Netgear WPN824 RangeMax MIMO Wireless Router

[skippysg]

I’ve personally bricked 4 or 5 netgear wireless routers and they could not pay me to try another without some major revisions.

[Nytro69]

WOOT!

In for 2

[cnote1287]

@Minowaman

So people should buy things they don’t like with their hard earned money?

but do you buy the router for the light or for the routing? and like someone said the light can be switched off

[murphicus]

I won’t buy anything from Netgear that comes in a plastic case.

@ZX3Junglist

I also only purchase electronics whose outer casing is thinly sliced ham

I prefer packaging made of bologna. Come to think of it, most everything is packaged in bologna these days…

[quiksilver42236]

@ninestories

I have this exact make and model of router. I booted an old Belkin for this guy a few months ago for the added VPN Tunnelling support which is an amazing resource if you spend a lot of time on the road or have other demand of your home network outside of your residence or organization.

One of my only qualms is that port forwarding is limited to 20 port assignments; reasonable for home use.

Security is good, the router can be fitted with its own security services and maintains an excellent connection log. My Vista, XP, and Linux machines all get along well over the network, as do my Wii, Zune, and Blackberry.

Regarding the “annoying blue lights,” there’s a button to shut it off, geniuses. It’s a cool feature and has a nice ambience to it if you’re not an epileptic, but I keep my lights turned off most of the time. Four wired ports in the back as standard, no external antennas, feet for vertical mounting, and decent range and signal from anywhere in my apartment building.

As far as the Zune, I thought I remembered hearing that you could sync your Zune to your desktop from anywhere in your house using the wireless somehow. Have you been able to do that?

[tbergy]

All right, currently running a b-whatever wireless router for 5 college student computers and a wii. Will this work for nothing fancy wireless or is it really a piece of shit?

[MrDragon]

@ZX3Junglist

I also only purchase electronics whose outer casing is thinly sliced ham

Nah, the good stuff is housed in fruit roll-ups.

Netgear’s good stuff comes in steel cases. That is one of my favorite ‘features’ as opposed to Linksys and the other guys.

[MrDragon]

@srsomasundaram

Will it work with Windows 2003?

This is a piece of hardware, not software that you would install on Windows 2003.

[JaaLin]

i have this one - the lights get annoying at night so just put a tshirt or something over it. otherwise it’s been rock solid stable with good download speeds… if i needed another router i would pick this up.

[BIGELLOW]

@quiksilver42236

As far as the Zune, I thought I remembered hearing that you could sync your Zune to your desktop from anywhere in your house using the wireless somehow. Have you been able to do that?

I’ve been able to do it. Not with this router, mind you… mine’s a Belkin.

The feature is nice. It can automatically sync wirelessly when you plug it in the charge… or you can manually force a wireless sync on the Zune itself.

[lc78126]

@quiksilver42236

As far as the Zune, I thought I remembered hearing that you could sync your Zune to your desktop from anywhere in your house using the wireless somehow. Have you been able to do that?

http://www.zune.net/en-us/support/usersguide/musicvideospictures/wirelesssync.htm

[kihou]

I went through 2 of these before I switched to Linksys. Never looked back

[Corrado]

@tbergy

All right, currently running a b-whatever wireless router for 5 college student computers and a wii. Will this work for nothing fancy wireless or is it really a piece of shit?

I’ve had one (bought on woot a while ago) and it was my SoHo router for cable broadband through which I had networked my Vonage service, a wireless print server, and up to 4 computers.

Range was good (basement installation in a 2200 sq ft house, reached everywhere expect the family room at the far corner blocked by the concrete wall & massive brick chimney).

My only gripe (and why it’s been replaced with a Linksys) is that it would seize up regularly if I was pulling a lot of content down (massive downloads of big files). This required a trip to the basement to plug & unplug the router to restore phone & internet.

FYI, it also seems to do something odd when cloning the MAC. My MN-700 Microsoft Wifi router (my FIRST WOOT PURCHASE) works flawlessly for ‘sharing’ Hotel Ethernet on business trips (drawback: only allows 2 simultaneous WiFi users – go go gadget refurb!). For whatever reason, the Netgear managed the MAC differently and would NOT fool the host network into believing that the router was actually my laptop (and yes, I know it was set up properly).

I second the opinion that this is a great back-up router, but YMMV if you try to put five 24/7 smut-surfing college kids on it.

[MDW19873]

Netgear has been on the rise and in my experiences, is pretty reliable. However, I’m hearing bad things about refurbished ones, so I’m not sure. I personally stick to Linksys. Cisco bigot ftw.

[kenshin159]

I work for a tech company and I always carry this router. I have not had one client call me back when I have installed this on their network. Just bought 1 for myself! Much cheaper than retail (best buy has it for like 70 bucks on sale right now).

EDIT: Linksys is by far the worst brand for routers (except the fact that you can put DD WRT on them). Most of the time when my clients’ call me because of a defective router it is because they own a Linksys WRT54G.

[MDW19873]

@kenshin159

I work for a tech company and I always carry this router. I have not had one client call me back when I have installed this on their network. Just bought 1 for myself! Much cheaper than retail (best buy has it for like 70 bucks on sale right now).

EDIT: Linksys is by far the worst brand for routers (except the fact that you can put DD WRT on them). Most of the time when my clients’ call me because of a defective router it is because they own a Linksys WRT54G.

Apparently they didn’t know how to configure the Linksys. Netgear pretty much baby’s everyone, and gives you no real power. That’s great for some people, but not for a lot of others. If you want to plug it in, have it configure itself, Netgear. If you want to actually do the settings yourself and have some control over the router, Linksys.

[surfcg]

i got this last year for about 40 for new

[MrGandi]

Just Bought one. this is exactly what i needed. hope it works.

that will do woot, that will do.

[spzygiel]

@uski

According to this article in NetGear knowledge base, you can do that with that router.

Congratulations, you’ve found your new wireless access point !

HOWEVER there is a quite frightening “Potential issues” section at the bottom of that article; see:
“1. DHCP configuration may not work reliably because the wireless router/access point may not correctly relay DHCP information from the router. Workaround: Use static IPs on the wireless PCs.”
Hmmm…

Easier work around. Allow the router and the wireless router to both work as DHCP servers and give them both non-overlapping tables from which to assign from. I’ve done this on several networks and VPN environments. Works like a charm.

[Codyy]

Bought the wireless N router last time it was up…downloaded firmware and the thing wont read my IP address…useless…so no way would I go the refurbished route again…