NETGEAR DG834G 54 Mbps Wireless ADSL Firewall Router - wireless router

Author's product rating:   

Speed	Very fast
Reliability	Excellent
Ease of Installation	Excellent - very quick and easy
Ease of use	Easy
Value For Money	Excellent

Advantages:	All - in - one package, ease of use, advanced features .
Disadvantages:	Price

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

Until recently, home networking has been the domain of nerds, and rich ones at that. Not only did a home network require at least two (expensive) PCs, but also the other relevant equipment which itself wasn't exactly as cheap as chips (to quote another "Duke").

There has been much grumbling in this household about the amount of time that I spend online hogging the phone line and I had always promised that as soon as I considered broadband to be within my price range, I would sort out this problem and everyone would be happy.

Well, that day has arrived, and as the resident nerd it's up to me to sort out the whole sorry mess. As I usually find, the problem to be solved wasn't exactly straightforward. Chez Duke has two PCs, in two separate rooms, on two different floors. The PC at the very top of the house is the one used most often, but it's the second PC, on the floor below, which is right beside the phone point. As you can imagine, the long phone extension cable running down the stairs created all sorts of havoc, especially when checking emails or chatting on instant messaging and someone kicked the lead out of the phone socket or demanded some phone time. Although my solution was a lot more expensive, physically wiring the PCs together was too huge an undertaking, especially since the wiring would be semi-permanent.

The final point was that I didn't want one PC to be some sort of "master" (i.e. needed to be switched on to be able to enable the broadband connection) and I was looking for a solution where either PC could be booted up and used irrespective of the state of the other.

Due to restrictions with wiring and the like, I had to resort to the more expensive wireless technology, and my research around the internet led me to the Netgear 54Mbps Wireless ADSL Firewall Router (with 4 port switch). Phew, what a mouthful, eh? This set up would mean that the PC beside the phone point would be physically connected to the router whilst the PC at the top of the house would be connected wirelessly which solves all my problems!

I can hear you all running away in terror at the horrible jargon, so stop! Return! I shall try to explain to you what this is all about.

I suppose the best place to start is the ADSL part. You probably know ADSL better as Broadband. Broadband is a fast internet connection (depending on the speed of the most common broadband connections it can be between 4 and 10 times faster than your ordinary modem connection). ADSL is generally associated with BT telephone lines. If you are running your phone line/broadband connection through a cable company such as NTL, you'll need slightly different equipment.

Wireless is also pretty easy to explain, cos it means you don't have to use wires. It's as simple as that.

As an aside: Wireless network technology may also be described as 802.11a, 802.11b or 802.11g, and you shouldn't panic if you see these complicated looking numbers. The 'g' suffix at the end of the numbers indicates that the speed of the connection is 54 Mbps, transmitted at 2.4GHz whereas the 802.11 indicates the protocol (or interface) used to transmit and receive the data. 'a' and 'b' suffixes mean that the same interface is used, but at different speeds and frequencies. It's more common to see 802.11b and 802.11g these days. 802.11b and 802.11g are compatible as they transmit information at the same frequency, although 'g' is approximately 5 times faster than 'b'.

A firewall isn't a big nasty thing looking to kill you either. A firewall is a piece of hardware or software (in the case of the Netgear, it's hardware) which monitors internet signals going to and from your PC and has the ability to restrict access, based on your settings, stopping anything that you don't want accessing your PC. If you're looking to have a broadband internet connection (or any kind of internet connection which is pretty much on all the time), a firewall is a must.

Another part of this all-in-one package is the router. A router is typically described as something which enables two different networks to talk to each other. The router sits between these two networks and generally gives information the best path to take to get to the required destination.

Finally, we move onto the switch. A switch is a piece of equipment which gathers information from and distributes to a variety of sources (in this instance, it will be to and from all the computers in your network). It may also be required to act as a filter as well.

Essentially then, the Netgear 54Mbps Wireless ADSL Firewall Router provides you with a broadband modem and hardware firewall base unit whilst allowing you to network your computers together without the inconvenience of wires, although that option is also open to you.

Inside the box, you'll find the actual base unit along with a power supply, a micro filter, two cables, the driver software on CD and the instructions.

