Netgear WGT624NA Wireless G Firewall Router

10 Review to this product

• 

  Bruce Dickey
  November 25th, 2010 on 1:37 pm

  Rating

  I purchased a comparable Linksys because my son had one. Duh? It was problematic. It was nice talking to the Linksys support Tech in the Phillipines though. It took about an hour to update the firmware. Then it failed.

  Netgear has a cool installation CD that walks you though the otherwise complicated process. A buddy recommended it but I went with the Linksys first. So it was a great side by side comparison. Netgear wins.

  I purchased the Netgear 108 speed over the Linksys 54 speed. It is great. The doubling of area covered by the wireless is stretching it though I think. But it is sufficient for most users.

  My buddy, who’s loaded, bought a printer hub and he loves it, another ninety bucks, I passed for now.

  The Netgear USB Adapter is great as well. Pay particular attention to allowing Windows to accept the unsigned approval by Microsoft. You can trust Netgear, we did finally and it works. If you mess up here during the install. I let my son 14 try it. I forgot to give him the warning slip to accept and he didn’t he declined. You have to go to windows and search for hardware attached to add it back to the system. That was a pain, I should have followed the directions. They should reprint the instructions on that. It’s great.

  My wife’s new Inspiron required a critical update when it came in from Dell. It hooked up to the NetGear wireless with no problem. It allows you to lock in approval for your devices on the WAP encryption so it quits telling you things are hooking up. Once you Trust the device and click the boxes it’s permanent. I like having a closed secure network. I love my neighbors and they can come over anytime and use my computer…… grin

  Good luck on your foray into wireless computing. My main system hooked to the Ethernet port, there are four. Netgear also allows you to connect through USB and includes both cables, which shocked me. Usually you have to buy cables, it’s like one you use on newer printers. Pretty cool I thought.

  High Speed surfer in Arkansas
• 

  IMca07
  November 25th, 2010 on 4:53 pm

  Rating

  (…)I actually purchased a Linksys WRT54G just a month before I picked up this netgear unit and am quite pleased that I did. The two reasons why I went the netgear route instead of sticking to my linksys box were (1) the netgear box has the additional SPI firewall in addition to the NAT and (2) the overall transmission range of the unit was significantly greater.

  (…)Although all wireless units have their specific advantages/disadvantages, I feel that this unit strikes a good balance for my needs.

  I would recommend though not to just stick to the default settings that netgear provides (I felt that they did not give adequate instructions as to how to use the robust set of security features they have available). Take the extra 10 minutes or so and actually change the default security settings (they are OFF by default). That is, I would do the following tasks the second it comes out of the box: (1) change the router’s password; (2) enable WEP or WPA-PSK (preferred); (3) change the network SSID name from its default; (4) disable the SSID broadcast; and (5) use the Wireless Card Access List to filter MAC addresses. With those tasks accomplished, you should actually feel somewhat secure. (I emphasize this because at my house I can access over 6 wireless networks that are completely wide open and have zero security whatsoever)
• 

  J. Sundquist
  November 25th, 2010 on 7:43 pm

  Rating

  I bought this router to replace a Netgear MR814 v1 that I outgrew.

  Right out of the box, this router worked without changing any settings at all! I turned off all pc’s and my cable modem, connected the router, turned on my cable modem, then the router, then the pc’s. Everything worked like a champ.

  Next I went into the web interface (which you can get to by opening Internet Explorer and typing 192.168.0.1 into the address bar, then type in the user and password) to setup the security settings. I was very impressed to see all of the latest security features included. Probably the one feature that I like the best was the auto firmware upgrade feature. The firmware of the router is what tells the router how to work. New versions of firmware can fix problems as well as give you new features. On many other routers the process of upgrading the firmware can be quite difficult for “normal” people that aren’t techies. With this router, you just click “Firmware Upgrade” and it will go out to netgear, find new firmware if available, and install it all automatically for you. Great feature.

  Range was also a big deal for me as the house it was being installed in was a split 3 level house with the router being in the 2nd floor. I never used to be able to go outside at all with my old router and the signal in the bottom floor was always very weak. This router lets me have full coverage throughout the house and venture off into my backyard to the edge of my property! Amazing improvement. I am using the Netgear WGT511 card in one laptop, the 802.11b pci card in a desktop downstairs, and a wired card in a desktop upstairs, all with no problems at all.
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  B. Altevogt
  November 27th, 2010 on 12:15 pm

  Rating

  Contrary to some reviewers I had absolutely no trouble connecting WGT624 Router to my Motorola Cable Modem and Mac G5. It was as simple as following the 5 easy steps laid out in the instruction manual. Had it up and running in less than 20 minutes. Have not have a problem in the 2 months I have been using it. Use it nightly, both on the T1 ports and the wireless capability. Often use both at the same time and find no bondwidth issues.
• 

  Anonymous
  November 27th, 2010 on 3:59 pm

  Rating

  This is the first wireless router I ever have. I have been using two wired routers and I am not comfortable with the security of wireless Wi-Fi products for a long time. WEP is a little better than nothing. WPA is the more secure protocol I would like to use.

