[Zim]

Thought I'd post a positive story since I've seen so many "conflict" reports.

Best Buy had this NetGear 802.11g router on sale ($90 with $40 in rebates), so with the ability for a local return, I thought I'd give it a go (ran the last 2 days on some neighbor's un-secured 802.11b network )

Opened the box, unplugged the cable modem, G4/800 plugged into a wired port, cable from router to cable modem, re-powered the cable modem, and then info Mozilla to connect to the router management page.

Easy setup. New Powerbook (1.33Ghz, built in Airport Extreme) found the network no problem.

Only hitches were that I wish they had a "forward all ports" setting (i use ipfw on my desktop, so I don't care about the router firewall so much as I care about connectivity), so I had to "open" the web, mail, ssh, and some upper ports to restore some connections.

I also have tried to restrict it to the MAC addresses of my Powerbook, and my desktop (so my network won't be wide open), and I set it to only allow 802.11g connections. Figured the MAC restrictions might be faster than turning on either of the encryption modes?

Found that I had to change a few env variables (I use a lot of command line unix stuff) to be fully specified domains (ie. news-server became news-server.rr.com) which I think I might be able to do via the "domain" setting in the admin section (but not sure).

I got file sharing going between both machines, as well as iTunes sharing.

Curious to hear any comments, and/or hope this helps someone that is undecided about what to buy.

Cheers,
Mike

[ginoledesma]

I bought this router myself a couple of months back as it was on sale in amazon and had a $20 mail-in rebate (bringing it to about $50). The only initial issue I had with is was really poor performance when using "recommended" settings. I had to change from channel 11 to channel 5 to get "g-level" speeds.

Have you tried enabling DMZ for your particular computer? I did the same sowhen I ran into some inbound connections. There're still a couple of features I'd like the router to be configured with (e.g. NTP time server is one), but for a cheap router, it does its job. I'm hearing good reviews and praises for the Linksys WRT54G, though, especially if you load the customized Linux kernel/firmware on it.. I haven't seen that much configurability in an appliance in a long time.

[Zim]

Originally posted by ginoledesma:
I bought this router myself a couple of months back as it was on sale in amazon and had a $20 mail-in rebate (bringing it to about $50). The only initial issue I had with is was really poor performance when using "recommended" settings. I had to change from channel 11 to channel 5 to get "g-level" speeds.

Have you tried enabling DMZ for your particular computer? I did the same sowhen I ran into some inbound connections. There're still a couple of features I'd like the router to be configured with (e.g. NTP time server is one), but for a cheap router, it does its job. I'm hearing good reviews and praises for the Linksys WRT54G, though, especially if you load the customized Linux kernel/firmware on it.. I haven't seen that much configurability in an appliance in a long time.

I changed off of channel 11 as well, but just as I'd try with a portable phone, trying the various channels to see which gave a better signal.

I have not tried the DMZ, what would it do for me? I'd like to keep my desktop and laptop with easy access to each other. Form what I remember of router theory, I'd think putting the desktop in the DMZ might hinder that? (even tho I'm opening it back up to the desktop like its in a DMZ.

One annoyance that I've now found tho is that the "Access control list" is not working as I'd hoped.. I'm finding that I have to re-authorize my powerbook every time it goes to sleep, etc. I would have hoped that authorized MAC addrs would STAY authorized to reconnect, but that does not appear to be so. Am I doing something wrong with it? Maybe I should just turn on the encryption/password and go with that... how much does it affect performance?

As for the Linksys with hackable firmware, can you post some links? That could be interesting, and I can still return this thing, altho so far it is working reasonably well.

Mike