| 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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Drops connections, customer service inadequate, October 31, 2004
By tk (New York, NY USA)
I've had this router for a few months, and am going to buy a different brand to replace this as soon as possible. Here are the issues I've been having:
Drops the connection frequently, every couple of minutes.
Customer service tried to help me out. After ninety days, they insist that you have to pay $1.99/minute for help. Considering that I've spent a few hours with customer service and it still doesn't work, this is unacceptable. Looks to me like they want to make some money on their customer service for a faulty product.
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Extremely solid product, October 25, 2004
By B. Williams
I had this Netgear Wireless-B router for a while and I can say it is quite a solid product. It does its job quite well without being annoying or obtrusive. The web based configuration utility is very handy and feature complete. If you do get one of these, be sure to periodically check for firmware updates from Netgear. Also be aware of Wireless-G technology which is newer and faster.
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Mas simple........IMPOSIBLE!!!!, October 23, 2004
By fito33 (Miami, FL United States)
Quiero escribir mi experiencia personal sobre este router.
Tan pronto lo saqu de la caja, lo que me sorprendio fu su tamano....apenas un poco mas grande que la palma de mi mano, lo que lo hace muy conveniente.
Inmediatamente lo conect al cable modem de mi servicio de internet y dos de los 4 puertos alambricos a mis 2 PC's.
No solamente obtuve Internet en las 2 PC's alambricas sino que mi laptop VAIO serie TR wireles LAN reconocio inmediatamente la senal inalambrica del router, sin necesidad de configuraciones, ni accesorios o adaptadores.
La senal es lo suficientemente fuerte como para trabajar inalambrico alrededor de toda mi casa.
Yo no soy ningn experto en computacion ni nada por el estilo, solo un consumidor comn y corriente y realmente me sorprendio que en tan solo 4 o 5 minutos mis 3 PC's estuvieran navegando.
Al principio tuve dudas si elegir un router 802.11b o 802.11g. Si tu intencion es trabajar interconectado inalambrico con varias PC's en tu lugar de tabajo u oficina utiliza el 802.11g pues tus PC's se interconectaran a una velocidad de 54Mbps de lo contario utiliza el 802.11b que te ineterconecta con tu cable modem a una velocidad de 11Mbps, que es la velocidad maxima de coneccion de tu cable modem hacia tu PC y asi te ahorras algunos dolares.
He leido algunos malos comentarios sobre su durabilidad, la verdad no lo he tenido el suficiente tiempo como para opinar al respecto, pero tambin toma en cuenta que actualmente tiene un costo de menos de $20.00 con la rebaja por correo, en realidad me salio costando $17 y centavos despus de completar el cupon y enviarlo y recibir por correo mi cheque.
Creo que por este precio lo covierte en un router desechable y si se te arruina mejor reemplazalo por otro igual.
He leido los mismos comentarios de mala durabilidad en otros routers mucho mas caros pues recordemos que todos son hechos en CHINA!!.
En mi caso en particular estoy muy contento de este router y como escribi en mi titulo....Mas simple.....IMPOSIBLE!!.
Espero sea de ayuda. (En Espanol es mejor!!)
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Great!, October 21, 2004
By Sam (Florida, MO USA)
The router works greats. The signal is strong, and has enough distance to go upstairs, although it is limited (but it's cheap enough that if you had to, you could get a booster and still come out okay). The setup is easy- it automatically detects the modem, and it sets up easily for wireless, where there is no loss in speed. Definitely good. Buy it.
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Product has been horrible, October 18, 2004
By disappointed (Minneapolis)
I successfully connected the product & it functioned for a while. After about 4 months (free service lasts for 3 months) the product began dropping the connection between the PC and the internet modem. I was told by Netgear to just reset the machine when this happens. Doing that worked for about ten minutes and the connection would drop again and the cycle would start all over again. I would spend the whole day resetting the router and not get any work done. Then they informed me of a customer service number to call & generate a return allowance - unfortunately the number automatically disconnects every time you call it - the one time a person actually answered I was told they had computer problems and could not help me - but would call me back. Of course, they did not call me back.
