| Netgear MR814 802.11b Wireless 4-Port Cable/DSL Router |
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Model: MR814NA
Brand: Netgear
Manufacturer: Netgear
Average Rating: 
(submit your review here)
Total Reviews: 716
Form factor: External
Hardware platform: PC
Data link protocol: Ethernet, Fast Ethernet, IEEE 802.11b
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| Features: |
Connect to a cable/DSL modem and get wired or wireless Internet access for all your computers
Compatible with most 802.11b wireless networking devices
Firewall, 128-bit Encryption, Parental controls
Smart Wizard automatically detects ISP type, Port Range Forwarding, Exposed Host (DMZ), URL Content Filtering, E-mail Alerts, and Wireless MAC Address Authentication
Compatible with Windows 95, 98, Me, NT, 2000, XP, Mac OS, NetWare, UNIX, and Linux |
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| Description: |
| The Model MR814 Wireless Router provides continuous, high-speed 11 Mbps access between your wireless and Ethernet devices. Also, the Model MR814 router enables your entire network to share an Internet connection through a cable modem or DSL modem that otherwise is used by a single PC. With minimum setup, you can install and use the router within minutes.The Model MR814 router provides multiple Web content filtering options, plus e-mail browsing activity reporting and instant alerts. Parents and network administrators can establish restricted access policies based on time-of-day, website addresses and address keywords, and share high-speed cable/DSL Internet access for up to 253 personal computers. Network Address Translation (NAT) protects you from hackers. |
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| User Reviews (716 total): |
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Works ok, but Netgear never gave me my rebate, January 28, 2004
By tjh (corvallis, or United States)
The Equipment setup was fairly easy for this. The range was not as good as I had hoped. I have a compute a floor above with the wireless pci card and it barely reaches. The pci card had problems in that the encrypted key would change by itself and had to be manually entered at every bootup. Tech support was
unable to fix this, but I managed a workaround by using all numbers. My guess was that the uppercase/lowercase ascii changed somehow. My only real complaint is that I never got my rebate from netgear. I sent the original barcode with the form, waited the weeks it took to get the rebate and it never came. I wrote letters, sent copies that I had made, but was told that I needed
the 'original' barcode which was appearantly lost in the mail, so I was out of luck. Just be careful and stay on top of it
with this company. I also purchased the wireless card for my laptop and it works great.
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great, January 26, 2004
By A. Dunn
Great price (with the rebate) and terrific router. Works flawlessly for me and seems to have a great firewall. Highly recommended.
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good machine for the price, PDA quirks, January 25, 2004
By Sonny G (Livermore, California United States)
I bought this router to network my toshiba E750 to my PC and the internet. Set up took some time due to user errors and some firmware quirks on the router. First, I had my DSL modem connected to the wrong port on the router. It can only go into one port. Second, the router assigned IP address for my toshiba pda would come up wrong, and I would have to hit IP renew several times to get it right. The pda would not connect until this was right. Lastly, most web pages did not download properly to my pda until I upgraded the router firmware to 5.03. Now it is wrorking great. Range is limited to just outside my house, but that may be my pda. Overall, with these headaches over, and some hours spent working them out, I am very happy. Please note I am an engineer and have some networking background, so I did not give up, whereas most people might have. This rewiew was written on my pda using the wireless network.
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Good - but not good enough, January 23, 2004
By jamandman (Los Angeles, ca United States)
I bought this prodcut with the hopes of sitting in my dining room or living room and working from there...however, the range just did not allow for it. It was easy to set up, just like my hard wired router, but I could not believe how slow it was and how weak the signal seemed to be.I am going to try another brand, but unfortunately I believe all these wireless networking devices are going to have problems with my house, my 2.4ghz phone and my need for spped.
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never got the wireless to work, January 23, 2004
By unknown
above says it all, hours on the phone and on line. i think the radio part must be dead buthow do you tell or prove it? too late to return. i won't buy any more 'netgear' brand. as they say your milage may vary.
