Ungeared

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I’ve been a long-time user of Netgear products. I have a WGT624 wireless router and several machines with WGT311 wireless network adapter. I’ve even recommended many friends and family members the same set of wireless products for their own networking needs due to Netgear’s easy-to-setup and cost-effective solutions. I’ve encountered a few problems over the years, but one recently that really threw me over.

I could cope with a wireless router that had heating problems – causing itself to lock up once in a while requiring a manual restart, and wireless signal problems at a computer literally 2 meters below the router (downstairs), but I can’t cope with dying hardware. And I’m not the only one with these problems. Previously when Netgear did host a community forum, it was full of overheating and signal problems, I guess it wasn’t exactly the type of publicity they were looking for.

I had a network adapter just die on me. One hour it works fine, and next it was in heaven. I’ve tried uninstalling/reinstalling drivers and even taking the card and moving it into a different PCI slot. I’ve tried changing configurations on the router and everything else I knew. It just won’t connect anymore.

Does anyone recommend any networking solutions? I’ve heard no issues from any Belkin customers. D-Link on the other hand is even worse. And would anyone have experience having a Belkin adapter connecting to a Netgear router?

9 insightful thoughts

  1. I always thought Netgear was the way to go (good marketing I guess). After I had bad luck with a single Linksys problem many years ago, I tried two Netgear products, an adapter and a router. Both died. Now I’m back to the lesser of two evils. Linksys may not be great, but I haven’t had any dead hardware from them (yet!).

  2. Linksys! That’s right. I always forget about Linksys. And they have custom firmwares and stuff too, right? Looks like its a choice between Belkin and Linksys now.

  3. I’ve been using LinkSys products for longer then I can remember and I’ve never had a problem with them. Netgear on the other hand… *shudder* I dont even like to think about my old Netgear router.

  4. Stay away from D-Link – i have DI-624 wireless router with their Xtreme boost thing (whatever its called) and when it works it works like a charm (with compatible D-Link card) but when it starts causing problems its nothing but disaster. The router has random periods of time (going for hours something) where it will loop itself into rebooting cycle. Sometimes it drops connections. I keep updating firmware as they are releasing it, but everytime i do so it fixes one problem and creates 5 others. I am not on firmware version -2 from current waiting for them to fix the problems introduced in the latest firmware.
    I have Linksys 4 port wired router and NEVER had any problems with it. Works like a flawlessly. One note though – over year ago i bought Linksys wireless router (cant remember the model) and it was giving me lots of problems, thats why I decided to go with D-Link. So they may have good and bad models….

  5. I have worked installing routers on a daily basis at a consumer level and I still do like Netgear. I personally own a couple of them. Are they the best? No. Are they better than many of the other options out there? YES

    Linksys has been on the bad side of the company I work for for the last 2 years because they lock up and over heat substantially more than any other router. For every Netgear that goes bad I can give you 4 Linksys routers. I have 3 high end Linksys router and they are all garbage. I wouldnt buy another Linksys or even recomend them for any reason.

    The reason Linksys routers lock up is very simple. The power adapters they are using are over powering the routers. We found that in testing a routers power adapter the ones that fail right away are the ones that are spiking and delivering substantially too much electricity to the routers. We have spoke with them many times about this and they admitted it was a problem but have refused to fix it.

    My current one that is powering my home network is a Buffalo router. While complex and not the easiest for the average consumer to setup it is solid and I dont have to reboot it several times a day like I do with my Linksys.

  6. I’m using a D-link DGL 4300 (“gamerlounge”) and it has been working flawlessly for more than a year now, I have 2 wireless computers (an iMac and a laptop) I never had to restart the router due to lost connectivity. I have 3 other computers connected via ethernet cable to take advantage of the gigabit connection speed, and the few times I looked at the actual speed while copying large files, Task Manager was showing something like 80% of the max speed was used (800Mbps).

    Apart from the really annoying flash animation they put on the router’s admin page (it’s annoying when accessing it via remote desktop for example…), I have nothing but praises. Their “gamefuel” crap proved to be very useful even when not playing games: big downloads do not slow down my network much (while browsing my wife does not notice when I’m downloading Vista for example).

  7. LINKSYS WRT54G. ive had one for the past 12 months and i still havnt had to reset it yet! BELKIN are also very good. Stay away from NetGear and D-Link

  8. hi, i wouldnt go near D-link at the moment, yes they are fast, ive spent 350 quid on modem and router, its fast, but only WHEN IT WORKS

    i have a DGL4300 router, gamefuel etc, for gamers its good, but no point

  9. I’m not one to just upgrade firmware simply because a new release is out, but I had a problem with my Linksys wireless router about a two weeks ago so I did the upgrade. After over 20 years in the IT biz, I should have known better. Now the little POS locks up everyday. If anyone wants it, it will be in my trash can any day now…

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