| Netgear WGR101 Cable/DSL Wireless Travel Router |
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Model: WGR101
Brand: Netgear
Manufacturer: Netgear
Average Rating: 
(submit your review here)
Total Reviews: 20
Operating system: Windows
Form factor: External
Hardware platform: PC
Data link protocol: IEEE 802.11b, IEEE 802.11g
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| Features: |
Small 54 Mbps Wireless Router that can be carried in a pocket
Internal Antenna design for durability
Includes convenient carrying case in which to store router along with essentials
Three mode switch that can select between configuration, single-user, and multi-user
Up to 5X the speed and 2X the range of 802.11b wireless |
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| Description: |
| Untethered wireless connectivity in your hotel room can be critical to your productivity (and sanity) as a mobile professional. Conference or hotel rooms with only one Ethernet port are no longer a problem because now you can bring convenient wireless networking with you. Netgear's 54 Mbps Wireless Travel Router is lightweight and compact, and it provides both single and multiple users wireless access without any need for a direct cable connection to the network. Expertly designed and protected with Double Firewall security, this portable high-speed travel router is your best insurance for wireless access wherever you go. |
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| User Reviews (20 total): |
Page 1 of Total 1 Pages
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Netgear Wireless Travel Router, May 13, 2007
By S. J. Riley (Detroit, Michigan United States)
I am pleased with this products performance. I had difficulty setting it up and had to call Netgear for help. Great product but don't feel one can set it up by themselves unless they are an IT person
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I wish 0 stars was an option, February 19, 2007
By D. Orum (Chicago, IL)
I bought this quite a while ago, and finally got the opportunity to use it. (or at least try to use it)
Setup was very easy, but I could not get it to work in shared mode. Windows didn't think I was connected to the internet. I searched live.com for this product and found others are having the same issue. Apparently like another review says, there is an issue with DNS passthrough. I was able to get it working, but won't be taking it on another trip with me.
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Broken Piece, January 30, 2007
By Amit Jain (Hyderabad, India)
I have received a broken piece and i opened it on myh return to India. Is there a way this can be replaced?
Regards
Amit
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Small but effective !, January 12, 2007
By Adil Vaz (Lages, SC Brazil)
The new firmware made this router compatible with PPPOe. I have used it both in an office network with DHCP and in a home with PPPOe. It was a breeze to set up - in the office, no setup was necessary. It is reasonably fast and does its job properly. Quite handy gagdget to pack ! Runs a bit hot, but I left it connected for 4 days without any problems.
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Works Great, January 11, 2007
By Jason Hock (De Pere, Wi Usa)
I read all the reviews before I purchased and was a bit wary. I was suprised to find out just how good this product is. I wanted something small for my apartment to hide by my cable modem. The minute I plugged it in it worked. No problems at all. Great product!!
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too small, too hot, too cheap and too buggy, January 9, 2007
By Akshay Chawade (Boston, MA)
I just could not get WEP configured on this. However, WPA configuration took a minute. Then I also need to reboot it once a day. Overall, it is good for the price I paid.
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fair, January 9, 2007
By unknown
This product was not that satisfied to me..... thats why I about to buy another router. this product is usefull only for a temporary use only. It is good if you use this for 2-4 hours only. If you keep this connected daily the connection automatically gets disconnects since this is mentioned for travel purpose only.
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Worked great for four months . . ., December 19, 2006
By s2
then it died. I purchased it months earlier, but never used it until four months ago. Yesterday, the lights went off and the router stopped working. I called Netgear's support line, and they ran me through some questions and then informed me that the one-year warranty had expired and the router it is bad and cannot be repaired.
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This is not a DSL router, December 9, 2006
By the photographer (California, USA)
This is good for
1.Travelling and using in Hotel rooms (As they claimed)
2. Sharing a Hotelroom netwrok
3. Light weight with a carry case of it's own
4. Used to secure connections during travels
5. Multi user during travel
Not good as
1. A regular DSL router.
2. Can not even use directly on a DSL modem.
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A piece of Junk, November 28, 2006
By foiegras (Ketchum, ID United States)
I bought this thing from an office supply superstore; I will not stoop to calling it a router. It is more like the ideal paperweight for masochists.
The first few days I was able to use it, with minimal or no encryption, in a hotel room with wired internet access. After that, it functioned off and on, for another couple of weeks and then it unceremoniously died. Forget about configuring it, you will find that trying to do this is an exercise in futility.
Fortunately, the office supply chain took it back and gave me store credit, so I am rid of this thing.
Don't waste your time on this product; there has to be something better out there that will fulfill your needs.
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Terrible... spend the money and get the D-Link DWL-G730AP, April 30, 2006
By American Expat (Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia)
We travel quite a bit, both business and pleasure, domestic and international... so the idea of a pocket wireless router was a God send. We bought this one at the beginning of our annual leave (aka tour the US in a month). We'd heard good things about the D-Link but with the rebates, this one was practically free.... there was a reason it's always on sale.
