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Netgear N300 Wireless Router (WNR2000)
10
final rating

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Criteria Comments Rating
  • Ease of use They brought back the old firmware that actually works! No need to trick it into thinking it has a WAN connection like the old white Netgears. great!
  • Speed / throughput I'm getting full bandwidth both ways, and my XBox Live connections improved over what I was getting with DD-WRT on a WRT54G. great!
  • Configurability / networking features Everything is working great and I've got some crazy port forwarding going on. great!
  • Reliability No comments —
  • Range Range is as good as I want it to be in a tight neighborhood. great!
  • Durability It's been running since last winter with no problems. great!
Detailed review
I bought this when my WRT54G running DD-WRT went belly up. I had been a huge Netgear fan in the past, but blacklisted them when the white models came out with that ghetto firmware that wouldn't let you configure it until it had a WAN connection. I was in a pinch and this was on sale at Wal Mart, so I decided to give them another chance since the Pro Safe line we use at work had won back some of my favor. I was thrilled to find that tricks were no longer necessary to get in and configure the thing. It has been remarkably stable and hasn't given me any problems even though I use a wide variety of chipsets with it, including all the random ones that pass through my house as I work on computers for others. I've got XBox and some other services port-forwarded through it and have not had a single issue with that. This has been so good that I probably won't bother looking for DD-WRT compatible routers when I finally have to replace it. I'll just buy another Netgear. This has also brought me back to recommending the brand to others once again. I'm rarely happy with computer gear of any kind, so this is no small miracle.

So, for something I wasn't expecting to be impressed by at all, I have to say this is a great router which works well in my multi-switch, high bandwidth network. Bravo Netgear!