  It took less than 10 minutes to finish basic setup after I had attached WGT624 (version 2) to my wired router so that my notebook with Windows XP could talk to WGT624 wirelessly. I then tighten up security on WGT624 with the following:

  1. Change admin password from ‘Set Password’ menu.
  2. Basic Wireless Settings:
  Change SSID Name
  Select ‘WPA-PSK’ (Wi-Fi Protected Access Pre-Shared Key) from Security Options, Enter a Pass phrase. Apply the same settings on the notebook.
  3. Advance Wireless Settings:
  Uncheck the option ‘Enable SSID Broadcast’ to make my wireless network invisible. Only authorized clients with the correct SSID can connect to my network. Then I add my notebook to the access list.

  It seems that it takes a little longer for WGT624 to update the settings. You should be patient. I change one setting at a time so that I can change it back with a wired connection. Sometimes, I have to reboot the notebook to re-connect to it.

  You can turn off wireless feature whenever you want.

  When everything works, I replace my wired router with WGT624. I update firmware without problems. The security features are great.
• 

  doppelganger
  November 27th, 2010 on 6:52 pm

  Rating

  It’s fast, easy to set-up and fun to sit on the couch and browse. For two or more people living under one roof with lap-tops, it definitely makes sense. I don’t know why I didn’t do this sooner.

  For those of you not router savvy (myself included), connect the computer you intend to be wireless through the router FIRST with a hardline, make an internet connection and THEN make a wireless connection. You may have to adjust settings in (XP) control panel. …
• 

  Ali Agha
  November 29th, 2010 on 4:57 am

  Rating

  Netgear WGT624 works great. Installation was simple. I download windows vista driver before I begin and burn a CD as recommended by netgear. Router works great but drops Internet connection. If you have the same problem then change IDLE TIMEOUT in BASIC Settings under Internet service provider login. This timer logs you out from Internet connection when there is no Internet activity. I set it to 0 to not logout. Since then the router works fine and I am enjoying greater speed.
• 

  B. Hinton
  November 30th, 2010 on 8:44 am

  Rating

  First, let me preface, like many have posted, the unit can reboot continously. However, this can be FIXED and the unit is rock stable afterwards. The solution: Update the firmware. Unfortunately, the automatic “check for firmware updates” menu function does not do this correctly.

  Go to Netgear’s website and download firmware V4.2.6_1.0.1. After downloading, manually update the router from the “Router Upgrade” menu.

  The link to the firmware is:
  
  http://kbserver.netgear.com/support_details.asp?dnldID=900

  Prior to the upgrade, under heavy load (ie. Bittorrent), the unit would reboot continously and lock up after 6 hours. Since the upgrade, the router now has handled 6+ days of a continous heavy load (300k down, 50k up) without as much as a hiccup.

  As for the router itself, it is beautiful and functions perfectly. It has a small footprint than almost every other router available and hosts every conceivable option necessary. The only function it does not have is QoS (quality of service), but I have never encountered a situation where it would be necessary. I’ve had VoIP for over a year now and not once has heavy downloading affected my phone quality.
• 

  SB
  November 30th, 2010 on 4:44 pm

  Rating

  Good router, nice firewall features and affordable

  I have had this router for about 3 month now, it works great. Excellent firewalls features, and for the price you can’t do much better. A lot of bad review on this piece of hardware, most of the complaints is about the dropped connections. I happen to know a lot more about networking then those people, and can tell you how to solve that problem very simply. I too was experiencing a lot of dropped connection, I rebooted the router and changed a few of the setting and now it work perfect. No dropped connections.
  
  Take the following steps if you are having the same issue:

  Access the routers setting through your browser by going to http://192.168.0.1/ , default user name should be Admin, and the password, is password.

  Go to the “advanced” category and select WAN SETUP and make sure Connect Automatically, as Required is checked.

  Then go to “basic setting” under the SET UP category. Go to Idle Timeout (In Minutes) the default setting will be I believe 10 or 15 min. change that to 0 (ZERO). This will prevent you router from disconnecting when it is not in use.

  This should solve you dropped connection issue. It did for me.

  Enjoy….
  
• 

  Donald L. Westermeyer
  December 1st, 2010 on 5:45 am

  Rating

  This router when paired with the Netgear WG511T does a very good job. The range is significantly better than other access points I’ve used (like the DLINK 614+ and 713P). I have the WAP in a corner of the house downstairs and I can use it at the other corner of the house, upstairs, and on a waterbed with nearly a full speed connection (a claimed connection speed of 96Mbps). A file copy transfer speed was about 40Mbps, which is close to copies done on a wired LAN and really is 10x faster than when using the DLINK 802.11B routers (This is not a shot at DLINK which in fact does have good products IMO).

  The router contains the usual set of configuration options including dynamic DNS support and a port forwarding. There is also “block sites” list by domain and/or keyword. I don’t really see much this because IMO nobody is going to type in all the bad sites into a router.

  One very nice feature is one can update the firmware with literally one button click. All these routers update the firmware after the product is released and feature makes the update pretty painless. My new router was apparently already several updates behind they day I bought it. After clicking the button it connects to a Netgear server to do the update. You can also update it from a disk file if needed.

  The router does UPnP as all of them do now, but you have to explicity turn it on via one of the setting pages. Seems like most people would want that on.

  One of the goodies on the install disk is some kind of ‘special edition’ “Freedom” brand firewall program from Zeroknowledge. It seems to be at least adequate but I’ve never heard of them before. It contains an ‘ad blocker’, but the ad list is poorly populated (they claim to update this list). You appear to get free updates to this software so there may be some potential here, especially if they did a better job with that ad list.

  Overall this is a good product for the price and highly recommended.