NETGEAR N300 Wi-Fi Gigabit Router (WNR3500L)..
GET NETGEAR N300 Wi-Fi Gigabit Router (WNR3500L) By Netgear
Most helpful customer reviews
237 of 246 people found the following review helpful.
By Matthew K. Morgan
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.
69 of 74 people found the following review helpful.
By Thomas Johnson
It's great to have a router out there that recognizes that customers just want the freaking thing to work, and don't care who wrote or maintains the firmware. With that in mind, I bought this router to replace another Wireless-N router that was simply a nightmare, with glitchy firmware from two years ago, and will now find a new home or function via Craigslist or something.
I was up and running using the stock firmware in about 5 minutes, accessing the router configuration page and setting up a secure wireless network. I didn't try any of the quick-install software - usually like to just set the thing up myself without putting any software on my machine, and for this it worked perfectly.
More importantly, this router is open-source-firmware ready, so if for any reason the stock firmware fails me, I'll have an option out there to try, as opposed to the endless struggles of my prior router.
My setup includes a wired WHS, a Snow Leopard wireless-N macbook, a wireless PC using a 'G' card (Win7), another wireless laptop also using G, a Wii, an XBox using a wired connection, and another wired media-center PC, running Win7, and an iPhone 2G. Powers everything without flaw.
72 of 78 people found the following review helpful.
By J. Eriksen
We purchased the Netgear N300 router to replace our aging (but highly reliable) Linksys for home; we have a number of streaming video devices that needed the extra computing juice of the Netgear. The product was easy to set up, and handled traffic seemingly without a hitch for two months. We began to notice, with increasing frequency, loss of connectivity at both the wired and wireless level. This problem was isolated to the router itself; swapping in our old, trusty router would always immediately fix this problem.
Since we were having such tremendous problems with the router, I called Netgear support, located in a call center in India, about two and a half months after purchasing the router with the intent of securing an RMA. However, after more than an hour on the phone, the technician told me I would need to bring in yet another computer to test the networking issue; he seemed convinced (against all reason) that this was due to a networking issue with the computer plugged into the ethernet port. Despite my protests that this was a hardware issue, he proceded to ignore my request for an RMA and demanded that a second computer would be needed to test this issue before he would issue an RMA. Whil I did not feel that his request was reasonable (since all of the evidence pointed to a hardware issue with the router), I told him I would call back with the case number when I secured a second computer. I called back three weeks later with a second computer in hand. I spoke to a second technician, who indicated to me -- against all of the evidence to the contrary -- that there was nothing wrong with my router because all of the lights on the front of the unit were on. "So," he concluded, "it can simply could not be that your router is misfunctioning, sir, this is an impossibility." The technician went on to tell me that "we are very sorry, but we cannot issue an RMA because the unit is clearly not defective. This is a IP issue, sir." The technician then went on to state that the IP address issue would be simple to fix, but unfortunately my technical support for the router was 90 days and had expired, so that Netgear would only be able to fix this issue if I purchased a "technical support contract, sir, that will allow us to provide technial support for not only your router,but any electronics you own, even your blackberry, sir." The price of the support contract was $69.99 for 6 months, or $109.99 for 1 year.
I expressed my outrage, indicating there was no hope that I was going to pay for such a contract when a new router cost $79.99. I told them that I believed that this was a hardware issue, and requested an RMA. The technician completely refused to honor my request, said he would transfer me to his technical agents for futher evaluabiton, and then the line was cut off.
I have to say that I have purchased other products, such as a ReadyNAS, from this company; after this experience, Netgear has lost my business forever. I'd go so far as to say my experience with Netgear was one of the worst I've ever had with a vendor, and it felt like they were trying to run a scam. I'd urge those of you who are considering the purchase of this product, or other Netgear products, to take the technical support into your purchasing decision.
Lest you think this is simply sour grapes, if you look through the reviews, you can see that I am not alone in my experience with Netgear customer service. Do you really want to deal with a company that treats its customers like garbage?
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