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Review on Netgear WGB511 802 11G Wireless Networking by Cool Martin

Revainrating 4 out of 5

My loyalty to Netgear is waning.

I've always used Netgear and never had any major issues with it (just some compatibility issues with some vendors) so I plugged it in as an upgrade to my Netgear 802.11b router [ .] and the setup -Wizard could not connect. I called Netgear support for help and after an hour of random attempts they told me my cable modem wasn't compatible with their router (what?!). They tell me to put a hub in between and it will work. Luckily I had a hub lying around so I tried it and it worked. Although this is very unnecessary. I'm online now and the enabled laptop network card works fine, but my roommate can't connect to the router. He has a card from another provider (I think Airlink) and it can connect to other boats but not mine. So he has to go and buy a Netgear card that works. I'm also trying out my Linksys gaming network bridge, which I've set up correctly, but it keeps having to reset after transferring <1 gigabytes of traffic. Some of these issues may be related to the devices and not the router, but I doubt it. Why do we have such vendor compatibility issues with this router? Btw i got this to run my tivo at 802.11g speed but recently i found i could do this better with two linksys WGR54g routers and new firmware. from sveasoft, which allows you to work in bridge mode. In conclusion, rough setup and vendor interface issues I had with previous Netgear devices make me think I'll be switching to Linksys from now on.

Pros
  • Electronics
Cons
  • Not as thick as other options