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Excellent product, October 17, 2004
By S. Gauthier
I purchased the unit some months ago, so it is much less in cost now but let me tell you. It a great deal and delivers speeds as if your computer was connected directly to the router. A great buy if your thinking of going wireless.
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Don't Update To The Latest Firmware, October 13, 2004
By Kaput Man (Bogota, COLOMBIA)
This product is real good, unless you upgrade to the latest Firmware (currently, version 5.3). The latest firmware is designed to change the DNS settings, making this router the only DNS server (proxy server). The idea is that the router acts as the DNS server, so when you type in an address the router queries the real DNS server and the router returns the DNS information. The result: slow connections, and a lot of errors (among them, not being able to check Hotmail). It will work fine if you manually input the real DNS servers (this means not using the easy to use built in DHCP server). My advice is DO NOT upgrade the firmware and if you have upgraded it, download the previous firmware (version 5.03) and perform a downgrade. With this previous firmware I haven't had any problem and I'm enjoying a real fast and reliable Internet connection.
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Poor Reliability, October 12, 2004
By Big Dummy (Florida)
Con: (1) Two MR814v2 units failed in the first 8 hours. Outsouced/foreign support available but not much help. (2) Really slow performance for some websites (hotmail for one.)
Switched to another router mfg and no problems.
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Works great now after shakey start, October 12, 2004
By kireviewer (Sunnyvale, Ca United States)
I cannot change the star rating, but I would drop this to one star, if I could.
It broke on me again. This time, it would not allow connection to the internet at all (previously, only the wireless part broke).
I have had this for almost 2 years. It went out on me once in the first year. It has been working great and trouble free for over a year now. Range is fairly good, but it doesn't penetrate more than 4 interior walls. It has also made my DSL more stable. You might want to see if you can get a g instead of a b for a similar price.
Initial installation took about 2 hours. Part of the reason is because my operating system was Windows ME and part was because I was just learning. It was the typical Windows issue. Although I wasn't instructed to, when I rebooted the computer everything started to work. When I got a new computer with Windows XP, it hooked up immediately.
After about 6 months, the wireless radio went dead. The router part still worked and I could use the cable connection. I had to spend about 3 hours on the phone with the technician to prove it was bad. I sent it in (at my expense) and got a new unit (free) in about 2 weeks. I haven't had any problems since. Note that I also bought a Buffalo wireless router that went bad in about a month. After reading reviews on all brands of routers, I don't think any one is very reliable. They probably all get their chips and parts from the same suppliers.
The wireless router almost covers my whole house. I have it in a corner bedroom upstairs. It covers all of downstairs, which is fairly open. It doesn't reach into the corner of a remote upstairs bedroom, that was an addition on to the house. The signal must penetrate 4 interior walls, one of which used to be an exterior wall.
The unit comes with a 2dBi antenna. I tried using 6 and 15 dBi antennas, and neither showed a significant improvement. I replaced this Netgear router with a Buffalo router and repeater set to reach the far bedroom. That set up worked great, when it worked, which wasn't very often. The Buffalo router finally crashed for good, and I had to send it back in for repair. I rehooked up this Netgear system while I am waiting for the Buffalo to come back.
My DSL is not reliable because I am at the maximum distance from the main station allowed. Half the time when I have problems, the DSL company tells me that I shouldn't have DSL. When I connected the DSL modem to the Netgear router, instead of directly to my computer, the DSL seemed to be more reliable.
This is 802.11b, which is 11Mbps. The 802.11g is 54Mbps. Is it worth the extra money to get a g instead of b? Probably not. I certainly haven't noticed a difference (this Netgear is a b and the Buffalo is a g). DSL doesn't come close to this speed, and most cable modems are half the speed of b at the best. So, unless you are sending data like video between two computers, g doesn't really give any advantages.
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It is a gamble., October 10, 2004
By Joe Coates (Seattle)
I bought the MR814v2 several days ago and have had only frustration after the first day. At first I thought it was the result of updating to the latest firmware so a downgraded to the old revision. But the problems persisted. Then I started reading the reviews.
