NETGEAR WG602 54 Mbps 802.11g Wireless Access Point

10 Review to this product

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  R. Hedges
  November 18th, 2010 on 9:31 pm

  Rating

  Be careful when shopping for this-I got an old version without realizing the firmware was basically broken (version 1), so make sure you buy versions 2 or 3. The (others I have) device works great if you have version 2 or 3.
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  Anonymous
  November 19th, 2010 on 2:14 pm

  Rating

  i’ve had it running 24×7 for 10 months and have not had to mess with it once. it provides a strong signal all around a 2000 sf house plus in the basement! the signal strength appears the same regardless of where it is. setup was easy. i’m also using their pci cards in three computers.

  would recommend netgear and this product.
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  B. Carr
  November 20th, 2010 on 1:24 pm

  Rating

  I got this to expand my wireless to the other side of the house and it works great. I had the WGR614 wireless router setup already and wanted wireless far away on the other side of the house. The house is already setup with cable run through it so setting this up was a breeze. I connected a cable from the router into the wall and from the wall on the other side of the house plugged a cable into the WG602 Access Point.
  
  Just follow the directions by first connecting the AP to your computer to configure the AP and all is good.
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  Timothy J. Niblett
  November 20th, 2010 on 11:47 pm

  Rating

  This thing is handy as it will do a variety of things. It works as an access point but you can also put it in bridge mode which is quite handy. I got one for my dad and I have one as well so we can connect our PS2′s to the internet. Works like a charm.
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  Charles Chen
  November 21st, 2010 on 10:09 pm

  Rating

  I purchased this access point about a month ago for my girlfriend’s house. Her existing setup consisted of a Zoom cable modem connected to an SMC Barricade 4 port broadband router/firewall. I went over to her house, plugged an ethernet cable into the router and the acess point, plugged in a wireless PC Card into her laptop, and it was ready to go. All together no more than 15 minutes to get it up and running.

  I haven’t had a chance to play with the advanced features and security, but from the initial setup, I have to say that I’m impressed, perfect for networking newbies (although I am not, I like the idea that this hardware is easy to use and easy to set up, as all hardware should be).

  Performance wise, I couldn’t be happier. As a test, I had the AP set up in a room on the second floor of her house and walked outside with the laptop. Roughly 70-80% connection quality around 3/4 of the exterior of the house and roughly 50-60% connection quality on the farthest side of the house, which is not bad IMO considering it’s going through several walls. The AP also works flawlessly with both 802.11b and 802.11g clients.
  Although when a “b” client connects, all “g” clients are dropped to 11Mbps, this is a behavior that is common to all current generation “g” chipsets. I am a “b” client while all the users in my gf’s house are “g” clients, works flawlessly.

  Aside from the above, the Netgear WG602 is probably the best looking AP that’s out there on the market. It’s very stylish and unobtrusive. Sizewise, it’s not much larger than a sandwich. It comes with a very practical vertical stand for added convenience. As a side note, Netgear is perhaps the only manufacturer that gets these stands right; it actually holds the AP up stably.

  In summary, this is an excellent choice for customers who already have some sort of wired network in place. It’s great for those who are less technically inclined as it should pretty much work right out of the box.
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  Eldho Thomas
  November 22nd, 2010 on 6:11 am

  Rating

  I just got this a week ago along with a Netgear WG511 PC Card. It looks really neat. And works great. The setup was a breeze. I just connected the access point to an ethernet switch connected to the router. Installed the PC card and it immediately detected the WLAN. Configuring the access point took a little while because my network’s IP range is from 192.168.1.1 to 192.168.1.255. The access point comes with a preset IP address of 192.168.0.227. To access the AP from a PC that is connected to my network over ethernet, I had to change the IP address of that PC to start with 192.168.0. The PC card shows the signal strength as “EXCELLENT”, “VERY GOOD”, “GOOD”, “LOW”, “VERY LOW” etc. I did some benchmarking on this. In the same room, the signal strength is shown as “EXCELLENT”. I copied 25MB of files from the other PC to my notebook. It took 1 min 7 seconds. Over an ethernet connection between the same two computers, it took only 53 seconds. Then I took the notebook to another room (2 walls) and the signal strength was shown as “VERY GOOD”. With 3 walls in between it was still “VERY GOOD”. Interesting thing is that I didn’t see any noticeable delay in copying the same 25MB files. I took the notebook to upto about 180ft (2 walls in between). The signal strength became “VERY LOW” and it also got disconnected after a while. With more than 2 walls in between, irrespective of the distance, it becomes very unreliable. I keep my access point in the basement in a corner room. I cannot get signal on my ground floor at the opposite corner of the house. I think it is safe to assume that we should get upto 200 ft with no walls in between.
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  Nom de Guerre
  November 23rd, 2010 on 10:12 am