The instructions are very clear and give precise details on exactly what you will need, although it's worth reading these before your ADSL connection is switched on in case you need extra equipment. Everything you need to connect to your broadband is contained within the box with two exceptions. If you wish to connect wirelessly, then you will need to purchase a separate wireless network card/device (typically priced somewhere between £30 and £50) and you may have to invest in extra micro filters (apart from the one you use to connect the router to the phone line, you'll need extra ones for each phone you have connected to an extension in your house at around £5 each.) It's advisable to have these at hand before you install the hardware as voice communications through the telephone lines can interrupt your broadband connection (and the microfilters keep the voice and broadband signals separate).

Installation was incredibly easy, and between unwrapping the package and reading the instructions, the first PC in the house was connected to my broadband connection within ten minutes all thanks to the incredibly easy Setup and Detection Wizard which automatically detected practically all the settings I needed to use. Bear in mind that five minutes of this was because I kept mistyping my login details for my broadband connection, and you'll see how simple this process is! The CD which accompanies the base unit is exceedingly useful at this point, giving advice and providing tutorials and troubleshooting guides should anything go wrong. It does get a bit technical in places, but is clear and easy to understand where it really counts.

The base unit itself is roughly just smaller than the size of an A4 sheet of paper in terms of desk footprint and roughly an inch and a half high (not including aerial), although there are screw holes on the bottom/back for wall mounting if desk space is limited. It's very plain looking with a few status lights across the front and the power socket and network ports along the back. The status lights, which indicate power and network activity through the 4 physical ports, the wireless connection and the broadband connection, are clear and easy to see.

Once initially installed, setting up the router/firewall is slightly more difficult. The instructions are sadly not as helpful here and many 'ordinary' users may find themselves out of their depth when trying to set up some of the slightly more advanced aspects such as the firewall but generally, most people should be able to get themselves up and running with no difficulties whatsoever. When accessing the base unit to change or update settings, there is an explanation of each setting to the right hand side of each page, although these may be a bit too jargon-y for a lot of people. That's not to say that it's impossible, because it's easy to set up restrictions to stop your little ones from accessing www.britneyinthebuff.com or www.swearyhumour.org, but tackling something more advanced may leave you scratching your head.

It's important if you are using a wireless connection to secure your connection. I found the manual to be woefully unhelpful at this stage, but found an excellent piece of (general) advice at http://www.pcnineoneone.com/howto/80211bsecurity1.html. (as an aside, there is plenty of great help on a large range of computing topics at this site and is well worth a look!)

The last thing that I did was change the default password for the router as an additional security measure, and satisfied that I had done this correctly, turned my attention to surfing the internet.

Browsing speed, download speeds etc. were all excellent indicating that I had properly connected the first PC to the router/firewall via the network cable, and that I could turn my attention to the second PC which was to be connected wirelessly.

This again was easily done. For simplicity, I used a Netgear wireless network card (WG311) because some people recommend using a card of the same make as your router, but this is not a necessity. Once again, I tested the connection and everything was excellent.

Setting up the network aspect of the system was also easy enough, by running Windows XP's Networking wizard on both PCs. As the router/firewall had already done a lot of the work previously, it was a simple matter of typing in a few names and letting it be. I can now swap documents between the PCs and play games, too.

I've been using the router/firewall now for a few weeks, and as the advert says, the better something works, the less we realise that it's there. This is no less true of the router, and while the performance of it depends also on my wireless network card and my broadband connection (both of which have also been top notch in the same time period), I have been impressed by the ease of installation and accompanying documentation and support options from the website.

Now everyone in the household is happy. The phone line is again free and both computers can simultaneously connect to the internet at speeds better than our previous dial-up connection could provide. If there ever comes a time when I need to add more computers to the network, then this isn't a problem as this piece of equipment can connect up to 253 computers to the internet connection (4 via a cable connection and the rest wirelessly).

If you're looking for further technical information on this router/firewall, then the official site is at: http://www.netgear.com/products/prod_details.php?prodID=223

Total cost of this system:
Netgear 54Mbps Wireless ADSL Firewall Router (with 4 port 10/100 Mbps switch): £122.42
Netgear WG311 54Mbps Wireless PCI adapter: £51.69
Pipex 512 Xtreme Solo Broadband connection: £23 per month (inc. VAT)

One of the PCs already had a network port built in, so I didn't need a network card, although you can pick these up fairly cheaply at around a tenner if you need one and extra networking cable can be picked up easily as well. If you don't know where to get any, you could try Maplin at http://www.maplin.co.uk/

The equipment may be a bit on the expensive side, but I already feel that the cost has been justified. If you're facing a dilemma similar to mine, I can't recommend the Netgear 54Mbps Wireless ADSL Firewall Router (with 4 port 10/100 Mbps switch) highly enough.