The MR814 was intended to replace a Siemens SpeedStream 2604 that has worked flawlessly for me for 3 years. The 2604 was another device that fared poorly in user reviews. My point? NetGear's (and Siemens) quality control appears to be poor. Some people will get the winners and some the lemons. The unfortunate thing about all these review sites is that they have no legitimate way to give % results. What % of the MR814s are junk from the start? If I knew the answer to that I would know whether to return my unit or exchange it for another.
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Cheap and easy on the eyes -- but totally unreliable, September 30, 2004
By Justin Mason (CA USA)
I've been using one of these for the past year or so, and really need to warn people away from them.
It's nice and cheap, and it looks great and has a great user interface through its web UI -- but it has a serious bug. Heavy internet use will cause it to crash -- it won't even respond to pings from the LAN. To fix this requires a manual power cycle.
This really bit me badly last weekend, when I was on the road and needed to log into my home machine via ssh -- the MR814 had crashed and the internet connection was down as a result.
It's a real shame, as in most other respects, it's a perfectly good product. But the reliability problems are just too serious.
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Amazingly simple install, September 27, 2004
By PJ (WI, USA)
Set up was amazingly simple for wired service (I did not need the wireless set up but it appeared simple also). In less than 15-20 min I had all 3 of my computers running on the internet. I have minimal computer knowledge. The price was perfect for my needs and since I do not plan to use the wireless -the type of wireless did not matter for me. I would recommend this product. (I have a windows xp, windows 98 and windows 2000 OS on the various computers.)
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Undoubtedly the worst hardware purchase I have ever made., September 27, 2004
By M. Harris (Chicago, Illinois)
I cannot speak more vilely of the Netgear MR-814. I purchased this piece of hardware from CompUSA. Despite struggling with various options and settings, I still found that my (cable modem) bandwidth was choked back to levels approaching that of an old-school dial-up modem, images would sometimes not load, and if I attempted to do multiple things at once (such as load many webpages at one time), only a few of the webpages would actually connect, the rest acting as if there was no connection to the Internet. Fortunately, I was still within my warranty replacement period, and I exchanged it for a Linksys BEFW11S4, which so far has performed very admirably right out of the box. Interestingly enough, I am not the only one to have problems: there was another Netgear product on the shelf behind the refund/return clerk, and I heard from a friend who works at a Staples store in northeastern Indiana that Netgear products have quite a bad reputation amongst their customers there, too. Stay away from this product with a ten-foot pole, as it's not worth its purchase price let alone the hours of frustration you'll sink into attempting to get its configuration to work.
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Great router, even Greater Price !, September 22, 2004
By John J. Hatzirallis (bristol, ct USA)
I have two of these, and for the money, you can't go wrong... I believe one user mentioned he had problems connecting using his apple powerbook.. Well, let me tell you I have mine at home hooked up to my PC, and have an apple g4 powerbook with an airport extreme card- no problems, in the other room, downstairs, or on the porch.. try it .. you'll see !
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THE WORST WIRELESS ROUTER. TRY OTHER BRANDS, September 18, 2004
By D.M
I've just bought MR814V2 for a week. it was really good in the first 2 day. After that, it make the internet connection much slower. I tried to test by using command ping www.google.com . With MR814 , both wired and wireless, the packet lost 30%. When I tested my internet connection without MR814, it worked perfectly with 0% packet loss. Moreover, upgrading the newest fimrware doesn't help.
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Decent Product; Non-existent Customer Service, September 14, 2004
By IT SuperFreak (San Diego, USA)
This product worked well for about 1 year, then it crapped out. Tried calling customer service on several occasions with no luck; the service line hangs up on me each time. Stay away from this company unless you want to take your chances.
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Excellent Wireless Router, works with Apple too..., September 13, 2004
By Grouchy Grunt (Seattle, WA.)
I had this router for about 2 months, it works like a charm with Verizon DSL, it is fast, reliable, and even looks good. I had to reboot it once so far. Setup was ridiculously easy, basically just plug and play. Securing the network takes a little bit more effort, but it is very far from daunting. I was a bit worried when I ordered it, seeing all the negative reviews. It seems to me that most negative reviews on this item stem from inexperience and not reading the manual (I am a network admin so I did not read it either, but then again, I am not crying foul after I am disconnected when I enable WEP... Please!)
