Rating: 
Summary: Fustrated user
Review: I purchased the Netgear wireless router and wireless PCI card. The wireless PCI card worked perfectly out of the box. I wish I could say the same for the router.I took three calls to technical support to finally figure out that the router was defective. It could not sychronize the cable modem's signal. The worst part of my experience was the wait time for technical support. I literally had to wait an average of 45 minutes each time I called technical support. I returned the unit and purchased Linksys' wireless router. It worked fine right out of the box.
Rating: 
Summary: addendum
Review: I have been using the MR315 wireless router for about 3 weeks now and it works great. I have read more about the switch portion of the router and the 4 wired ports. If you have an existing network you can hook up at the fast ethernet connection of 100 MBS unlike another reviewer said. The cable/DSL port is 10baseT connection true but you can uplink to any of the wire ports of the router. The 10baseT connection is for the cable modem which is a slower connecion. I have the 3com office connect modem and ATT cable service. I can connect to my smc barricade for true firewall. Again it has worked great
Rating: 
Summary: Don't start a cable modem installation without it
Review: I just upgraded my satellite return system to a cable modem using the MR314 as my firewall/router/WAP. Throw out the cable company's CD and just connect the MR324 to the router. Sweet! I removed the satellite equipment and had the router and cable modem on line in less than 30 minutes without having to install any drivers (Windows 98SE). The web interface is direct and simple to configure for ports and wireless security. I put my three primary machines onto three of the router's switch ports, and connected the last port to the SOHO LAN switch. This product is everything that computers are supposed to be: fast, friendly, reliable. Keep an eye out for Netgear rebates... Al
Rating:
Summary: Does what it should.. easy and effective
Review: This is a handy little unit, combining everything you need for safe, easy broadband access. If you are not a complete idiot, it is easy to set up in just a few minutes. I am an incomplete idiot, and it took me about 15 minutes while making dinner and chasing two children. Throughput is great across my middle-sized house, and the unit looks sturdy and fits easily among other equipment.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent
Review: This product has been very good. At first it may not work right for you and will keep disconnecting or taking away your connection. You need to upload the new firmware via netgear.com. That should help the problem. Also there is one problem, sometimes it's not that fast, but usually its the same speed as the hardwired computer to the modem. Also sometimes you may get booted off. One other thing, it doesn't always show up with Green connectivity, meaning the best. It always is yellow for me, but the connection still works. This is based on my situation thought. It may be different for you. But overall, this product is excellent.
Rating: 
Summary: Uplink is only 10mb - can't be just a bridge.
Review: This would be a 5 star item except for two major problems. The first is that the router only functions via the uplink port. And that port is ONLY 10Mb. If you already have an existing network that is 100Mb, you'll need to buy a 10/100 switch to plug this in. Irony is, I bought this because it includes it's own switch. This 10Mb port is a major bummer. A single wireless laptop is 11Mb. If you have two or three (or 32!) they all have to share that 10Mb uplink. If you want to connect 100Mb wired devices to the switch portion of this device, they share that 10Mb too. CHOKE CHOKE. The other killer with the uplink port is that it cannot be a bridge to your DSL/Cable modem or other hub. The uplink port is a router or it is nothing. If you have multiple IP addresses from your ISP, the MR314 will not function as a bridge for those other IP addresses. If your needs are simple, the MR314 is a great device. You get a single address from your ISP (and it will MAC Masquerade for cable modem users) and you plug in the MR314. Plug everything else in and you don't even need to configure the MR314, it just works. However, and why I killed two stars in my review, if you have an existing network or want to build your network out later, the MR314 integrates very poorly.
Rating:
Summary: Doesn't handle ISP gateway switches well
Review: I have this router and 802.11b rocks... but I've had trouble using it with my Charter (my ISP) cable modem. When Charter resets it's gateway (which is something very common in the ISP industry I guess), the router has to be completly reset (to factory defaults) in order to "regain" a connection to the internet. This in itself would only drop the rating to a 4 of 5, but Netgear's backup settings utility seems to back up the old gateway address too, so even after resetting the router to factory defaults and then re-installing your backed up settings, you aren't on the internet. You still need to completely reconifgure the router from scratch... by hand (can be very frustrating depending on the amount of conifguration you want your local intranet to have).
Rating:
Summary: It's a funny feeling not seeing an ethernet cable!