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Go for the Linksys, January 22, 2004
By unknown
I started setting up this product and while it is well documented with a good interface, there was a fault in the wireless access point. Ok, fair enough everyone makes mistakes, but this is only the start of my problems, I sent an e-mail to the tech support e-mail address which was plastered all over the netgear website, the product documentation, and even in the router admin webpage, then quickly got a response back to say that the email address had been shut down due to a huge amount of SPAM email. Ok fair enough...SPAM is a pain that we apparently will have to live with. But what really torqued me off was that the e-mail suggested I use their web based form to report a problem and provided a link. So I took the time to fill out this form, and promptly got another e-mail back saying that the e-mail address was shut down due to SPAM, they had programmed the webform to send the data to the same e-mail I had used earlier. So, I was forced to call the tech support number. After 20 minutes on hold I finally talked to a tech support guy who walked me through all the settings I had done...eventually found that the firmware was not the most current available, so they told me to update the firmware. I reluctantly hung up and performed the process to update the firmware. As I expected no fix. So, I spent another 20 mins on hold waiting to talk to a tech who again verified all the settings, which is what I had just done with the previous tech...what was the point of having a case number if I have to repeat the process over again anyway? Spend the extra few bucks get the Linksys.
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2dbi, not 5!, January 20, 2004
By unknown
The previous MR814 cranked out 5dbi, but v.2 quitely reduced that to 2dbi (much weaker, which means less range.) Also, the antenna is not removable, so you can do nothing about the limitation...
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Piece of junk!, January 20, 2004
By Superwoman (San Diego, CA United States)
It took forever to network my PC's with this first of all; then ultimately I had to disconnect it because it interfered with my Internet connection. No wonder there was such a HUGE rebate on this product. I really got what I paid for - a worthless piece of junk!
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Do not waste your time or money on this one, January 18, 2004
By A. Gupta (Mechanicsburg, PA United States)
This router has some problems. The DHCP implementation does not follow standards, as a result, some CompactFlash Wi-Fi adapter cards will not work with this router. The keyword blocking feature does not work in the firmware upgrades 4.13 and higher. After firmware upgrade, the router stops generating access logs, the empty logs are not e-mailed as per schedule and the router stops showing the attached devices. Technical support is extremely poor, with no solutions to the problem and long hold times. Aside from these problems, it is really a great product!!
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Don't count on the rebate!, January 16, 2004
By J. Rodriguez (Houston, Texas United States)
Very easy to setup and has worked flawlessly with my laptop running Win XP Pro, PDA running PocketPC2003 and my old PC running Win 2000. I can share documents and a printer but only after some playing, less than two hours, with the Connection Wizard. After an MS update I could not disable the WEP security as before; now my work VPN connection has slowed and I cannot figure out why. Video runs normal and am not sorry for saving money over the performance of the 802.11g format. The ONLY draw back has been a very slow rebate check, TWO months and counting, and no confirmation from Netgear.
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Cheap, Reliable, and Easy to Set Up, January 14, 2004
By Bryan Kamenetz (Los Angeles)
I have owned this product for six months now, and have had absolutely no trouble. I replaced a Linksys router for this wireless option, after a tragedy involving the Linksys router and a glass of water. The hardest part about setting this one up was crawling under the table to plug it in. After that, it worked like a charm. Took no time at all, required almost nothing from me. In the six months I've had it, I have never had trouble with either the wired or the wireless connections I maintain. I can't recommend it highly enough.
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Product may be OK, but Netgear support and ethics are not, January 13, 2004
By unknown
I was able to set up the router fairly quickly. Ran into couple of issues, which I tried to resolve through their support, but they didn't answer my email, so had to rely on other users on the net.
The router since works fairly well, even in a two-story home.
The only issue I have is when I come out of deep-sleep mode,
where the router won't respond, so I have to restart my computer.My problem with Netgear is that they would not pay the rebate on this product, they won't even take emails on this issue. During my investigation on Netgear's reputation on the Better Business Bureau web site I found this excerpt: "Based on BBB files, this company has an unsatisfactory record with the Bureau. Specifically, our records show a pattern of non-response to consumer complaints as well as a pattern of unresolved complaints brought to its attention by the Bureau. " Regardless of the quality of their products, Netgear comes across as a company that lacks simple ethics of business, so they shall never again get my business.
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Buy a Linksys, January 11, 2004
By unknown
I bought this item last weekend and returned it this weekend. It was easy enough to set up, but it ran very slow. I spent a lot of time doing research and getting help from the computer geeks at work, but could not come up with a solution to the slowness. I spent a little more on a Linksys WRT54G today, and am very happy. I still only use the .11b, but it is alot faster.
