NETGEAR WGT624NA Wireless G Firewall Router

I bought this router to replace a Netgear MR814 v1 that I outgrew. Right out of the box, this router worked without changing any settings at all! I turned off all pc's and my cable modem, connected the router, turned on my cable modem, then the router, then the pc's. Everything worked like a champ. Next I went into the web interface (which you can get to by opening Internet Explorer and typing 192.168.0.1 into the address bar, then type in the user and password) to setup the security settings. I was very impressed to see all of the latest security features included. Probably the one feature that I like the best was the auto firmware upgrade feature. The firmware of the router is what tells the router how to work. New versions of firmware can fix problems as well as give you new features. On many other routers the process of upgrading the firmware can be quite difficult for "normal" people that aren't techies. With this router, you just click "Firmware Upgrade" and it will go out to netgear, find new firmware if available, and install it all automatically for you. Great feature. Range was also a big deal for me as the house it was being installed in was a split 3 level house with the router being in the 2nd floor. I never used to be able to go outside at all with my old router and the signal in the bottom floor was always very weak. This router lets me have full coverage throughout the house and venture off into my backyard to the edge of my property! Amazing improvement. I am using the Netgear WGT511 card in one laptop, the 802.11b pci card in a desktop downstairs, and a wired card in a desktop upstairs, all with no problems at all.

This was my first attempt at using any wireless technology for the computers in my house, and I was pleasantly surprised. Here is my roll-up review: Pros - 1. Easy Set-up - Took me about 15 minutes to setup up router using the Install Wizard. 2. Great Price - Under $50 after rebate. Hard to beat that, especially if you buy the 108Mbps PCI or PCMCIA card. Otherwise price is comparable with other 54Mbps routers. 3. Awesome Security features - The router comes with MAC Address control, WPA, and NAT+SPI Firewall features. These are all easy to setup and the screen displays definitions of each feature as you select it in the Router menu. So even without the manual, I was able to configure the security portion of the router settings easily. 4. Range and Signal Strength - One of my computers is around 100 feet away with 5 walls between the router and computer, and I never lose signal and never go below 11Mbps. Now if I am under 50 feet I am getting 54Mbps 90% of the time with 2 walls. From what I have read, that is pretty good. 5. System Stability - I have seen some other reviews about the router resetting or causing computer problems. I have had this router running for over 2 weeks straight without one reset or problem on my comp. I am running WinXP with SP2 now. I am even using a Linksys 54Mbps PCI card, so no problems noted with different brands of components either. ------------------------------------------------------------ Cons - 1. Router Casing - Even though it is an attractive router, the casing is not solid. They could have made it with a thicker mold of plastic or with some stronger material. You will just have to be careful with where you put the router. --------------------------------------------------------------- Overall - 5 Stars I highly recommend this router. If you are looking into getting a Wireless router, and you want security, stability, and performance, this router is for you. Just read the manual first, and use the Install Wizard.

I was in dire need of a new wireless router as my old one had recently stopped working. I preferred to have a Wireless G router as my wireless cards were all G compatible. I also wanted it to work with the Xbox 360 and Xbox Live. For the price and performance of this router, you can't go wrong. It was a breeze to setup and I had no problems with any of the 4 computers finding it and connecting. The security was equally easy to setup. The whole process took under an hour. I then connected the Xbox 360 to the wireless network. Lo and behold, it connected flawlessly and logged in about 2 times faster than my previous router. The NAT was now set to open (this can be a hard thing to accomplish on the Xbox 360) and I was able to play online with extremely good performance. Then I connected a Playstation 3 (PS3) to it as it has a built in wireless card. It recognized it instantly and I was browsing the web and playing online games within 5 minutes. Speaking of speed. This router has increased both my network speed and my transfer speed on my laptops. I understand that the G standard is faster than the B. But compared to the speed I get at work on our Linksys G router, the Netgear Super G router has it beat hands down. So, if you are looking for a router that is easy to install and setup, is extremely fast, is Xbox 360/ Xbox Live and Playstation 3 (PS3) compatible, and won't break your budget...the Netgear WGT624 is the router for you!

I have had this unit for several months during which it has performed almost flawlessly. This is not a full featured unit, but for the price, I don't think you can expect that -- it has basic wireless and WAN security, nothing fancy. However for a home user, it should be enough to keep your network relatively secure. On the wireless side it does provide TKIP security, which is a nice touch. Since 802.11 security is a nightmare anyhow, this is about the best you can do with little effort. On the WAN side, the simple firewall provides NAT and port redirection and the unit also provides a log so you can monitor activity. E-mail alerts are also available. There are a couple of small annoyances that I have found with this unit, and hence the four stars: The "Status" page on the GUI really doesn't provide the status at all. This is particularly annoying on the WAN side. It doesn't tell you if your link is up or down. An older SMC router I had previous to this one did, and made it much easier to troubleshoot connectivity problems when they do arrise. The second problem seems to be power related. There have been a couple of instances where the unit has frozen - usually after a storm. My router is on a UPS, so I suspect the problem is caused by fluctuations on the phone line. A reboot will clear the problem, but taking both of these issues into consideration, sometimes it takes a few minutes to re-establish internet connectivity once it has gone down. I have now gotten in the habit of rebooting both the router and the modem when connection is lost. One really nice security feature it does have on the GUI is a list of all of the clients associated to your router wirelessly as well as on the wired LAN. This is a great tool to see if someone has hacked your security and is using your internet connection. I would strongly recommend checking this page if you find your internet connection has slowed down and you can't find another reason why. I've found the wireless coverage to be excellent, too. I've used multiple client adapters with it - Cisco, Asante, Linksys - all without a problem of any sort. And considering this unit does not have diversity antennas, it has surprisingly little drop out. Overall, I feel this is a great unit for a home or home office. It is simple to setup, configure and maintain. My complaints are all minor and this unit has functioned for almost a year without any realy problem.

