Rating: 
Summary: Excellent - After Firmware Upgrade
Review: I bought this Netgear wireless router after hearing a lot of positive feedback about their products overall. I bought the MR314 router and a MA401 wireless card and had no problems installing either for use with a HP XP Laptop. The card was running in about a minute and the router seemed to be work quite well with my Time Warner / Road Runner Cable Modem connection. The instructions were a little confusing but I worked around this fairly easilyThe only problem I encountered was after the wirless connection was first running. It would crash after 1-10 minutes and require rebooting and then it would crash again. I called Netgear and in fairly short order I was told to upgrade the firmware from their website. The woman was a little wooden and hard to understand but I managed to find out what I needed. I upgraded the firmware and have had NO problems since. The connection runs uninterrupted and fast (1 floor apt less then 300 ft from router to furthest point). This process, which I thought might be loaded with problems, went quite smoothly and the wireless service is a joy
Rating: 
Summary: Easy? Yes Capable? Well...
Review: Like other users, I got this wireless router talking to both my wired MacOS G3 and wireless PC laptop (using the companion MA401 wireless PC card) within 1/2 hour. The web-based wizard served by the router worked well.
However, I had to bring it home and set it up to find out there's no built-in firewall in this router. You have to rely on NAT and the wireless encryption for security. Strike one.
Also, I couldn't find any documentation on the CD or NetGear's site for the unit's telnet command line interpreter, and whether it might offer more configuration options than the web-based interface. Strike two.
Finally, the wireless range inside my wood and plaster house was much more limited than spec'd. Transfer rate dropped to 2Mbit when I got a couple of rooms away and disconnected in the back yard. Strike three - return to vendor.
Rating: 
Summary: Bad reception
Review: So much for the miracles of wireless. In order to get reception on my laptop, you basically have to be in the same room as the router. In my bedroom (only 40 feet away from the router), reception is poor or non-existent. According to tech support (nearly impossible to understand through a thick accent), I should be happy to get at least 30 feet inside a house. The great range advertised by this product only occurs in a laboratory. In a real house, you'll be cursing yourself for buying this product.
Rating: 
Summary: The best there is
Review: Folks, this is the best wireless router I have come accross. It works amazingly. It took me little over 5 minutes to setup and working. 4 of those minutes was trying to figure out how to open the box's plastic cover. If anybody cannot get it working, they should not own a computer. It just does not get any easier than this. I recommend using the same brand for the PCMCIA card such as the Netgear MA401 802.11b Wireless PC Card.
Rating:
Summary: Not able to add a booster antenna
Review: Great router. Great price. That is if you plan to use your notebook in the same dwelling as your MR314. Once you go outside, the frequency is dispersed. Netgear really needs to allow a user to attach an external antenna. This would really help performance so you can "stay connected" especially with a lot of radio interferrence we have around us (microwaves, 2.4 ghz cordless phones, etc.) To my knowledge, Netgear is planning to come out with a unit where you can plug in an external antenna. This would be ideal. For now I think Lucent and Cisco are the only wireless routers that allow you to connect a booster antenna. Otherwise a good value if you do not need the extra coverage. Location: residential neighborhood.
Rating:
Summary: Okay, I had to call my ISP but otherwise easy install...
Review: Must confess, I got this unit instead of the Linksys because I like the Netgear (lack of) styling. Also, PC Magazine readers said that Netgear and Linksys (and SMC) had high levels of customer support, so that did it for me. Anyway, I never called technical support! Didn't have to! I had some questions about DNS names (dynamic) for Verizon DSL, but the Verizon techies told me EXACTLY what to do with this box, I was truly impressed. I now have a wired ME PC hooked up by CAT-5 and a wireless USB XP Home PC upstairs. My old 450hz PC seems happier having the Netgear handling everything. The new PC recognizes everything except for the ME PC file sharing, this might be from a conflict in files types, not sure... Also, I like the keyword filtering... Very easy to use. No negatives. Initially, the system wouldn't connect, but went through the settings and rebooted and that was it. Totally satisfied!
