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Netgear 4 Port Cable/DSL Router RP614UK
Netgear (
08 January, 2002 )
Electronics |
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37.75 |
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subject to change. |
usually dispatched within 1 to 2 weeks. |
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Excellent router, not so excellent technical support  |
This is a great piece of equipment for anyone who intends to network more than one computer either at home or at a small office. Its very easy to install and works very smoothly - if you do have problems with connection a quick tip is to press the Restore Factory Settings button at the back for 10 seconds. Im using a cable modem with Telewest, so if you already have a cable modem (Telewest Blueyonder, NTL etc.) and want to use up to 4 computers at the same time, this is well worth considering.However, as a Mac user (iMac on OS9.2 environment), the two pieces of firmware for this router provided by Netgear.com, which are downloadable by clicking the Download buttons, are not available to me. Ive already notified Netgear of this matter, but all I get is an automated reply, which doesnt solve the problem, and disappointingly they never answer their UK technical support phone number. The CD-Rom (Install Assistant) that comes with this router doesnt really work with Macs either, but you dont need it to install the router anyway - actually no software is needed for installation!. FYI, the manual says it works with Windows 98, Me, 2000 or XP, and MacOS 8.6, 9.x or 10.x. eMac, iBook, iMac, and so on.
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Does the job well, set-up can be fiddly |
I bought this router to use with BT ADSL broadband and Netgears DM602 ADSL modem/router. Id read how this configuration (DM602/WGR614) could be tricky and that it would be necessary to define a gateway in the DMZ etc. However, the initial set-up couldnt have been easier.Id been using the DM602 in router mode to connect "by wire" and I left it exactly the way it was. I changed the admin IP address of the WGR614 so that it didnt match the DM602, rebooted the WGR614 and then ran the wizard. Lo and behold, I was connected inside of 10 minutes. The fiddly bit was getting the wireless encryption to work but that may have been pilot error. When in doubt, reboot everything and renew the TCP/IP connections via IPConfig. Initially, the wireless connection would drop and reconnect every 10 minutes. This turned out to be a Windows XP feature - XP searches for available wireless networks every 10 minutes and for some reason drops the current network and then reconnects after the search(!) Configuring the WGR614 to NOT broadcast the SSID fixed this and the connection is now rock-solid - it hasnt dropped once in a week. My Linksys wireless PCMCIA card easily keeps up with the 512kbs broadband speeds even though its only 802.11b compatible. I recommend this DM602/WGR614 combo for easily installing a wireless network on BT ADSL in the UK.
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Excellent firewall  |
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This firewall is a piece of cake to setup. Althought it has a wireless feature, it can be used as a wired firewall solution. This allows it to be perfect to slowly migrate to a wireless solution. It even allows both to be used at the same time. Make sure you know which version you get. There are 4 versions of the WGR614 names v1, v2, v3 and v4 (funnily enough). v1 doesnt support WPA except through a beta firmware upgrade. v2 to v4 does. The setup screens are easy to use as it always contains help information along the side to explain all the options on the current screen you are looking at. This is money well spent.
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