| Netgear WGR614 54 Mbps 2.4 GHz Cable or DSL Wireless Router |
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Model: WGR614
Brand: Netgear
Manufacturer: Netgear
Average Rating: 
(submit your review here)
Total Reviews: 712
Operating system: Windows
Form factor: External
Hardware platform: PC
Data link protocol: Ethernet, Fast Ethernet, IEEE 802.11b, IEEE 802.11g
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| Features: |
Router
WGR614
4 port
54 Mbps
Wireless |
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| Description: |
| Netgear WGR614 802.11g Wireless Router with 4-Port Switch - The amount of homes with high-speed Internet access and multiple computers is growing steadily. Wouldn't it be nice to share that high-speed Internet connection with all of the computers in your home? Wouldn't it be great to also share files between your computers? And wouldn't it be amazing if you could do all of that wirelessly!? Well you can, with this 802.11g Wireless Router. Just add optional 802.11g, or 802.11b, adapters to each computer, connect your modem, run through the easy installation process, and you're ready to go. It even supports the slower 802.11b wireless protocol for increased compatibility. VPN pass-through |
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| User Reviews (712 total): |
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Works like a charm!, February 23, 2006
By Walter Burke (Texas)
I think the title says most of it... I've bought several wireless routers over the last few years but this has to be the best bang for the buck.
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Product fine, but customer support is TERRIBLE, February 22, 2006
By A Nath
Once I finally got the product running, it was fine. But NETGEAR customer service is abysmal. They keep you on hold for ever - on three separate days, at different times of day, I was on hold for over 20 minutes before a recorded message suddenly came up asking for my phone number so that someone would phone back. But, guess what? No-one called back at all. I spent about 4 hours trying to get the device to work - what a waste of time; not worth the measly saving on this model. Just hope you don't need technical support from this inconsiderate and arrogant company.
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Crippled product, brain-damaged installer, February 17, 2006
By Jered A. Wierzbicki
Save your money, this thing is a Mickey Mouse piece of crap.
1. I bought the WGR614v6 and a wireless NIC when my Ethernet card broke. Alas, the router's wireless interface is disabled until you physically plug in an Ethernet cable and configure it. Using your physical Ethernet interface. That's right. You must have a working Ethernet NIC, with a *WIRE*, to use this *WIRELESS* router.
2. I took the WGR614 to work hoping that I could set it up there and convince it to turn on its wireless interface. So I *PLUGGED IN* the *WIRELESS* router and tittered with joy as the "SMARTwizard" "detected" my "network type". It detected I had a "DHCP network", and then spent about a minute and a half trying to DHCP. It couldn't, because my company has static DHCP based on MAC address. So it gave up and displayed a 404 page. That's right. The "SMARTwizard", on the router, gave up and redirected to a page that didn't exist. On the router.
3. I took the router back to the store and got a different one.
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Broke before I got to use it!, February 17, 2006
By P. Brennan
I had this item for about three days when it broke. My computer was brand new also. I knew I had everything hooked up right. Finally, I had to pay a technician to come out because I thought there was something wrong with my computer. I sent the router back for a refund. The technician sold me another NetGear router and it's been working fine. Maybe I just got a bad one. I hope so but it cost me a lot of money to find out.
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NO STARS! do not buy at all costs stay away. get LINKSYS WRT54G Wireless-G Router instead, February 16, 2006
By main street records (philly, PA)
while i am not a tech head, i am competant enough to follow directions and set up electronics. after numerous setup attemps, calling NETGEAR tech support, calling IP tech support, calling PC tech support, etc. i gave up and hired a professional tech head to come in and set it up. he managed to get it working in a half hour! good deal right? WRONG. after he left i enjoyed my internet/xbox live for 1 night. the next day, nothing. i had the tech come back out and he updated the firmware and puttered around with it for an hour before getting it set up. 5 hours later i am back to square one. no connections whatsoever. i gave up and decided to go get a LINKSYS as i heard they are more reliable. this was the best choice i could have made. i set it up in 10 minutes and have had 0 problems thus far. save yourself a headache and go with the LYNKSYS instead (i have the LINKSYS WRT54G Wireless-G Router). and to all of you who are enjoying your NETGEAR, you are very talented &/or lucky! I will never again buy another netgear product! NO STARS OUT OF 5.
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Great wireless router, February 10, 2006
By Red Sox 1 (Shelton,CT)
This wireless router has been working flawlessly. It took 10 minutes to setup and signal strength is great. Even "borrowed" neighbors unsecured network which was the same router also. Recommended by Dell.
