[ginoledesma]

Anybody got the Netgear WGR614? I bought one (WGR614v4) from Amazon.com when they offered a great deal on it ($20 rebate) and just got to using it now. Unfortunately, I've hit one of the worst problems one could imagine... I'm getting extremely poor performance from it. So much so it is significantly slower than my older Netgear MR814v2 (11Mbps).

This is what I've submitted to Netgear's Technical Support:

I purchased a WGR614v4 to replace my MR814v2. However, I am getting very poor wireless> network speeds when transferring from my PC connected to the router. The WGR614v4 is currently setup to serve 802.11g-only clients (I'm currently using an Apple Airport Extreme card), no WEP encryption, no MAC filtering. My PC is connected via 10/100BaseT. On average, I get sustained transfer speeds of only 253KBps using SMB and 274KBps using FTP never exceeding 300KBps. However, using the same setup on my MR814v2, I am able to get sustained transfer rates of at least 524KBps for SMB and 554KBps for FTP.

The router shipped with the v3.37 firmware, dated September 2003. Your website also lists this as the latest version to date.

I have tried resetting the router to no avail. I am getting significantly slower network transfer speeds than the router I intended to replace.

[stevesnj]

Originally posted by ginoledesma:
Anybody got the Netgear WGR614? I bought one (WGR614v4) from Amazon.com when they offered a great deal on it ($20 rebate) and just got to using it now. Unfortunately, I've hit one of the worst problems one could imagine... I'm getting extremely poor performance from it. So much so it is significantly slower than my older Netgear MR814v2 (11Mbps).

This is what I've submitted to Netgear's Technical Support:

I just bought one from Staples $50.00 with rebates and I love it...way faster than my Linksys wired 4 port router. You may have a bad router...atry pluging in directly to the router. If you get the same speeds then rplace the router. What distance are you from the WAP...what type of building you in?

[ginoledesma]

Forgot to update this thread.

I played around with the router a little bit more (because I couldn't send it back) until I got it working to my expectations. As it turned out, using Channel 11 (as recommended for Asia) was causing terrible interference in the area. Which was very odd considering my older MR814v2 router was using that same channel before. When I switched from channel 11 to channel 5, everything worked out smoothly.

Lessons learned during this ordeal:
- Netgear support is almost useless. Their web-based contact form returns only an automated reply containing the very same information as you can find on their website. Instructions on the email say that to get a personal reply, reply to the auto-generated email with added information. I did, and only one out of my three requests received a reply, albeit useless and irrelevant to my needs.
- Play around with the router and don't accept defaults if it doesn't work out for you.

Recently, Netgear announced the v4.04 firmeware for the WGR614v4 router. This firmware again introduces the WPA-SPK encryption feature which the router was marketted to support (Netgear initially released a firmware with that feature but pulled it out). The new firmware has made my router perform much more efficiently, too, what with my being able to get slightly better performance.

I'd give this router a 4/5. One point down for lousy support and documentation. Oh, and you can't sent the date and time of the router (which makes the log report facility useless) since the date (January 1, 2004) is hardcoded onto the firmware. Its "supposed" to contact an NTP server, but we all know the Wisconsin University fiasco Netgear had with them.