This router works fine with a 3rd party 802.11b adapter in my PC, and also works OK with an Apple iBook G4. The only snag is that Apple's Airport Extreme card has the worst reception of any wireless adapter ever made!!! One can only get good reception within about 20 feet of the base station (if there are no walls or other obstacles), and this holds true with Apple's own base station as well. This is in no way Netgear's fault. If you want to use wireless in a productive manner, forget Apple.
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Excellent Router & Great Value For Money, September 13, 2004
By Geek (Los Angeles, CA, USA)
Let me first start by saying that I have bought four of these for myself and family/ friends. This is an exceptional router and at this price you can't find a better choice. I see a lot of disgruntled people here who can't connect to the router wirelessly after changing settings. I would like to give a couple of tips.
First of all, make sure you configure the router when you are hard wired. You have to ensure that you are connected to the router via a LAN cable whenever you are making any changes to the router's configuration. This way when the router restarts etc. you will still be connected to it. If you are carrying out any changes to the router through your wireless card, for example if you have changed the WEP encryption code in the router, then once you submit those changes, the router will not let your wireless card connect until your laptop's card is configured for the same WEP key. So once again, please ensure you carry out changes to the router only when hard wired. The moment you get your router, I suggest you carry out a firmware upgrade (go to netgear's support site and download the latest firmware for your model from there). Once again follow instructions and make sure you are connected through a cable to carry out the same.
Now log onto the router and then do a couple of things. First of all, rename the SSID to anything you want (eg. Joan's Arc). Then go to the wireless settings, then to wireless access, and click on 'Disable SSID broadcast'. This ensures that the SSID is not broadcast to others around you who have a wireless machine. So when their software searches for a wireless access point all they will see is a blank name. To be able to connect to your network they would have to know the name of your SSID (Joan's Arc in this case) and manually type it in their machines (Highly unlikely that they will be able to think of the same name as you do. You can make your name even harder to obtain by simply using numeric characters in it.. for example Joan's Arc2004). Secondly, to make it secure use a 128 bit WEP key (this has to be a 26 digit key consisting of alphanumeric and numeric characters. You can use only certain alphabets in small and large case so you need to check that out. Also remember that you have to feed the same WEP key number in your laptop wireless card software (or the windows wireless settings if you are not using your wireless card's software). Finally you can ensure that only the wireless devices you specify can logon to your router. Go to the Wireless settings, then to wireless access setup and then click on 'enable wireless access'... Thereafter click on 'Setup access list'. Once there add your wireless device by using its mac address (the mac address is a unique number given to a wireless device, very much like a phone number- this enables the router to identify the device trying to connect to it). The mac address will be listed on your wireless device and you can also see all the devices that you can allow to connect to your router in the router's configuration window. (One important note to remember is that if you have already enabled WEP then you will have to first feed in the same key into your wireless device software settings before the router will display it in it's list of devices). Select the device that you want to allow to connect to your router and apply.
Hope this helps to a certain extent to configure your routers. Trust me, this is an amazing router and if you are having connection problems, it most likely is due to the settings in the router- not because the router is faulty.
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Very very unreliable, September 12, 2004
By GMW (Forest Hills, New York United States)
I would strongly advise against buying this router. When I first got it, I couldn't have the wireless part turned on if I wanted to get to the Internet. Customer service was useless the first few times, and then they led me through this absurdly complicated procedure to do a special reset on the router. Now the reouter occasionally just dies on me, requiring me to unplug it and plug it back in to get it to work again. It's phenominally unreliable.
Finally, their free support is limited to 90 days. In other words, if you have a problem after that time, even if it's a problem with the router, you have to pay!
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No Problems, September 10, 2004
By maf (WI)
I've had the product for a year. Never had a problem with it and its been under heavy use. My roommates are file sharers. One was wireless, the other plugged right into it. There have been Gigs upon Gigs of data pushed through this and its never needed a reboot. Currently it has 2 wireless clients on it at all times, and a third on and off. Never had a problem. Had a combination of linksys, netgear, and proxim cards used with it as well and windows and linux. It looks kinda cool on top of it all. I am just using it as an ap right now so I've turned off all of the nat and firewall stuff. Took a while to make that work, but no issues.
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