Rating: 
Summary: FABULOUS! A Must Have!
Review: Straight out of the box, I had this router up and running between my Win2k and Win98 boxes sharing a DSL line and files in only 15 minuites. Almost no effort at all. Instructions were very clear and consisce. I have never had a problem with NetGear products, and this was no exception. Very pleased with my purchase. It supports PPOE (WinPoET) and has eliminated my need for firewall software. I don't even have to log onto my DSL service, the router does it for me. I can turn on either one of my computers and have instant internet access. A+ Product!
Rating: 
Summary: Not what I was expecting....
Review: First off, let me say that I work as a Network Engineer. I previously used a Netgear hub in my home and have been very pleased with it. When this switch/router became available, I decided it was time to pick it up to share my cable modem with my wife's computer.When the router arrived, I was disappointed to find that I can not change the WAN MAC address. I can only specify factory default *OR* spoof the MAC address of a card that ATT already has the MAC address for. Because I wanted to upgrade to a 10/100 NIC from my 10 NIC that ATT had on file, I was left with no choice but to call ATT and give them the MAC address of the router. I could have saved time if the router would have just let me change the MAC address to the one ATT had on file. After an hour of getting ATT to change the MAC and waiting for the settings to take place, I was finally able to boot off of the router's MAC address DHCP. I am returning this router back to Amazon after a week of use. This router appears to be working fine when I surf the web and, then, all of the sudden drops http request packets. I'll request a web page and it will just 'freeze'. I know it's the router because the ISP light on my cable modem is still lit *AND* I can still instant message with friends and play games online while the router refuses to forward http requests. The only way to fix the router is either to: (1) reboot it through telnet or (2) unplug it. I have to do this at least 10 times a day. I have upgraded to the latest firmware (April 13th) and it didn't solve this problem. I'm sorry to say that this router is useless to me and it seems that I am the exception based on other reviews. Tonight, I reluctantly ordered the comparable Linksys. I can only hope it works better.
Rating:
Summary: Lived up to its claims..
Review: Needed a means to tie my two Macintosh computers, a WinPC and them my Linux laptop to my cable modem plus share files between all of them. So, from reviews read here about several products, I chose the RT314. Just looking at it and checking its overall construction gives me a feeling that it is a substantial product. Connectors, metal work, features, and finish all say, "I'm a REAL serious router!" Plugged it in to the iMac first and checked to see if it made it out the cable modem to the net. Worked like a charm. No tweeking or anything. Proceeded to add on the other computers with equal ease. I did use their browser based configurator from my Mac, but found there was little I had to change from their defaults to make everything work. The manual provided on the CD is in pdf format and is quite through for when I need to go deeper, like for the firewall stuff. Only problem I ran across was not really the router's fault, but mine. When hooking up the RJ45 cables to the router from the comptuers and modem, I ended up grabbing one of the wrong cables. There are "straight through" and "crossover" cables. Pay attention to which one you are using on this. No harm, just wont work. Symptom was (besides not working) is that the lights on the front of the router for the port in question did not light up. That means it is not seeing the network port on the computer. So, try another cable. Finally, with perhaps two units "surfing" at a time, I don't see any degradation that I can attribute to this router. Plenty of capability for home and small office setup.
Rating: 
Summary: A Solid and Capable Performer
Review: A solidly built device, the RT314 provides a good means for sharing a single DSL or cable connection amongst multiple computers, and increasing the security of the connection. It can be installed and configured in an hour or two, but you'll want to spend additional time enhancing the filter settings, as the default ones leave you more exposed than necessary to scanners. Numerous sites offering enhanced filter settings and lots of other help and information can be found on the web by searching for "RT314." To be safe, before you begin altering the configuration, make sure you have a 9-pin, male to female serial cable on hand, as if there is a problem and you can't log in through the network, you can connect through your PC's and RT314's serial ports. My only complaint is that most administrative functions need to be performed though a character based telnet sessions, as the capabilities of the browser-based interface are anemic, at best. All-in-all, though, a good product, and well worth the money.
Rating:
Summary: Nice, but inflexible.
Review: Granted, I'm used to using actual routers and I'm accustomed to IOS, but this thing is nice, and cheap. The cheap part is what attracted me, actually. I paid for it and it works flawlessly. I have to say, I'm impressed, it does all it claims to do. One problem turned out that you need a firmware update to run a Half-Life server, but that's it. I'm successfully running a Linux box with http, ftp and pop services. No problems, ever. Just drop another machine on this thing and *bam*--on the 'net. Easy.
Rating:
Summary: Fast easy setup!
Review: After reading many customer reviews, I decided to purchase the RT314. I had only had my DSL for a few days and wasn't too impressed with the speed. When I connected through the router, to my amazement my speed increased by 30 to 40%. There was no setup to contend with and it took longer to install a phone line than to install the router. In addition I have had no alerts on my software firewall,(Zone Alarm). Highly recommended!
Rating:
Summary: An absolute necessity for the new "networked home"
Review: If you have more than one PC at home and need to connect to the Internet, this is just about the easiest and cheapest way to go. Two years ago, you could not get a product like this at any reasonable price, but now it is practically an off the shelf consumer item. I love tinkering around and learning all of the internal stuff that turns most people off. But, the RT314 doesn't really require you to learn much to get it to work right out of the box. A pleasure indeed! It took me about 20 minutes to get the thing connected and working with my cable modem (Cablevision in New York). No problems at all. The lights blinked, I rebooted everything and up she came! Very fast throughput. Comparing connect speed with and without the RT314 inline shows a small difference, certainly smaller than I expected. When you have two or more PCs accessing the 'net, it is amazing how the slowdown you expect never really happens. Of course each PC is not getting the full bandwidth, but it sure seems that way. Buy it. You'll like it. Easy to set up, easy to upgrade and hardly needs maintenance, if ever. Best hardware purchase I've made all year! :-)
Rating:
Summary: Awesome!
Review: One of the easiest devices I have ever hooked up in my life. Just go through the simple instructions step by step and it is done. Hook your DSL/Cable modem to the device, add TCP/IP on all PCs, set them to Auto Detect the IP #, then go into the router setup via a web browser, click next a few times and boom....You are done. Total setup time...less than 5 minutes. Awesome product!
Rating:
Summary: Tips for @HOME cable modem users
Review: Since I am not familiar with networking, it took me about 4 hours to analyze and read the setup instructions repeatedly, and another 1 hour to test and complete alternative setup procedures. I got two 4-year old Windows 95 PCs that are now sharing one @HOME cable modem using the Netgear RT314 Gateway Router. There are two setup problem areas that I spent a lot of time to solve: 1) System, Host, or Account Name is actually the ISP-assigned Computer Name in the Identification of the Control Panel-Network (and NOT your User ID or E-mail Name) - router cannot obtain IP address with an invalid name. In addition, leave the Domain Name blank to allow the router to automatically determine it. 2) PC is unable to load any web pages even after router obtains an IP address - this was solved by manually entering the default gateway of 192.168.0.1 in the TCP/IP Gateway Properties for the Ethernet adapter.
Rating:
Summary: sad waste of time
Review: Would not connect to earthlink/Mindspring over Covad; the largest ISP ( non-AOL) As a newbie to Networking, I bought this at Circuit City because I wanted a simple consumer product that would not immerse me in tech. It promises to connect to DSL with just your name and Passsword. There is NO way to give it a DNS address. I struggled for three weeks. Learned a lot of stuff I never wanted to know, and then returned it while almost losing all my money. Saddest part was the tech support. It Looks really cool, but was not working during the time I needed it. I actually got an email after I had already returned the product apologizing for it being down,-- and what was my problem??
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