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Don't expect to get the rebate, February 1, 2006
By R. M. Sills (Castro Valley, CA USA)
the good news: The router setup went smoothly and quickly, and it's worked well now for almost three months.
the bad news: The company that handes the rebate says they lost my original submission and lost a faxed re-submission. Netgear didn't respond to emails, and it appears unlikely that I'll ever get the rebate. In short, you should assume that the real price is the one *before* the rebate.
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pretty on the outsite, junk on the inside, January 31, 2006
By Claudia Chez Abreu (Miami, FL United States)
At first, everything went smoth... easy to install and configure... then on a day to day basis, after working with it for a amount of time, the connection drops and needs to be reseted every once in while. then one day i came home and found it with all the lights on, tried everything to reset it and it was impossible. I've tried calling 3 times their customer support to get a Return authorization and have waited for a period of 10-15 minutes each time, and still havent been able to talk with one of their "engineers".... i bought the router last october and it died now in january. Definetely not a product i would recommend.
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Pretty, small, and does the job for normal usage, but not heavy, January 30, 2006
By Nakamichi (Washington, DC USA)
I have used several of Netgear's networking products in the past. So I had confidence in the company when purchasing this device.
The WGR614 sure is an eye candy; being petite, white and having curved corners. Much more pleasing to the eyes than the blue box they sold in the past.
Good out of the box directions and easy to setup. The initial configuration wizard makes configuration the device a breeze. After a minute or so, you're ready to go. Tweaking is not that difficult either.
Competitive wireless range. I was able to go multiple floors and still have a connection. This probably varies from household to household.
My only gripe about this product, that it doesn't handle a large amount of connections simultaneously well (200+ in my case). If you peer-to-peer or host web services this is not the device for you. The device gets fairly hot, and then starts to drop packets (after a few hours/days) to the point you have to restart the router to make it functional. After exchanging 4 of these at different locations and using the latest firmware, I have to conclude that it appears to be a limitation of the device.
For normal web surfing and downloading, I believe this device is great. Putting this into a network that only does web surfing, downloading and game playing, this device works flawlessly. As long as you don't have many simultaneous connections at the same time, this is a great product.
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hmm., January 30, 2006
By werdnA (texas)
This was a great router, until about a year after I bought it. I woke up one morning to find all the lights on the router on, and I tried every way there was to reset the router to no avail. I thought that maybe this was just a problem with my router, so I recommended netgear to a friend who bought a newer version of the same model. His died about 3 months into using it. Go with linksys.
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Easy setup but doesn't work well with all computers., January 29, 2006
By Burfoot S. Ward III
The Netgear WGR614 802.11g router was very easy to setup using the setup wizard that came with the router. It was very important to follow the directions as given, but if you do, it sets up with little or no problems. The router has been very stable for all "wired" connections with good responsive speed. However, on my laptop with a built-in 802.11g card the wireless signal kept dropping out every 2 to 3 minutes. Most of the time the computer picked up the signal again, but sometimes I had to make it reconnect manually. This was very fustrating! Another laptop I used, with a netgear 802.11g PCMCIA network card, worked well with no signal drops. Netgear customer service told me to disable the firewall on the router and that should help stop the signal drops, but I don't have access to that computer anymore at this time. But even if I did I wouldn't want to disable the firewall for the whole system to allow that computer to keep a connection with this router. You would think that Netgear would have a better way to fix this problem.
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waste of time, January 28, 2006
By r00tbeer (USA)
I wasted a day trying to get wireless to work on this thing. It simply does not work. Netgear must have hired the Linksys QA department for this one.
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Easy to install, works 24x7 without interruptions, January 28, 2006
By Mannina Magha (Traveller)
I bought this modem in Feb'05 and it has been working flawlessly for the last year, always switched on, used for atleast 2-3 hours a day. (Sorry about being late in writing this review, but I beleive in fully using the product before writing a review)
The installation was very smooth, the installer CD comes with a auto-installer which will communicate with your DSL modem and does almost 100% of the things by itself.
Before you start configuring your wireless router, do make sure that you have the correct DSL internet username and password on hand and you have tested the internet connection with the Model ALONE before you test with the wireless router.
I am surprised that there are so many negative reviews on this wireless router. If there are installation problems with the netgear wireless router, there are very few reasons why it could be:
* Your DSL modem is not configured property
- DSL modem settings are pretty complex, if you mess it up, press the 'Reset' button to get it loaded with factory defaults
- Did you check if the default IP Address of your DSL model does not conflict with the IP address of the wireless router(http://192.168.1.1) - if it does, you can always change the IP address of your DSL modem
* Did you verify that you have provided your internet username and password correctly ?