It took forever to set up. The old firmware is buggy, the new firmware is difficult and touchy to install. The router itself does not seem to be compatible with most personal cable/DSL modems. Out of the eight houses we were in, it would only work with one, although it appeared to connect with several others. It did work with the Ethernet connection of about 70% of the hotels... but that's not a great average. It also gets very very hot and than will quit working until it cools down again. Frustrating.
After the first week we went out and got the pocket D-Link.. excellent- plug it in and it works EVERYWHERE: personal homes, questionable modems, hotels, etc... we have used it from Alabama to Bangkok and everywhere in between. It's also about half the size of the Netgear. Save the hassle and get it first.
... also a tip, pick up a little usb wi-fi adaptor with your router. You will find that many people without a wireless router already, will only have a desktop, and you will need to make it "wireless" as you will be connecting their modem to your router.
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very slim and very quick, December 31, 2005
By eee (WESTCHESTER, NY)
I got this at a 1 day sale with rebates and customer coupons for a song.
I basically unpacked the box, plugged it into my existing wired network, plugged in the slim power adapter into the 110 volt wall outlet, and in about 1 minute, my existing 2 wireless PCs reconfigured their proxy settings (running Win2000ProSp3 and WinXPProSP2) and both were able to use Internet Explorer and Outlook email with very fast downloads.
Netgear supplies a slim zippered padded case that fits the router, power adapter, and all the supplied cables. Throw it into your PC case or your shoulder bag and be ready to go online wirelessly wherever a wired Ethernet port is found while traveling.
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Nice unit - some areas for improvement, July 29, 2005
By over the top (Around the World)
I'll try to add some additional perspectives to the other reviews.
1) My configuration includes a Netgear PC CARD (108G), Dell C640 laptop. I was able to configure this unit with WPA on the first try and had no difficulty with 1 laptop connected. I have not tried 2 or more pc's yet.
2) Previously I carried around a Linksys BEFW11S4 V4 router for hotel use, as these are going for around $9 now it doesn't matter if the maid steals it. But this unit is MUCH smaller and lighter.
3) I wish the power supply had been built into the unit with an integrated, folding power plug. Adding an external power supply and cable adds a lot of bulk, but less than the BEFW.
4) The unit was flawless in 4 days of use. Never dropped a connection at all. This with WPA configured and SSID not being broadcast. I use the ATHEROS client software, although the NETGEAR client would probably work just as well.
5) Paid only 17 bucks for this with rebates, so it's a little more expensive than an 802.11B router.
6) comes with a nice carrying case that keeps the power supply and router together.
7) Mine is new and came with the latest firmware loaded. If you are downloading the firmware, be sure to follow Netgear's directions. With Netgear routers, I have found that you need to do a factory reset after flashing and the re-key all of the device settings. Otherwise things will NOT work right.
8) I see that Linksys is coming out with one that has some nice features like, ability to expand a wireless network, say you are in a coffee house with wireless access, you supposedly can use this router to expand the wireless access. It also has integrated power supply... sweet...
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Not Acceptable for Multi-user or WEP Access, June 15, 2005
By drjulians (Houston, TX USA)
I hoping to use the WGR101 to provide wireless, encrypted access to two laptops from a wired ethernet connection in a hotel. It worked fine in single-user, no encryption mode but that is not what I needed. I experienced severe problems trying to use it in single user mode with WEP or in multi-user mode with and without WEP. One or both laptops would lose the ability to connect to the internet at seemingly random intervals. Sometimes cycling the laptop wireless radio would restablish the connection, sometimes I had to reboot the laptops, sometimes I had to reboot the WGR101, and sometimes I had to reboot the laptops and the WGR101. Stay away from this product unless single user, unencrypted access is what you need.
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STAY CLEAR!, June 11, 2005
By merc (PA USA)
After only owning this wireless router for about 2 months, I am now shopping around for a replacement travel wireless access point. This device's firmware is EXTRMELY buggy... here are a few of the issues that I have noticed while using this paper weight:
1) If you use WPA-PSK with this device, expect your connection to drop every 60 minutes -- and sometimes at random. The only way to recover from this is to either wait it out (about 5 minutes) or reboot the WGR-101 (about 3 minutes).
2) This device is EXTRMELY slow -- and what I mean by this is not network speed, but the WGR-101s processing speed. As I mentioned above, it takes the device about 3-4 minutes to fully boot this device.
3) I tested WEP briefly on this device and noticed some issues with this as well. The connection would drop as it did with WPA-PSK, only it seemed to be at random.
If you are looking for a reliable travel wireless access-point, this device is NOT for you.
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If all you use are default settings it works sometimes., May 23, 2005
By Anonymous deCoward
This product has serious firmware problems in two areas, encryption and DNS. I have spent many frustrating hours when I could have been getting work done. Upgrading the firmware makes it no better. However if you don't make any changes to the default configuration (do not encrypt your connection), reset the unit each time you use it, and are lucky and it passes through the address of the DNS server, perhaps you won't notice anything wrong. At least for the first few times. Eventually everyone who buys this product realizes it's got problems. Netgear is of course no help because they are told to treat everything as a user problem. It's so small and could be so useful, I really hoped it would be OK, despite the negative reviews I saw. Now I must join those negative reviewers. Don't think a firmware upgrade will fix it or that you will figure out the correct configuration. This product is a waste of your valuable time.
