Review on NETGEAR WPN824NA Wireless Mimo Router by Antonio Ashton

I would give the device 5 stars but there is a setup issue in the software and poor tech support. The router works great, I was able to connect to the internet on any computer with a good signal anywhere in my 2 story 5000 square foot home. The instructions for setting up security and encryption are sketchy, but I was able to figure it out. The problem I had was that I couldn't use file and printer sharing until I had spent over 8 hours troubleshooting and this unit was installed on a brand new Dell 5100 that shouldn't have any unusual conflicts or configuration issues. Technical support was worse than useless. The website didn't say anything about troubleshooting file or printer sharing and the guy on the phone (seems to be in India) didn't even know how printer sharing works in Windows XP and when I tried to explain he said: he hung up on the page. Thank goodness Google as I was finally able to find (on "askmarvin") a solution. In XP Home, the default "Compatible NWLink IPX/SPX/NetBIOS Transport Protocol" is disabled and needs to be installed under the local Ethernet adapter and then the network setup wizard needs to be run again on each computer. I suspect configuration issues are common to all wireless routers, but it seems like this shouldn't happen on a new machine and Netgear needs to fix their installation software. I still recommend this device, but you may risk file and printer sharing if you don't have the patience to troubleshoot yourself.