I tried using this wireless router with two modems -
(1) Speedstream 5100 : Works like a charm
(2) Huawei SMARTAX-MT-800 : I tried using this modem with the Netgear wireless in India, but for some reason, I could never get the wirelss router married to the Huawei DSL modem. I finally had to throw away the Huawei SmartAX and swith over to the Speedstream.
After switching to speedstream 5100, the combo of netgear wireless with the speedstream has been working 24x7, without any issues.
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Works great with PS2, January 27, 2006
By Marco Daniel Barcenas (Tegucigalpa, Honduras)
Quick and easy installation, easy administration and works great with my PS2.
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hard to keep working, January 27, 2006
By cspiffo (Northampton, PA USA)
The router, for $30, seems like a good deal. I got this to replace an old linksys wireless b router. The linksys router has given me reliable access for 4 years. If I had a problem connecting it I would just recycle the unit and it would keep on trucking. This netgear router, in agreement with other reviewers, has a problem staying connected. I would try to access the configuration program on the unit to try and correct the problem, but while it was trying to connect it would refuse to let me. I would have to unplug the WAN port and then the router would allow me to access the config screen. This in turn led me to have to recycle the dsl modem's power. I would hope that the router would continue working for a while, but it kept cutting out. Finally, I wound up reinstalling the linksys router. No problems!!! This router is nothing but headaches. Don't be fooled by the price. Stay away from this product!!!
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Not for internet games, January 25, 2006
By Welison Floriano (USA)
I bought one and hated it! When playing Starcraft over the internet (multiplayer game) it will have high latency, making a terrible game lag. I contacted netgear support several times and tried every configuration they suggested, it did not work. In the end, I had to return it. It seems that the way it was built can't handle bursts of small packages well. It will probably work well for home network without any high demands (as any other router would, as a matter of fact).
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So far so good, January 25, 2006
By J. Green (CO USA)
I haven't experienced the same disconnection problems as mentioned in other posts. I use Wireless occasionally and am mostly connected directly to it from my PC. I am running the Firmware prior to version 1.0.11 and it has so far performed great. In reply to K. Poole's review, PPTP does work if you configure Port Forwarding for port 1723 to the internal PPTP client's IP address..
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Not for serious users., January 24, 2006
By Vams (Atlanta, Ga)
I held a high opinion of Netgear in the router arena until I tried this router. Now, I will avoid this company as much as possible.
If you are a simple user who wants secure wireless access in your house, this is a great router for its price. But anything beyond that it utterly sucks.
Although it maintains the LAN and Wireless network, it drops the Cable/DSL/WAN link ALL the time. The longest I have gone is 3 days and the shortest 5 minutes (avg ~1-2 days). The absolute worst part is that the router never realizes it. If I am there, I can manually reconnect instantly everytime, but if not, it will take 6-8 hours before figuring out that it has lost the WAN link and try to reconnect.
My 5 year old, then (...), router can stay linked up for weeks and reconnect instantly after a loss. I can totally depend on it for months on end but alas it is not wireless.
Quite a few people seem to have this problem and have complained since the beginning. This is the 6th version of their firmware and they still haven't solved the problem!! Although all the "features" of this router work, it fails at its core task. Says something about the company.
My recommendation... if you need anything more than simple web browsing (VPN, online banking, personal servers...) go try your luck at the the other companies or spend a little more and get a better value with the highend routers.
Good luck.
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Works after 1+ hours on phone to India, January 24, 2006
By R. Miller (St. Simons Island, GA)
This seemed like a good price (...), so I ordered it and received it promptly. After about 10 attempts to get connected using the included CD for easy setup, I registered the product (required before you get tech support), waited a few hours, then called the tech support number. My system is not complex: a BellSouth Westell DSL modem and an HP Pavilion 701 computer with Windows XP. After 1+ hours on the phone to India, the WGR614 router finally works. Fortunately, the guy on the other end of the phone spoke very good English and I could understand most of what he said. To get the router to work, it had to be set up for half duplex at 10 MBPS and there seems to be some speed loss when downloading large files. I have have yet to try this one with wifi enabled and have not tried other brands of wifi routers, so no comment on how that works. Be prepared for a long call to Netgear tech support.
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Works Great; Easy Setup, January 24, 2006
By Mike Crane (Minneapolis, MN)
This router was easy to setup, I just ran the software on a wired in computer and it started working with my cable broadband router. An IBM 42T laptop and Dell 6000 laptop easily find the router and have excellent connections a floor away and several rooms over. The laptops also print to an HP wireless printer which set up without any problems. All of this just worked without a bunch of complicated codes or addresses being configured manually. And I have a Motorola 5.8 phone that doesn't seem to be affected by the wireless system at all.
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