  Rating

  OK, I’m gonna have to laugh. Many of the reviews you see around the Web for electronics are laden with complaints about customer service. The reason I have to laugh is that I think this is more a symptom of our self-service society than any given company’s customer service. I mean, I’ve been having issues with an item I ordered from Home Depot, and the hospital where my son is getting treatment has lost his blood samples and then lied about it.

  But I digress. This product was a breeze to set up and has been working flawlessly for seven months. I’ve had several Netgear products in the past, and have never had a problem. I’m using encryption and MAC-filtering and both were easy to configure via the browser interface.

  My only complaint is WPA support. This particular AP doesn’t support it, and according to Netgear’s website, never will. The “V2″ will, but not this model. When I first purchased this, I was under the impression that 802.11g and WPA were synonymous. Apparently not. This AP is 802.11g compliant, but does not support WPA. If that is important to you, get the V2.
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  20 Fan
  November 23rd, 2010 on 3:17 pm

  Rating

  Truly a fast and easy installation. Make sure you do the steps correctly (there are only like 4 of them!) and you’ll be wireless in no time. It took me 5 minutes from box to install. Truly the way to go if you want to have both wired for some computers and wireless for others.
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  Anonymous
  November 23rd, 2010 on 8:03 pm

  Rating

  It took more time to unwrap the package than it did to set up the WAP and start surfing wirelessly. Without reading the instructions, I plugged the WAP into my Netgear RP614 router using the supplied Cat5 cable. I then plugged in the power supply and woke my Apple PowerBook. The PowerBook immediately recognized the WAP and was able to connect to the Internet. Amazing!

  I then opened the manual and followed the instructions for configuring the WAP. I first went to the Netgear web page and installed the latest firmware upgrade (version 1.5.67). I then changed the password, turned on 128-bit WEP encrytion (for what it’s worth), and enabled access control. The access control feature allows one to list the MAC address of the computers which are allowed to connect to the WAP. I have not yet tested wheter this feature works by denying access to unlisted MAC addresses, but I will later. I was able to get good signal in all the rooms of my 2000 square foot, wood frame house. The only difficulty I had was minor interference from a neighbor’s Wi-Fi network. I turned on the interference robustness feature on my laptop computer and this problem went away.

  My access speed through the WAP to the Internet is the same as if I were plugged directly into the router, that is, the WAP connection is faster than my cable modem connection (1.7 Mbps). I have not yet checked the computer to computer connection speed, but I will as soon as I get another computer with an 802.11g card.
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  Anonymous
  November 24th, 2010 on 5:50 am

  Rating

  I just bought the Netgear WG602 about a week ago, and I am very impressed. I also purchased the Netgear 54G Wireless PC Card. Both items work great. All I did was connect the ethernet cord (that comes with the access point) from my existing D-Link wired router and into the Netgear access point. Then I installed the PC Card software on my laptop and rebooted and done. It was up and running in 10 minutes. At about 1 foot I was connected at 100% out in the living room about 30 feet away through one wall it was between 78-86%. Then about 60 feet away through 4-5 walls it was 60%. Even at 60% the connection flew. It was just like I was connected through a wire. I then walked outside my house about 200 feet and was still connected. My dad has a Linksys 802.11b access point and can only go about 40 feet. It seems the 802.11g makes a big difference on signal strength. The access point is very stylish and the stand works great. You need to point the antenna in the right direction to make a stronger connection. Another plus is that you can replace the antenna with a more powerful one if needed. You need to secure the access point soon after you set it up. I went into the setup features of the access point and turned on authentication type to shared key. Then I turned on WEP and used the passcode feature by typing in a word. Then I turned on MAC security and added the PC card’s MAC address (which I found in the About tab) to the allowed addresses. Then I rebooted the access point. At this point of course the laptop could not connect because it was not using WEP so I went to the PC card and told it to use WEP security and used the same passcode that I had used on the access point. And then told the Netgear Wireless PC card to re-scan. It found the access point and the entire setup including tight security was done.