I'm a student living in Somerset - I am studying for A-levels at the moment.
I'm a student living in Somerset - I am studying for A-levels at the moment.
Member since:31.08.2006
Reviews:12
This router looks very good on paper, and has a high range of features. However, while using this I have experienced a wide amount of problems with it.
When you first access the router the you can run automatic setup to make it easier to connect to the internet using it. However, the automatic setup detected the wrong settings for our ISP, and chose PPPoE instead of PPPoA, which caused problems from the start. When we eventually got this router working, we found that the connection dropped a lot - this was bad enough because we could not get to the internet, but also caused the router to reboot, stopping any LAN file transfers between PCs. This rebooting issue was fixed with a later firmware update to the router however, but this router is no longer officially supported by NETGEAR now that v2 is out.
The router defaults to no encryption, and no access list, but has support for an access list, 64-bit and 128-bit WEP encryption, and WPA-PSK. All of these work well, though WPA is obviously recommended. The latest update also added support for VPN, which may be useful for some people. Another fault with this router however is that it is quite awkward to set up things an average user may have to use, like port forwarding - this requires making a "firewall rule" relating to the port in question, and then using this rule as a service, and specifying which WAN and LAN IPs can use it, which could be quite daunting for the average user.
The manufacturer support is poor for this model as well - the complaints on official forums about this routers connectivity problems have been mostly ignored, and this has caused more problems for NETGEAR. I have tried most things in relation to this, and have had no luck.
Overall, I would not recommend this router. Some problems may have been fixed in DG834Gv2, but this version has too many outstanding problems to be used. There are better, cheaper alternatives out there.
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Sep 2nd, 2006
very helpful by (9%):
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