Review: You know when you leave your house and you have that empty feeling because you forgot your work bag? Well that's how you'll feel when you go wireless! I'm a web monkey, but always have a way of uncovering stumbling blocks that nobody else does. I'm crashing with relatives and there's one cable internet connection in my sister-in-law's room. She's in college and can't give up the connection. I need access to the 'net when she's using it/occupied in her room, so I sprung for the router. I knew I'd do it eventually, so why not now? First of all, my main cynicism was due to the reported range of the product. From a performance standpoint, I couldn't be happier, however! The router is in a room on the second floor and I do my work on the main one, and I always get a good to excellent signal (you can tell by looking at the status of the wireless card). The room is essentially at the extreme end of the second floor. I went to the extreme end of the first floor (maybe 40 feet) and still got a good to very good signal (these are actual ratings, btw). Then I took it down into the basement and still got a "good" (again, that's an actual rating) signal. Realize a few things. One, I'm using linksys' wireless card and these results are in a new construction (3 years old) home. Obviously your results may be different but I hope mine are just as good when I get back to my house, which is under construction. Two, realize that the maximum that most cards transmit at is 11 Mbps, which is obviously faster than all 'net connections out there. Even with a crappy signal, the average person won't notice it. Good signal, very good, excellent, what does it matter? It's hard to picture that even without cables, the bottleneck is actually your ISP and not your card! Now, on to the things to watch out for. First of all, I decided to pull out my wife's old pentium II, wipe the drive clean and start from scratch with windows 95. Realize that most wireless network cards (at least the ones that I've seen) need at least windows 95 version B to work. Of course, I had version A installed and had to upgrade to 2000. Linksys, simply states that you need windows 95, so be careful. Secondly, there's a bug accessing the web-based admin utility. Specifically if you use I.E. 5.0, none of the links work! This is with firmware version 3.25 (whatever the latest is). I'm assuming that netgear is working on a solution for this. Third, as with most of these router guys, the product is great until you need tech support. The wait makes you find solutions to your own problems! Finally, this router, like most out there, doesn't have a "real" firewall. It won't stop denial of service attacks, doesn't check packets, etc. Netgear's FM114P does have this and more, but to be honest with you, not only does no one need it, anybody who does (only businesses do) should get a professional hosting service to host their site. To me, the FM114P is more novelty than anything else. However, I'm eventually going to sell this one and get it anyway! Maybe. Okay, enough rambling. Overall a great, great product. Don't know why I didn't do it sooner.
Rating:
Summary: Well, I guess it's okay
Review: Well, I am re-reviewing this product after 6 days of use. It was really easy to setup. Setup wizard was very easy to follow and I was up and running under 10 mins. WEP configuration and MAC filter was also very easy to setup. First of all, I got this for very cheap after the rebate. I'm very satisfied both pricewise and qualitywise. The first day I got it, I experienced a lot of disconnects and low signal strength. After searching Netgear's website, I found the firmware update. Since the update, I have always gotten full 11Mbps connection, very good signal strength (my laptop is about 50-55ft away from the router) and NO disconnects. I am really really really happy that I bought this. Some of the cool features I like are web content filter (limit websites accessed by computers using keywords and such), website log (it emails you all the websites visited by all the computers connected to the router), and NAT firewall (I did few firewall tests on the net and it blocked all my ports and hid some). Another thing I like is the backup/restore feature. You can backup the router settings to your computer, so, if you ever have to reset your router, just, restore and you're up and running with previous settings after one single click. The product itself is very sturdy. Blue metal finish makes it tough. :) Few tips to new users:
1. Rename your SSID.
2. Change your admin password.
3. Use MAC filter to filter computers that can access the wireless connections.
4. Use 48/64 bit WEP encryption. 128 is better but that will have some effect on your throughput.
Rating:
Summary: BUY IT!
Review: Buy it! After doing alot of reseearch I finally went with Netgear. I had considered buying the Linksys but after reviews from Amazon[.com] I got scared that I would have the same problems others were experiencing. Setup took all of a minute. The configuration of the router took about 3 minutes. Speeds are great, I have tested with many bandwidth meters and actually hit 790 on a 768K cable modem. If you have a laptop and want to be able to be anywhere in the house, this is the one. One thing that always gets overlooked until you need it is customer tech support. Netgear tech support is great!
I was never put on hold for more than 30 seconds before I got a live person!! With wireless prices going down in the last 3 months, now is the time to buy and NetGear is the logical choice.
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