Netgear WGR614 802.11g Wireless Router

 Did not like this product, will use Linksys next time
I bought a Netgear rp614 awhile back to upgrade from my old Siemans router. I was very impressed with the ease of the routers administration and all, and would rate that router a 4.5/5.0 or 5.0/5.0 it's a damn good router all around, network transfers, stability and gaming.

However, this wireless router I bought to conjoin with my old network and server as a WAP was horrible. It was very unstable and had several bugs working as a WAP which it is capable of doing, but very poorly. I highly recommend to buy a Linksys over the Netgear here, even though Linksys routers are a bit inferior wired for gaming, their wireless ones far exceed Netgear.

 Dirt cheap... for a reason
As has been widely reported throughout the web, modern revisions of the WGR614 are often prone to processor overheating issues, resulting in partial to complete loss of internet traffic. I discovered that--rather than arranging the router vertically (using the two supplied feet)--arranging it horizontally and elevating the underside to ventillate helps with these issues.

For $25 to $30, the WGR614 can be considered a "tech hobbyists bargain"; modfying the outer case with a CPU fan might be necessary for carefree use in warmer or non air-conditioned climates.

Functionality-wise, the router offers not only terrific consumer oriented carefree setup (networking functions right out of the box) but also pleasant advanced features such as automated Dynamic DNS login & updating for cable modem subscribers.

While I would like to give this unit 4 stars, the inherent overheating design flaw hurts its rating.

 Disappears from network, UPnP doesn't work right
I have the v5 of this router. I put the latest firmware on it. None of this made any difference to all the tests I discuss below.

I am a very experienced software engineer. I just want you to know who was doing these tests.

Since my initial testing about 2 weeks ago, I must correct my
initial assessment that the router's throughput is bad. Actually, it's very very good. I was having problems with a wireless notebook card. However, the rest of my negative
opinion stands, and I'd still say "get another router".

If all you want to do is surf the web and read email, this router will work. If you want to do ANYTHING ELSE, run, do not walk, to the store, and get yourself a different router.

I'm in a lab, with perfect Ethernet connections on both the WAN and LAN sides of this router (no ISP involved), and my wirelessly connected computer is sitting feet from the thing, so there's no "bad signal" issues.

Here's what's wrong with this thing:

1. Discovery is awful. Using it in wireless mode: now you see it, now you don't. Discovery by the Windows wireless manager fails a lot.

2. UPnP doesn't. It times out, locks up, and loses UPnP entries at the drop of a hat. So you can forget chat, messenger, videoconferencing, and any other tools that use the handy UPnP setup to open the port forwarding entries.

3. Every setting you change in the web interface requires the router to restart and it takes FOREVER (like 30 seconds).

4. Out of the box, the wireless doesn't work, BY DESIGN. You have to use some obnoxious "configuration" program they include on a CD, or, connect with the WIRED side, and go to the main config web page.

5. Change the wireless SSID from the default "NETGEAR" and it's goodbye wireless LAN. You won't be able to connect to it every again, until you connect using the wired side, change the name BACK to "NETGEAR", reboot, and then change it again to what you want. Then it finally works.

6. When you change "some" configuration settings, it will spontaneously lose other ones. When you change settings, "sometimes" after it saves them and reboots, you won't be able to find the router again until you power it off and on.

You might think it's just a defective unit. But don't bet on it. Like I said, if you just set it up and use the web and email, it never hiccups --- very unlikely if it had a hardware problem. But if you do anything else to it, it's a total piece of junk.

My experience a week ago with support for their older MR814 router led me to NetGear's useless tech support call center in India (no, this isn't racist, it's really in India). And what do you get?
1) You have to go through an arduous web page "registration" process before the call center will even help you.
2) The web page registration would not work, insisting that the "purchase date" I entered was invalid, even though it's not.
3) The call center person told me they would register my router for me, and that I would have to call back in 20 minutes after the registration had time to get into their database.

In short, their tech support is such agony, that I am not going to call them on THIS router. It's going in the dumpster.

I am in the process of reviewing routers for a videoconferencing software product my company sells. Specifically, I'm looking for ones that support UPnP well, because I want to set up the ports on the router to let video get in without making the user setup the router themself.

