( 24 reviews )
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Posted: Jul 12 2009
I needed to buy a new wireless access point because the Link Sys I had... well... stank. It would lock up and need to be rebooted at least once per day if not more. I bought this one and got it hooked up in about half an hour or so. I've had it a few weeks now and I have not needed to reboot it one time. So, why the four stars? I only wish they had put as much thought into the instructions as they did the access point. In a lot of the steps, they only tell you to do things without actually telling you how to do them. I needed to use Google to do some of the steps like changing my IP address. It also doesn't give you a lot of help on the security set up, but luckily I have done that part before and I just set it to look like my old one. All in all, it is a good little access point, they just need to put some more effort into their instructions.
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Posted: Feb 17 2009
I got hung up very early in the instructions. The instructions tell you to hook up the device to your computer, then access a particular IP address at NetGear, which is supposed to step you through the process (other wireless devices I've worked with do basically the same thing). I could not get that website to come up, even though I was definitely connected to the internet (other sites worked fine). So I called netgear's customer support, figuring it was probably a known, common problem related to Vista. After holding for 15 minutes, during which the same 3 marketing messages repeated on a 30-second cycle, I finally spoke to a support engineer. It was clear this engineer had never worked with this particular product, and that he was handling two calls at once, since he put me on hold multiple times. He was also completely unfamiliar with Vista. An hour-and-a-half into the call, he had me enter a particular IP address into my network settings; I knew that by doing that, instead of using the "automatically obtain an IP address" option, I would no longer be able to access the internet and told him so. He asked me to do it anyway, then try to access the NetGear site from the instructions (note that an hour and a half into the call, this was the first time we had even tried to do the step that I was hung up on). Of course, neither the NetGear site, nor any other, would come up at that point. He was about to put me on hold again when I finally ran out of patience and told him I'd just return the device, which I did. So I guess bottom line: If you can get it to work, great; if you need support in order to address any issues, you'd be just as well off asking your cat for advice.
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Posted: Nov 14 2008
I'll provide detail below, but to summarize my review, this product works fine as a standalone wireless access point but did not work at all for me as a wireless repeater, even when using 2 of these devices with one as the primary and the second as the repeater. Here is the problem I was trying to solve with this product...after re-locating my office and Verizon Fios Actiontec wireless router into the basement of my home, I found that the Actiontec was not strong enough to provide reliable wireless service to the front half of the first and second floors of my home. Having read the great reviews of the WPN802 as a wireless access point with very strong range, I purchased one and connected it to my router to act as its own access point (I did not attempt to use it as a repeater for the Actiontec as I have read mixed results of using other devices with the Actiontec, and also learned that the WPN802 is only supposed to act as a repeater for another WPN802). I found that the WPN802 only had marginally better range than my Actiontec, and so this wasn't a solution to my problem; given that both my Actiontec and the WPN802 were in my basement, I assumed that the foundation of the house must be interfering with the signal and so the answer was likely to place a wireless repeater somewhere above the basement. With this in mind, and ignoring other warnings in reviews that the repeater mode had issues, I purchased a second WPN802 as it seems they are only supposed to act as repeaters for another WPN802. I placed the second WPN802 on the first floor of my home and configured it as a repeater for the WPN802 in the basement; the signal from the second WPN802 was very strong, however it was impossible to connect to this second WPN802...you see, in order to configure the repeater mode both WPN802s must use the same SSID, and without fail my laptop always connected to the first WPN802 with the weaker signal. I tried this on 3 different Dell Inspiron laptops using both Dell's wireless utility and the Windows network connections utility...this is pretty common equipment. I spent 5 hours on the phone with Netgear's technical support in the Philipines trying to get the repeater mode to work; I must compliment them for their thorough and knowledgeable nature as well as responsiveness - we tried pretty much everything in terms of assigning static IP addresses, different channels, access control, etc. but nothing worked. This was not easy as we had to continually do a hard reset on the 802s, and as has been mentioned in previous reviews you need to be directly attached to the 802 to re-configure it. Their support would undoubtedly still be trying to solve the problem with me, but I ultimately chose to take a hardwired approach to solve the problem, running a CAT5e into my attic that was attached to the Actiontec in the basement and a WPN802 in the attic. The WPN802 in the attic is exhibiting great range and covering those areas not being serviced properly by the Actiontec. Due to the obvious repeater functionality flaws, I cannot rate this product higher than a 3, and I rate it at that high a level only because it does work well as a standalone wireless access point and because I was impressed by the professional nature of Netgear's support. If all I wanted was an access point however I could have gotten something cheaper, and now I have 2 of these (which thankfully I do have uses for).
