Netgear Rangemax WNDR3700 Dual Band Wireless-N Gigabit Router (Black)
My entire household runs on wireless. With three computers, an Ipod, a Nook all accessing the net at any given time. The previous router, a Belkin served it's purpose for over a year but just bit the dust one day. Would not turn on. So it was off to the net for some window shopping before hitting the big box electronic store.
My original choice was the Apple Airport Extreme. A very good A/B/G/N router, and dual band as well. Where my router has to reside is on the bar between the kitchen and the dining room. Phone company says this is the only jack that is strong enough for DSL at the speed we ordered.
Coverage in a two story townhouse was ok. The desktop in the downstairs den would only get a fair connection. This I really could live with, as it was used by a family member late at night, when others were catching up on their beauty sleep. I wanted to add a USB hard drive for backup of all the machines, and went and purchased a 1TB external drive. This is where I ran into issues.
Since there are no Macs in the house, the Airport Extreme would not recognize the NTFS partition when viewed from other computers. I did speak with Apple support on this, and their suggestion was to format the drive to Fat32. I really didnt want to do this on a new drive, and end up with a bunch of partitions. Then I did some further digging, and found out the the router does not support QoS. Not a big deal right now, but in the future it can be.
Back to the net, and I found the router that has been awesome for the last two months. Netgear's WNDR3700 Dual Band Router. Now, I will agree with other people on the setup. It DOES take a long time. Once set up, and all the security features done, it was time to see what this router could do.
Constant good to excellent connections anywhere in the house. This is on two N devices, one G device. No more slow downs when everyone is logged on and transferring data, playing games, streaming video, etc. I have not had to do a single reset to the router yet. It just plain WORKS! Plugged in the USB portable drive, and I was copying data to it in no time.
The dual band capability is very nice. Although none of my personal gear supports the 5ghz band, I did have my work laptop home one evening, and logged in to do some support work remotely. Boy, having a non crowded band all to yourself is like cruising down the Autobahn at 3am. The connection was fantastic, and I was zipping away with my work. I do plan on upgrading my laptop card to dual band ASAP. I do like the feature of the router checking for updates automatically whenever I log into it then asking if I wish to apply that update. There is probably more features here than the average user may need or understand, but for us geeks it is great!
They say you get what you pay for, and although this router is pricier than your ordinary B/G/N router, it is well worth the money. I believe the folks at Netgear really listened to what customers wanted, and they put together an extremely nice product.
So if you are looking for a new router for the home and have difficulty with signals, or if you need a new router for your SOHO or SMB, give this one a shot. I am sure you will be as happy as I am.
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