As a result, I have a big pile of different routers here, and I can tell you that this one is the worst, bar none.
Stay away from the D-Link DI-624 too, while you're at it.

The Linksys models I've tried work the best, by far.

 DO NOT BUY - absolute garbage
This is the worst router I have ever seen. It overheats so much that you could fry an egg on it. It drops the connection to the ISP about every 5 minutes, and NOTHING will fix it. It is a complete waste of money and time. DO NOT BUY IT, not under ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, for ANY PRICE. I wouldn't take another one, not even if Netgear paid me. This is the last time I will ever buy a Netgear product.

 Do not buy this product!
I wanted to upgrade from my Linkysys wireless B network to wireless G. Netgrear was rated highly by PC World, and the price was right so I purchased the WGR614 router and a Netgear wireless G ethernet bridge. I could not get the bridge to communicate with the router nor could I get it to communicate with the Microsoft wireless G card in my 2nd PC. Called Netgear tech support and the individual could not resolve the problem, so I was told that 2nd level tech support would call me in 24 hours! Guess what? No callback. After fiddling with this junk for two days, I decided to request a return and buy Linksys wireless G equipment. Their tech support is offshore also, but at least they will help you and not make you wait for them to call back after days!

 Do not buy this router.
I bought a Netgear WGR614 (version 6) router to front-end a pair
of networks connecting to Comcast cable. The network was
already up and running, I simply wanted to swap out an Airport
Extreme that was working fine in that location.

The Netgear WGR614 was easy to configure.

The problem is the Netgear WGR614 can't handle any reasonable
DNS load. If I connected my laptop directly to the Comcast
network, I could get DNS answers from Comcast's servers as fast
as I could send them. If I put the Netgear WGR614 between my
laptop and Comcast, 1 or 2 out of each 10-15 DNS requests would
time out. If I connected the mail servers to the Netgear
WGR614, 5 out of 10 DNS requests would time out, and I would
often see strings of 10-20 DNS requests time out in a row. This
was severely damaging to the network: browser URL lookups would
fail, host lookups for spam filtering would fail, and so on.

Netgear support was easy to get in touch with, and initially
responsive. However, once we got through the basics (is the
power on?) all they could suggest was manually configuring all
of the computers behind the router to use static routes to the
name servers (which I wasn't willing to do, and, in a simple
test failed to fix the problem), or upgrade the firmware to a
beta release, version 1.0.7. I did upgrade the firmware, but
it had no effect at all on the problem.

Netgear support told me twice they would escalate my support
case to "level 2", but after each escalation, I never heard
from them again.

Remember the Airport Extreme had no problem working in this
location? After Netgear support failed to fix the problem, I
bought a Linksys WRT54G, it handles the DSN request load just
fine!

 Does not last
I bought this in March 2004. It worked great for the first couple of months. Then started to require a reboot once in a while and eventually stopped working. I called the warranty hotline, after more than an hour of trouble shooting he agreed that the product is bad and needs to be replaced. However, I was expected to pay for the shipping which was an additional $14.99. The new piece which I got worked for only a couple of weeks before going bad. I do not want to spend another $14.99 for shipping or something being sold at $30. Very bad, I would recommend buying something more reliable.

 Doesn't Handle Multi-Computer Networks Well
I purchased this router about 8 months ago. It was easy to set up and get my one computer online.

My problems with this router began as I added more computers to the network. I now have 4 computers on, 3 wireless and 1 ethernet. When users on the network are sharing files, the router crashes and has to be reset.

This is getting really irritating and I am looking for an enterprise router to avoid having this problem again.

 Doesn't work with VPN, poor tech support
Bought it, set it up (not too hard, not too easy), worked great with Internet ... but Outlook did not work across my company's Nortel VPN. Contacted tech support; they only do email back and forth. I quickly tried suggestions and responded. It's been 2-days and no response yet.

 doesn't work!!!!
After reading most of the good reviews for this product, I couldn't wait to receive it once I placed my order...Once received I followed all the installation instruction but this router could not find my ip address, submask, gateway default etc...as it was advertised it could...I've been using an older linksys router and wanted to get something new, but I think I will stick with it or at least with linksys...