By 

Matthew K. Morgan (Ruther Glen, VA USA) –

  

  

  

I recently purchased one of these routers as a replacement for my Linksys WRT54GL, a stalwart in the realm of home networking. My Linksys router is healthy and it works but it does not allow me to set up DHCP reservations without a 3rd party firmware update, and it does not support Wireless-N. After searching for a good balance between functionality, quality and price I settled on this router by NetGear. So far I am very pleased with this unit, though I had some minor issues when setting it up.

Setup of NetGear routers (including this one) is simple and easy. There are two methods of setting it up, using the Wizard CD or going in manually. For users not too familiar with setting up wireless networks or routers, using the CD to get started is a good option. More seasoned users may prefer to work without the CD and work directly with the router. I chose the latter of the two. Even so, tapping in and finding any given setting is relatively easy, everything broken down into several pages. Because the router configuration is accessed through a browser, manipulating the router configuration is very much like accessing a web page and should feel familiar.

The factory-default username, password, and access address are printed right on the router itself so there is no risk of losing this information at any point.

I connected 3 laptops, one at a time, to the wireless network and encountered my only difficulty with moving to this router. Because I retained the network name and key I expected the swap to be seamless and mostly invisible, but my systems each complained when tried to connect, stating that the network configuration had changed even though I retained the settings, the type, key and everything else. To get each system working I had to delete the connection completely, then I allowed each to redetect wireless networks available. Two of them came up without any further incident, but one of the laptops required a reboot before it would properly connect.

Signal strength is important when it comes to wireless networks. My Linksys router gives me very strong signal strength, and I was fearful that this new NetGear router would lack the same power to broadcast. Happily, it broadcasts brightly enough that I have had no problems with connectivity due to losing signals. It is *at least* on par but seems to be stronger. My router lives on the second story of the house, while my personal laptop is in the basement.

As soon as the router was configured and provided a connection to the internet, I logged in ang got a surprise – it is configured by factory default to look for firmware updates every time I log in. This is fine as logging into the router becomes an infrequent activity after a while, though up front it can be annoying to have to wait for it to download and then update itself.

I have had no connectivity issues or drops since setting this router up.

The DHCP reservation and MAC filtering work well, which are the two advanced features about which I care most.

Something I have not seen in any other router up to this point is a USB port. According to the documentation, the router can be set up to provide persistent storage through the network by simply connecting a USB hard drive (or even a thumb drive) to it. I have not tried this but I absolutely plan to put this to work, which will make sharing files between the different computers simple without having to make several copies. It should be noted, though, that this could be a risky practice if using to access the same file frequently from multiple points.

Looking through the options that can be set up, I found a keyword-based page filter, QoS settings and a lot of other features I have not previously seen. For a mid-range wireless router this one has a generous set of features. Of course, the standard features are there – firewall, MAC filtering as mentioned above, different encryption key types and a lot more too.

This is a very nice router with a nice feature set. It is very easy to set up, easy to configure once it’s running, and so far has proven to be stable. If you need more than a basic wireless router, consider this one as a good candidate.

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UPDATE 12-01-2011: It has been over a year and a half and I still have not had any trouble with this router. I have seen some of the negative reviews and detailed reports of issues but I have not encountered any problems up to this point. It has been stable and reliable for me. I have noticed that the surface gets a little warm; I suspect if I kept it in an enclosed area that it could potentially be less cooperative but there’s no reason for me to move it as such.

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