I bought this brand new FR114W last year end of July. It has worked like a charm ever since until recently. First let me give you the pluses.
_Automatic recognizes PPOE settings for easy authentication and setup.
_Firewall a plus nothing gets past it until you enter a ip:port map to your internal network.
_Logs, another plus, it gives details of all attempts of access to your current WAN ip. DDOS, ipspoofing etc. as well, it emails the logs acording to your rules...
_syslog entries to any internal syslog capable software of all activities that the FR114W fires at the logs.
_It registers your dynamic ip address from the PPOE connection to DynDNS.org which is a big PLUS. Although they can have more options like noip.com
_DHCP capable Lan Setup.
_Remote internet management. This is not recommended unless you restrict it to a particular ip but beware of ip spoofing.
_Wireless ready. WEP ready up-to 128 bit encryption, Trusted PCs by MAC although MediaAccessControl can be spoofed as well, but then they would have to try to guess the key for the encryption as well as the channel and if you have unchecked "SSID brodcast" and "Bridging to wired LAN" you should be pretty safe. Although they can still guess your pwd for the admin site of the FR114W and then your doomed.
_Block access to any site you wish. This is specially good if you want control any access to a particular site from your kids. Drawback is that you have to enter every site you want to block fqdn (fully qualify domain name ex. www.thissite.com) or ip address. But you have the control.These are by far the most important features which are hard to find without a hefty price tag.
The negatives are
_With the 802.11b MA401 wireless card, access range is weak. At my house a radius of 30ft. is pushing its limit.
_The 4 ports at the back of my FR114W unit went bad after a year of non-stop usage. But Netgear has a 3 yr. warranty on this units so they are replacing it, but choose from three options.
1. send the unit and when we receive it we'll send you one back.
2. $15 +/- and we'll send you one then you send us the bad one back.
3. $25 +/- and we send you one overnight of course I have to send the bad one back.
Anyways, I did go with option 2 and I should be receiving the refurbished FR114W soon. Yeap, you read correctly "refurbished" which in the dictionary means "To make clean, bright, or fresh again; renovate." so I do not feel that bad.
Overall, I give this FR114W unit high ratings as I do not expect for everyone to go through the bad ports syndrome as I did. Also I hope that the refurbish unit does live up to my ratings of it.
Excellent product but beware of the bad ports syndrome., August 31, 2003
Excellent router, wireless signal slightly weak, January 18, 2003