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Excellent Product from Netgear, April 27, 2005
By Ranjit K. Mishra (Dallas, TX)
Excellent product guys! I was little sceptical before buying this product as the reviews were not very encouraging. But, I have not experienced any kind of problem with this slim and nice looking router. There was a little hitch while installing it, but, the customer support helped me figure that out quickly. Excellent customer support from Netgear. And the good part is that it works with my cable internet connection at home also.
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Does not work well - terrible support from Netgear, March 15, 2005
By TimInChicago (Chicago, IL USA)
This is one of those things that I bought, really hoping and wanting to be able to say good things about. I really wanted this to be a good product; but it's just not.
First off, the firmware releases have been quite buggy and while they have added WPA support, I find that it does not work well. I think that if you wanted to use this device without encryption and without changing the DHCP range and not in any sort of 'must-have' environment, maybe it would work. For me, all of those things have caused me more headaches than I care to remember.
I have had a lot of problems with...
-Using WPA with multiple devices connected at once, the signal drops every 60 minutes, like clockwork. To get the signal back, you have to repower the router and restart your wireless card. Very frustating. When I tried to get Netgear's help, they told me to reload the firmware - I did this but to no avail.
-The DNS passthrough resolution stinks. (Sorry if I 'tech out' on you here, but this is an issue some may find valuable to know about.) In many situations, I can not get DNS resolution through the 'gateway', which is of course the WRG101. To resolve I have to go into the router's browser interface, pull of the DNS server IPs that the hotel or ISP issued to the WAN port and manually configure my IP settings in my WinXP Pro machine to use those DNS servers. This works, but what a pain.
At the end of the day, I can't get Netgear to give me anything resembling decent support on this thing and I would say it only works for me 20% of the time without monkeying around with it. I keep trying (and hoping for better firmware)(as of v.1009 it still stinks) but I'm sure that someday this thing will find it's way into a hotel room garbage can - or better yet, out the window.
Look elsewhere if you want encryption and stability - this is a bummer product.
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Nice Solution, January 7, 2005
By Shannon W. Miles (McDonough, GA USA)
I bought this somewhere else, but wanted to get another review out here for reference in case someone else was considering this product.
This took a little bit longer to get set up than I expected and longer than a wired plus wireless DSL router I have. I had two main problems. First, the darn thing is slow serving up its internal pages in configuration mode. (By the way, you can directly connect via a cable to configure it.) Second, getting the WEP and DHCP settings to stick took a while. That said, I had the same trouble with the previously mentioned DSL router, too. After getting over these two hurdles it works like a champ and I've not had any trouble connecting across the room, etc.
Beyond the product itself, I haven't quite figured out how to stow everything in the included case. The bits don't quite fit in the supplied slots. This is especially true for the power supply.
All in all, this fits the bill for what I wanted it for - a way to use the 802.11 connection from the laptop when in the hotel traveling.
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Great idea, fair implementation, so-so value, September 13, 2004
By The Grumpy Hacker (Milwaukee)
I applaud Netgear for being first to market with this device (the only other I know of is the Apple Airport Express), designed for geeky business travellers. There've been many times when I've been in a hotel with wired Internet access but wanted to use my laptop across the room in bed, or in a conference room with one wired network drop and a handful of people who wanted to use it. Travelling with a 30-foot cable and/or a multi-port switch is no fun. This device is light and tiny, has a modest-sized power adapter, and even comes with a short cable for connecting to a wired port and a zippered carrying case for all of that plus your pc-card NIC.
If you're not concerned with security and have your wireless NIC set to do DHCP basically all you do is plug it in and you're all set. Configuring the device is kind of a pain though: you can only connect to it wirelessly, so if you forget the SSID after setting it not to broadcast, or forget the WEP key, you have to use the reset button and start over (make sure you hold it down a good 10 seconds, just pressing it once quickly doesn't work).
It doesn't act quite like a typical router despite some product literature I've read: on a hotel network it doesn't provide firewall or NAT security--keep in mind if the hotel assigns you a public IP you're bare naked on the Internet.
Although the physical switch on the unit that puts it in config or single-/multi-user mode is a neat idea for security, it gave me a lot of problems having to reassociate or power cycle the device after changing settings. Given that in its default state it's a pass-through device like a bridge and has no IP address, there may not be a significantly better way though.
I had little to no luck using this device with my home router or cable modem, but on a hotel wired access point it was seamless including VPN connectivity (unlike my Netgear MR814 at home). Range is very good even through walls and floors/ceilings. I got mine for about half price after rebates which, I think, just barely makes it worth it. If you like to have the latest gadget, and especially if you travel, this is less of a pain and certainly niftier than carrying around a 30-foot cable and/or hub.
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