Netgear MR814 802.11b Wireless 4-Port Cable/DSL Router Electronics

Average Rating:

Had a little bit of trouble getting the router and modem to "speak" to each other, but it basically had to do with the fact that you have to fully unplug (electrical, cable, etc.) the modem and let it sit for a few minutes prior to re-plugging in the router (so it can reset).

Upstairs I loaded the driver for the adapter and had to go through the process a few times before the PC would actually recognize it. But, once it did, the amber lights went on and we were live!

All in all, it took me about 45 minutes from opening the boxes to being wireless. Pretty painless and no lag at all from the wireless network. We can both be online with no delays. It works great! I would highly recommend this setup and with the prices coming down/rebates, you can probably pull it off for arond [$$$].

Hope this helps!

Joe V.

On the whole, I am considerably happier with the Netgear MR814. I've summarized many of the advantages below, roughly in order of importance. (Because the Linksys BEFSR41 is not a wireless DSL router, this review will not address the wireless capabilities of the Netgear MR814.) However, I should first point out that there are three notable disadvantages to the Netgear, relative to the Linksys.

(1) One fairly serious drawback is that the Netgear appears to drop idle SSH connections to the outside world, and the idle timeout appears to be an extremely short period of time. I've tried to utilize some anti-timeout mechanisms that my SSH client has, but to no avail. I am hoping this anomalous behavior will be remedied with later firmware releases (the most current as of this review is version 4.09). (2) Another drawback is the lack of UPnP support. I didn't rely on UPnP with the Linksys, so the Netgear's lack of UPnP doesn't affect me at all, but I figured I should mention it. (3) Finally, the Netgear port forwarding feature does not allow the user to specify whether only TCP connections, only UDP connections or both are forwarded, as you are allowed to do with the Linksys. My assumption is that the Netgear always forwards both TCP and UDP connections, but some other reviewers seem to indicate that just the TCP connections are forwarded. In any event, my port forwarding for services such as SSH, SMTP, HTTP, HTTPS, and IMAPS appear to work fine with the Netgear.

Now on to some key advantages of the Netgear over the Linksys.

ADVANCED DHCP FEATURES. While in DHCP mode, the Netgear can reserve a particular IP for a particular machine, ensuring that the machine always gets assigned the same IP. You just specify the IP you want to reserve and the MAC address of the machine you want to reserve it for, and the Netgear will always give that machine the specified IP. Also, the Netgear allows you to limit the range of IPs that are available in DHCP mode, restricting the number of DHCP clients you allow in your local network.

DYNAMIC DNS SUPPORT. Those who use dynamic DNS will be pleased to know that the Netgear has a dynamic DNS feature built-in -- namely, it has the ability to contact the DynDNS server and update your IP information whenever your DSL provider assigns you a new IP. No need to run a ddclient daemon on one of your machines to check for IP re-assignment every 15 minutes; the Netgear will handle this task on its own.

WARRANTY/RELIABILITY. While the Linksys offered a measly one-year warranty, the Netgear has a three-year limited warranty. And as I mentioned above, the Linksys failed on me on two occasions; once was immediately after purchase, and the most recent was two years later. Both times the Linksys simply locked up with the red diagnostic light permanently lit after it was power cycled.

CONTENT BLOCKING. I myself don't use these features, but the Netgear allows the administrator (presumably, a parent) to block access to certain URLs and to certain services, and this content/service blocking can be set to follow a schedule (e.g. access to URLs containing the keyword "adultsonly.fake.domain" is blocked from 7am to 10pm Monday - Friday). Attempts to access blocked sites or to use blocked services will be logged, and the logs can be sent periodically via email to some specified email address.

VPN PERFORMANCE. Although I haven't run any controlled experiments, it is clear that my VPN connection to work is dramatically faster than it was with the Linksys. I'm not certain why this is, but the difference is undeniable.

WEB ADMIN UI. The Netgear's interface to its web administration utility is much cleaner, more navigable and more helpful than the Linksys's web admin. Also, the response time for the Netgear web admin pages is far shorter than it was with the Linksys. I remember that it used to take many seconds to click between pages in the Linksys web admin.

CONFIG BACKUP. A nice auxiliary feature is that you can save your router configuration to a backup file with the Netgear and reload the config settings from the file later. This feature is especially nice if you use the port forwarding and have a long list of services that you had to input manually (e.g. SMTP, SSH, HTTPS, IMAP, IMAPS, etc.).

It has 1 x 10Mb/s WAN port, 4 x 100Mb/s Ethernet wired ports, as well as 11Mb/s 802.b11 wireless access. It makes an excellent replacement for my Linksys since it provides much of its functionality with wireless access added. It can be configured using a browser and it has one of the best configuration interfaces I've seen. The following comments related to the latest version of the firmware: 4.09.

It has a configurable firewall that supports port forwarding and can be set to block specific ports to selected internal IP addresses. All blocking can be scheduled to operate only at specific times. It can also block specific websites, a feature I don't have any use for. It cannot, however, block specific MAC addresses, which is an important feature if you are using DHCP. Even if you are not, static IP address can be easily changed by users on the network. Therefore, in my opinion, MAC blocking is a must for a future version of the firmware.

On the wireless side it supports up to 128-bit encryption as well as MAC filtering. It does not however allow you to disable wireless operation. For me, this is another important omission in the current firmware. Being able to schedule wireless operation times would be a nice security enhancement. Why have it run all night when you are sleeping, or during the day when you are at work?

I am hopeful that in the future the firmware will evolve to provide more useful features and perhaps drop some of the less useful ones. If it were to gain all of the functionality of my Linksys I would be extremely happy. As a minumum I believe that it should allow MAC blocking and it should allow wireless operation to be disabled/scheduled. Since this is a relatively new model there's a good chance that this will happen, especially given Netgear's excellent past record in home networking devices.