thanks to a WEP key generator (based on passphrases) and a wonderful manual. Other features of the device work just as well. The router seems to be more intelligent than other routers that I have used. For example, I am able to DCC in IRC or DirectIM in AIM without having to forward ports to a machine. A big plus. With all of those pros, there are also a list of cons as well. Firmware:
This has to be one of my biggest cons about this router. The quality of firmware on this router reminds me of Linksys a few years ago (in which you waited about 3-6 months before updating your firmware). Out of the box, the router worked great via the ports, but wireless was a different story. For one, when I attempted to connect wirelessly using my PC Laptop, everything worked great. Then, when I enabled encryption, I could remain connected for about 1 minute, then it would drop out. A minute later, it would come back. Then, the cycle would repeat itself. I decided to upgrade to the latest firmware (which to my surprise was two years newer than the one shipped with hit). The new firmware added new features such as the ability to disable SSID broadcasting. The new firmware fixed my dropping problem like a charm. But, when I dissabled SSID broadcasting, the same thing started happening. The only difference here was that I would drop and gain every second! Since I much rather not broadcast my SSID, I simply upgraded my PC's to the beta of SP2 and that fixed my problem there. My Macs did not have the same problem with the disabled SSID, but did have the same problem before I upgraded my firmware. Then, a new firmware came out which allowed for WPA encryption. Since I rather use WPA than WEP, I upgraded, only to find out that by doing that, wireless stopped working all together! Downgraded back, and everything worked again. Internet Performance:
This one may just be me, but I have noticed that I get slower Internet performance wirelessly than I do wired... even when I'm next to my router. For example, I have a webserver that has files on it. I can download those files at around 150-200KB/s. When I connect to the router via ethernet, I can download at around 350-400KB/s. Although I can live with both, this always bugs me because I should get the same speeds regardless. Specifications:
One of the reasons I bought a G router was for the extra speed on devices that have G cards and the compatibility on my devices that have B cards. In the end, I upgraded everything to G. Why? Simply because this router has very poor Wi-Fi/Wi-Fi+ support. If I turn my router to 802.11B only, I get decent wireless B speeds (usually between 8-11Mb all the time). In 802.11G only mode, I usually get throughput speeds of about 35-45Mb all the time. But in mixed mode (G & B support), I get about 2-4 Mb throughput all the time, regardless of if the device is G or B. This may be a firmware problem so I'll wait to see if a new one fixes that (while breaking something else). All and all, it wasn't a bad buy for $40. It does all that I need it to do and since everything is G now, it works pretty great. If you are looking for a starter router that will provide your wireless needs, this one will do the trick.
Rating:
Summary: Easy Setup
Review: First of all, I woould like to commend Amazon.com on their fast delivery. I ordered it on Monday morning and I got the package delivered to my front door the next morning. That was with the free shipping option, which was suppose to take about five days.
Now about the Netgear WGB511 802.11g wireless networking kit (which includes a WGR614v4 and a WG511)...I was able to get the router running with default settings in less than 10 minutes after I took it out of the box and that includes the time that I used to figure out how to use my old Linksys HPRO200 router as a bridge to my HPNA network. Upon inspecting the firmware version, I noticed that the version posted on Netgear's web site is newer and includes WPA-PSK so I quickly downloaded it and burned the new firmware. Except for the slow download from Netgear the whole process went very smoothly, however, the instruction for setting up WPA-PSK is minimal and it took a bit of guessing on my part to set it up (had to guess what needs to be done on my Windows XP, but only took couple tries.) The range of the wireless network is good and I was able to get excellent strength readings throughout most of the house. Over all, I am extremely pleased with the Netgear router so far, I just hope it won't quit on me prematurely as my Linksys wireless AP did right after warrenty expired.
Rating:
Summary: Need to upgrade the firmware.
Review: I was pretty disappointed on this one. It kept dropping connections regardless of the distance to the peripherals. I really liked MR814, but it died while upgrading the firmware. For this I was reluctant to upgrade the firmware for this one, but did, and connection drops are gone. Pretry stable now. One thing I do like about it over MR814 is that it keeps all the settings during firmware upgrade even though it says it won't.
Rating:
Summary: Works Great with OS X
Review: I have used this router with an G3 iBook, OS 10.3 for about 4 months now. I had a bit of trouble in the first couple of weeks with finding the wireless connection after putting the computer to sleep and turning it back on. However, I think that was a temporary glitch - it hasn't happened since. Other than that, this has worked really well all around my apartment and I would definitely recommend it to Mac users. I was a little worried about buying a third party product and I wasn't sure how it would work with the Airport Card, but this has turned out to be a great choice. Doesn't hurt that it is MUCH cheaper than buying Apple's Airport. Still, there is one downside when compared to Airport - the Netgear router does not have a USB port so you don't have the option of connecting a printer to the router. Airport on the other hand does allow for wireless printing.
|