After setting everything up, I found that I had to switch the wireless security protocol for the Netgear WGT624v3 from WPA-PSK (which is the default choice) to the older WEP security protocol. Apparently, the former (which caused my connection to, repeatedly, go off & on on a regular basis, very rapidly) the "latest & greatest," and it's not really supported by a lot of devices. The latter, as I understand it, is like MP3 of wireless security protocols, has been around for awhile, and IS a hell of a lot more compatible with what's out there. Plus, it gives the same level of security. I also found that, to take advantage of it's Super G 108 Mbps capabilities, I had to modify the wireless mode setting to "Auto 108Mbps". Doing so allowed me to fully use the capabilities of the Netgear WGT11T Wireless PC Card to get the maximum wireless connection speed possible for my laptop. In any case, it was fairly easy to hook everything up: Unplugged the ethernet cord from my cable modem into the Netgear WGT624v3, then connected another ethernet cord from them back to the cable modem. Then, I turned the power on for both (first the cable modem, then the router), and restarted my computer. Afterwards, I simply ran the setup CD program to finish up and...that was it!! I now can surf the World Wide Web from my kitchen, living room or anyplace in my house. In short, I just TOTALLY love it!! I like not being tied down to my computer desk anymore. And the speeds I'm getting are unbelievable!!

I bought this product to use with an Orinoco Gold 802.11b laptop card and with a new 802.11g bridge to connect them to my LAN. From the beginning (with the firmware out of the box) through 5 different firmware revisions (including the latest 4.1.11 released on 6/24/2004), this unit has experienced major problems operating in mixed-mode (with both B and G clients). The G client operates reasonably well at about 75% link quality at 15 feet, but the B client suffers from poor transfer rates and faltering link quality. Constantly, the B node drops to a 1Mbps link even though it is about 30 feet away and the SNR is over 30. Typically, the link stays at 6Mbps with an occasional jump to 11Mbps (I've tried every frequency). The B client card is known to be good as it works with 5 other brands of routers and perfectly with Netgear's own MR814v2. The problem is even exacerbated when transferring large amounts of data between the two wireless nodes (B to G, or G to B). I attempted to contact Netgear support about this issue. After their initial reply (roughly a week and a half after the first request was sent) that since they had never encountered anything like my situation in the lab, my B client card must be defective, I explained to them that I had tested many things including disabling 802.11g and 108Mbps mode on the WGT624v2 as well as moving both units around. I also told them that the Netgear MR814v2 does not experience any of these problems. Three weeks later, I have yet to receive any response to my repeated emails requesting a solution. I would have to say that Netgear offers EXTREMELY poor after-purchase support (not my first experience with this). Since then, the router has begun randomly dropping the link completely on the 802.11b node for 3-5 seconds at a time about 10-15 times in a row. In terms of design, the WGT624 is lacking in several areas. The 108Mbps mode has a fatal flaw as well: when in 108Mbps "turbo" mode, the only channel the router will operate on is the frequently crowded and noisy Channel 6. The port forwarding mechanism is very simplistic and leaves much to be desired. Mappings can not be made from an external port to a different numbered port internally (i.e. comes in as 8888, goes to internal server as 80). When assigning descriptive names to the mappings, no spaces may be used, nor may any "+"'s, "-"'s, or "."'s. This product is a major disappointment since Netgear generally makes reasonably good products. If you need any type of support for the product, good luck because you will not get it from Netgear. Unless you live in a fairly rural area with very little interference, few people with wireless devices, and are planning on using only Netgear's 108Mbps client cards, I would highly recommend staying away from this poor product.

I purchased my WGT624 v2 from amazon.com. As soon as I pulled it out of the box it was constantly rebooting (dropping me off the internet both wired and wireless). I was able to fix it though and I will tell you how and what happened. When I had this problem out of the box, I called for netgears free 90 day support. They were horrible! They answered the phone without a long wait, but they knew very little about this product. They gave me an RMA and I received the new router. Unpakced the replacement and same problem. Updated firmward to latest, and followed all the troubleshooting on the netgear site and I still coudln't fix it. Just when I was ready to return it to amazon I found out how to fix the problem. There is a setting on the router for preamable and it is set to auto by default. Auto is supposed to detect if the card(s) support short preamable (short is usually only useful when there is a lot of interference from other wireless devices in and around the home and most cards don't even support it). I changed the setting from auto to long and that fixed the reboot problems. I have gone around to as many forums as possible to try and post the solution so that others can cure themselves of this problem. It works great now that I found out what the problem was. This is not a router for a novice computer user. If you are a novice I suggest you get a linksys product. This netgear has a lot of features for the price though, and this is just a stupid problem with the firmware. Hrd2k

I have owned the WGT624 since November 2003 (version 1), and have never had a problem with it that I can recall. I don't know what a lot of these other reviewers are doing to theirs, but mine works flawlessly. I have recently updated the firmware to the latest version (4?) without even a hiccup. SPI is enabled and the WGT624 doesn't lose any speed with my 3.0 Mbit Comcast ISP (thru a Motorola SB5100 cable modem). All wireless devices I own work without a problem, and the WGT624 has never, ever, spontaneously rebooted on me! This router is secure, port forwarding works like a charm, and it takes little to no expertise to configure the WGT624 to do what you need it to do. Granted, calling tech support is useless, but a simple search on the web with your problem will point you in the right direction. If you need to connect multiple devices to your broadband ISP, require secure wireless connections, and like the benefits of the built-in firewall, then you can't go wrong with the WGT624. Highly recommended.