Rating: 
Summary: Very Poor Reception
Review: After two hours on hold, one hour each time and two hours on the phone I finally returned the unit for full refund. Why don't they tell you in the literature that the router must be in the highest room and the satellite down one floor. I never found that out until the end of my talk with one of the technicians about 1AM in the morning. If I had known this I would not have bothered to try and go wireless as I would have had to reinstall my dsl modem. Some of the techs seemed knowlegable but the wait time is as bad as I have ever experienced trying to get a tech. I'm going hardwire but not with Netgear because of the frustration of contacting tech support.
Rating:
Summary: Fantastic product
Review: After having an awful experience with the Linksys counterpart to this product, I gave up and bought this after hearing that a friend had a good experience with one. I ordered it and had it out of the box and humming along nicely within 15 minutes. The instructions are very clear and make installation a breeze. The wireless range appears to be a little short, but I'm writing this from my living room couch through a couple of walls, about 30-40 feet from the router, and I'm downloading a file at 100k/sec. Although I haven't had to use customer support yet, I understand that it is outstanding, plus the router has a five-year warranty. I can't say much more, I've had it only a couple of hours, but this router is fantastic. It does exactly what it is supposed to with minimal fuss and very little technical know-how.
Rating:
Summary: Do not use with Verizon DSL or Stormport DSL modem
Review: I bought the Netgear MR314 on the recommendation of my company's IT manager, who uses it at home with a cable modem through Time Warner. We use ORiNOCO (Agere) network cards and Lucent (Agere) access points at the office, which work great. I connected my Netgear through the modem Verizon provided for their DSL service (a Stormport 620). The connection from my laptop to the Netgear router would go up and down like a yo-yo-up for 5 minutes, down for 6, back up for 45 seconds, down for 2 minutes, etc. When the link would drop, I couldn't even ping the router from my laptop. This same behavior was observed if I was using either a wired Network card (D-Link DFE-890TXD) or my ORiNOCO Gold wireless card. Through the course of 4 phone calls lasting a total of about 4 hours, over the course of two weeks, I went through all sorts of troubleshooting with Netgear, including:
- upgrade to 3.28 firmware
- upgrade to 3.29 firmware
- downgrade back to 3.28 firmware
- reset router configuration (with little button on back)
- different turn-on sequences (modem first, then router & vice versa)
- static IP addressing instead of DHCP
- replacing the router (RMA) I finally tried unplugging the DSL modem from the router. Lo and behold, the router worked fine. I could ping it without dropping a single packet for hours. Now, I also know that my modem works fine-I connect directly from my laptop to the DSL modem with no problem for hours at a time. So, something was causing the router a problem with its LAN connection whenever it had a WAN connection to contend with. I was escalated to a Mitch in Netgear's Level 2 support group. As is common in the hi-tech industry, he was only interested in blaming the other guy. This is despite the fact that it's the connection from the laptop to the router that goes down (i.e., that LAN connection). Once the LAN connection comes back up, the statistics reported in Netgear's management interface show that the WAN connect has stayed up continuously. He ultimately suggested that I return it and buy a different brand, which I will be more than happy to do (probably a Linksys). It's just the hassle of shipping it back, ordering/waiting for a new one that bothers me. A note on Netgear's support. Their level 1 support group is in India. Having set up and managed several call centers for hi-tech companies, I can tell you this is becoming more and more common. Heck, I was even connected to a call center in India when I called American Express last month to update my address. In any event, I found the support guys in India to be very polite and competent. I've read about quite a bit of frustration with Netgear's level 1 support, but I think it's important to remember the purpose of a level 1 support group. They are essentially running through checklists, and performing basic troubleshooting and solving well-known, well-understood issues. I found the folks in India were more than capable to do this (they ran me through all the steps mentioned above). I probably would expect more support than I got from Mitch in their level 2 group, but I know that the problem I had was fairly subtle, and it's tough for support guys to actually fix something that's broken in the software or hardware design. I think I would have at least expected him to offer to investigate further with their engineering folks before punting. I imagine this product is fine with certain configurations. But, if you have a setup similar to mine, I would avoid Netgear. If you already bought it and start seeing similar problems, I would try the latest firmware, and if that doesn't work-return it while you can.
Rating:
Summary: Great Product
Review: No bad words, installation was much easier than I expected.
No problems what so ever (even with non Netgear NICs). Strong signal in my apartment, no more cables! I highly recommend buying it!
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