After normal windows installation, I tried to turn the 128-bit encryption by using the passphrase option. But on my laptop I couldn't do the same passphrase on it. I get "Frame dropped error" with a yellow colored big "W" symbol over the icon on the system tray. The workaround for that it is to generate the encryption in hex on the router and type the hex values manually on the laptop.

On the linux side, although I was absolutely hopeless to make it work, surprisingly there are great forums to make it work. www.....org is the best. There are different success stories to make this work.

Overall, I am happy about the product. The tech support is also good. The link/signal quality is averaging 80 percent across the house. In the living room it is only in 70% as it is exactly in the opposite side of where the router is located. In kitchen and other places, it is at its upper 90s.

Needless to say, microwaves, cordless phones have greater impact on the wireless connection.

So get this and you wont regret.

Mahesh

The only problem I had was getting my DSL provider to assign it an IP address, because the Linksys has no way of releasing it, only renewing. But the Netgear is great - it allows you to release the IP address and it even let me mimick the MAC address from the Linksys router temporarily, enough to convince my ISP's DHCP server to release the IP address and bind it to the new box's MAC address. Also the signal seems much better than the Linksys's.

I also plugged my old non-wifi SMC Barricade back in and had none of these problems, so I know it isn't me.

I tried to email customer service and got no reply. I called customer service and got a fellow who didn't know what ssh is, and whose only solution was to reload the driver from the (very slow) website.

So I'm returning this device and getting something else. Probably a wifi SMC Barricade.

* I have SBC Yahoo DSL on my XP desktop. I had to go into the SBC Connection Manager and turn on the Auto Connect. After that, the router instaled great. My wireless card (Netgear MA401) is installed on Win2000. Everything is working very quickly.

* I had to adjust the router location to get the maximum connection between dsktop and laptop. But it is pretty easy. Just put the router in between the desktop and the laptop. Monitors, microwaves, cordless phones, and any other wireless devices cause interference. So be careful.

* The CD helps out a lot and the directions for the wireless card are very simple. I really reccommend this. CNET rates this router very high.

* My questions are how to print share since it's not a print server, but there are help files I have not explored yet.

* Security Encryption is optional and I coudn't get it right to begin with. I had the laptop set for 64 bit with the passkeys, but it has to be exactly the same on the desktop or you will not have access. The default is Disabled so you can surf, but make sure you read the instructions online on Encryption because they are not in the manual.

Installation and setup was a breeze. It auto detected my PPPoE service and I was up on internet in less than 10 minutes from a wired and a wireless connection with encryption(for my wireless LAN). I have not noticed any significant signal strength issues or speed issues with encryption on. So far this is running great and I never had to reboot or lost my connection in almost 3 weeks.

Why? First off, it drops TCP/IP connections that are inactive for more than a few minutes. This is really annoying, since it drops telnet connections quite rapidly .. this behavior is for both the wired and wireless ports.

Second, it needs to be powered off and on at least once a day, as it will start slowing down, not retrieving tcpip connections, and a quick power off/on cycle seems to fix the matter.

So in the end, while it's easy to setup and has good range, I cannot recommend this router because of the above problems.

I was reluctant to go wireless because my home network-to-be would include both an iMac and a PC. I purchased the MR814 router and the MA101 Wireless USB adapter. Within 30 minutes of opening the boxes, the wireless network was active and operating flawlessly. The MR814 router was installed between the iMac and my DSL modem -- the necessary cable was supplied with the router. The router setup required no software installation -- router settings were established using my browser and accessing the Netgear internet site. The instruction manual was very well written and the installation went "by the book". The MA101 wireless USB adapter required a software installation on the PC prior to plugging in the hardware to the USB port. The installation was brief and the software almost self-configured. The MA101 transceiver began communicating with the router immediately with "good" to "very good" signal strength (the PC is located about 150 feet from the router in a single story house). I was extremely impressed with the quality and ease of installation for this product. I highly recommend it!

a) My loft is 100 feet long and at first the router was installed at one end. The other end: 15-25% reception (not acceptable.) I don't know how somebody claimed 1000 feet! Maybe they meant INCHES. But after finalising installation in the center of our loft it works 80-100% everywhere. Even on the neighbor's floor below as well as on my toilet...a totally new and exciting experience for me :-)

b) So I bought the netgear PCcard as well, from an advice that you should have same brand. It was plug in and installed in a few seconds. However, a laptop kept losing connection, very annoying and made it not dependable. The friendly support staff took a while to figure it out (about an hour). Hopefully this is not an reoccuring problem.

c) The wait for support was short, only 3 minutes.

d) This is minor, but I thought I'd mention it. The cat5 cable came with these sleeves that wouldn't allow it to plug into the back of the main computer. One of these "designer" things, totally useless. So I got a longer one anyway and threw the other one out.

I would give it 4-1/2 stars, not 5, due to that the laptop kept losing connection. But I think that problem may be solved now. Generally a nice product, its maybe a bit on the large side.

So finally I own something that looks like a spaceship.

Greetings.

1. Does not support 802.1x authentication. Make sure this is disabled.
2. Does not support multiple VPN sessions from same client whether wired or wireless. I need to VPN to 2 separate networks simultaneously from the same machine. When I connect to the second network, the router is unable to see the first network.

This is a easy to use, effective router as long as you're not doing anything too fancy. For me, it's routing capabilities are not as good as my Linux router on a floppy.

However, after a few minutes, the wireless connection dropped. I reconnected and kept having the same problem. This happened even with my laptop a foot away from the router.

Tech support was not very helpful. They suggested a static IP and reinstalling the firmware, even though I had the most current version. None of this worked.

I finally tried disabling 802.1x authentication and now it stays up. This is a built-in feature only on Windows XP. Win2k has 802.1x support through a patch.

It would have been nice if tech support would have recognized this when I told them I was running XP. Looks like the only security for this router is WEP and access restriction by MAC address.

It works great now. But I was pretty close to sending it back.