Netgear MR314 CABLE/DSL WIRELESS ROUTER WITH 4 PORT SWITCH 802.11B (NetGear Inc.-MR314NA)

Netgear MR314 Cable/DSL Wireless Router

MR314 CABLE/DSL WIRELESS ROUTER WITH 4 PORT SWITCH 802.11B (NetGear Inc.-MR314NA) Review, by Becky Waring July 27, 2002

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• Reviewed by: The Mighty Quahog

  Strengths: Ease of setup, reliability, AppleTalk compatibility

  Weaknesses: None

  Overall: I replaced an older wired Linksys with the MR314 and haven't been sorry. I run Mac, Windows & Linux on my network and they all play very well together. I also have a Ricoh CL-3000 plugged into it and control a Tivo2 wirelessly. Flawless. There's nothing quite like sitting on the back deck and surfing the web on a beautiful day!

• Reviewed by: maccmannmatt

  Strengths: Sorrt setup time. GREAT signal strength (better than the ME102) and range is great too.

  Weaknesses: None that I have seen yet, mainly because I have yet to see how well the firewall works. It's just NAT, but it looks as if I can specifydwhich ports I want to block and which I want to allow.

  Overall: I told myself that I'd never do this (spend the money on a router) mainly because I have an older PC that I used Win98SE's Internet Connection Sharing and 2 NICs on. I put a software firewall on it and virus scanning software and no problem, EXCEPT that since I left it running 24-7, it was also burning at 200Watts! It was almost like leaving a 200W lightbulb in my basement all the time. I couldn't se doing this anymore. Wasteful to say the least! I also had a Netgear ME102 and Linksys 5-port switch that I ran from the router-PC. Not "complicated" really, but lot's to manage in several different places. I looked at the 3Com Officeconnect Wireless Cable/DSL router first, but after looking around the 'Net I found that reviewers didn't see much difference betweem 3Com's unit and the MR314, except the price! I saved $36 PLUS the extra $30 rebate. A GREAT deal. It took less than five minutes to get up and running. No problems at all. It worked using the defaults that it came setup with. The only thing that I entered in the setup was the ESSID for the wireless. I use a Lucent Orinoco card on my work laptop that I bring home and a Cisco Aironet card on my wife's laptop. I also have both Macs and Windows-based PCs (both laptops and desktops) on my home LAN and all of them work flawlessly. A few words to the wise: REAGISTER IT IMMEDIATELY. I have heard that if you don't do this within 30-days of buying it you forfeit your rights to the 5-years of support. Good stuff

• Reviewed by: stevekulpa

  Strengths: Ease of installation, operation, documentation

  Weaknesses: After 2 months of working fine, the router stopped transmitting. It had to be replaced. Read about it below.

  Overall: When I first bought it, setup was a piece of cake. I already had my cable modem set up with a cat-5 wire to my PC. I took the router out of the box, hooked it up between the modem and my computer, turned the cable modem off, rebooted my computer, turned the modem back on, and I was done! I connected my computer directly to one of the 4 ports and then took one of the Netgear M101 USB wireless adapters up to my daughter's room (computer is in the basement, her room is on the 2nd floor). That took 5 minutes to set up (had to load the USB driver). Right off the bat she's connected. Signal strength is 50-65% (through 2 floors), but she still gets anywhere from 800Kbs to 1.2Mbs, which is excellent! ----- Ok, so it's been two months now. A couple of weeks ago my daughter's signal started to drop now and then, then it dropped completely and would not re-establish. I moved the router up a floor, but still no signal. I called Netgear support and the tech and I tried everything he could think of to so he tells me he'll call back in 1 hour. Two days later I call back and tell him I think the router's wireless stuff is dead. I bought a new adapter and that did not fix the problem. He tells me the router has to be physcally higher than the adapter for it to work. I ask why it worked fine for almost 2 months. He says "You were lucky". I then fire off a real nasty e-mail and I get a reply from "James" who then sends me a new router and now all is well for now. We'll see if it lasts.

• Reviewed by: higa

  Strengths: Ease of use. reliability

  Weaknesses: Documentation, no firewall

  Overall: I researched wireless routers HEAVILY to be sure I was buying the right one. I was hoping to get one with a built-in print server, but none of those looked to be reliable. Once I ruled that out there was no question about going with the MR314. I could find nothing but praise for it, and the price was right. I got mine at computers4sure with a MA401 wireless NIC for 180.00. I only paid for ground shipping, but it arrived the day after I submitted the order (kudos to comp4sure)! I had it wired and set up in fifteen minutes. That included: 1) Switching the wires from my old hub 2) Resetting the cable modem 3) Booting the hard wired PC 4) Logging in to the router (the hard part was finding the default name and password in the documentation) 5) Changing the admin password and setting up the wireless access filter for the mac address of my only wireless NIC. 6) Looking for and eventually determining there was no firewall functionality that I could customize. Of course that doesn't include installing the wireless NIC on my laptop. But that took less than ten minutes. I was a little disappointed about the lack of firewall capability, but I can live with my software firewall. The signal strength does drop to about 50% in some parts of the house, but I see no measurable change in throughput. Overall a very good system. It hasn't needed to be reset once in the week it has been running. I will post back if it gives me any trouble, but I doubt it will.

• Reviewed by: lcw168

  Strengths: Easy Setup. Competible price.

  Weaknesses: Needed better level One technical support.

  Overall: I Brought a defective unit from BestBuy (someone actually switched the good unit with a defective one). Called Netgear Level One support, on the phone over an hour and they were helpless. They was hard to understand with their Indian accent. Called Level Two support and spent another hour with them still unable to get it to work. A that top level engineer was suppose to call me back in two days. I suggested that the unit might be defected and he suggested to bring it back to BestBuy for an exchange. I Exchanged the defective unit from BestBuy and set it up in less than half an hour with cable modem connection. Setup home network with one Lan Printer (Cat5 cable and HP internal print server), one desktop(Cat5 cable), one desktop (MA101) and one laptop (MA401). Loving every minutes of it. I would definately recommend this to other.