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Money down the toilet....., January 10, 2004
By xcrewd_2ice (Laredo, TX United States)
Bought 2 of these pieces of junk with one montht difference, one for me and one for for my sister's place. Both started to drop wireless connections after 2 months use with increasing frequence until wireless feature is down most of the time. Firmware updates are just placebos, won't improve anything!!Customer support are just dummies reading through scripts assuming you're utterly stupid and forgot to plug to the power or so. Rebates are a bad joke!!! 4 months and I got no money back on either!!! and I'm not going to expect them to honor the warranty, so they'll end up leveling some table.
SAVE YOURSELF SOME MONEY BY SPENDING A FEW EXTRA BUCKS ON SOME OTHER BRAND!!!!
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Great Router, January 9, 2004
By skepticalbeliever (Gainesville, FL)
As a computer/electrical engineer I was ready for whatever this router had for me. To my surprise, I was up and running in less than 2 minutes (clocked). I just did all the unplugging, the plugging, the re-starting, and POOF all set and done --not a single problem.
This is the BEST value I've seen in a while. For less that $30 (after mail-in rebates), this is a gift, so to speak.
The configuration interface is superb. The control the advanced user has over this router is tremendous. The security is rather strong and complete (even more so with the firmware update). I transferred a 150Mb test file from one computer in my network to another in less than 15 seconds! In case you don't know, those 100Mbps that they so much advertise are "theoretical" or "lab" transfer rates and are very seldomly achieved in real-world situations. So, for this under $30 router to achieve performace comparable to pro-grade equipment is outstanding. I definitelly recommend this unit to anyone novice or expert.
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Simple, Easy to use and Reliable, January 8, 2004
By Yona Appletree (McKenzie Bridge, Oregon United States)
When I bought this router I was slightly worried from some of the reviews saying it had problems maintaining a wireless connection. In the two months that I have had the router, I have had no dropped connections whatsoever (from a DELL Inspiron 8200 with WinXP Pro and a miniPCI internal 802.11b card).The router is easy and quick to setup. It took me about 5 minutes before everything was working. I currently use it to share a Dial-Up connection (ugh) with my laptop. I cannot say how well its WAN connection works as I do not use it for routing a high-speed connection. But for networking my PCs both via wires and via airwaves it works excellently. I recommend this router to anyone who wants to start a new wireless network, or someone switching from a cable based network. Due to its ease of use, I think that this product is a good choice for someone who has limited computer/network experience. But don't let its simple interface fool you: it has allot of power and settings just begging to be tweaked with ;) All in all, I think this is an excellent product for its price. I am sure there are better routers out there, but for home use, it's hard to beat this deal. Highly Recommended.
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Netgear MR814 - Simple Straight Forward = Nice, January 7, 2004
By foldboy (Hillsboro, OR, USA)
I purchased this based on reviews and the lure of a nice price... The install on this piece of hardware was a breeze and I was up and running in minutes. I would highly recommend this router.
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Works great!, January 4, 2004
By Richard S. Gawlik (Andover, MA USA)
A great product you can get up and running in just a few minutes! The instructions and CD are well written and the unit works very well throughout a two-story house. By the way, I noticed that you can get quite a bit of additional range by placing the unit on a foot-square piece of ordinary aluminum foil. (Forms a ground plane for the antenna, I guess.) This product deserves five stars for sure.
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A great little router, January 3, 2004
By gadget enthusiast (Cambridge, MA USA)
To supplement the reviews, let me describe two networks that I setup and have running with two of these great routers. At my parents', I have a router setup in the basement and get great signal on the floor above on a PowerMac running OS9 with a Belkin USB/802.11b adapter. At my apartment, the router serves an iBook (OS 10.3/Airport), PowerMac G4 (OS9/10.3/Belkin USB-802.11 adapter), Dell PIII (Windows Me, Intel USB adapter), and another Dell PIII (Windows XP, Siemens Speedstream adapter).Both of these networks are sharing Comcast cable modem service. The router has worked flawlessly at the apt. After 3-4 months of up-time, I sometimes have to reset the router at my parents' to reestablish Internet connection (have not had time to investigate this- could be Comcast or the router; only have done it twice). Setup/administration is extremely easy through the web interface. If you know what you're doing you can have it setup in less than 5 minutes. WEP and MAC access control lists for security are pretty much all you can ask for in these types of routers; the MR814 offers these and makes it extremely easy to setup. I highly recommend this router.
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Easy installation and great reception, January 2, 2004
By unknown
This product is easy to install. It only take me 15 mins to set up my wireless workstation and connect it to my LAN. The range is also superb.
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