Netgear WPNT511 RangeMax 240

Summary: I am a network engineer in OK. I am testing different wireless devices for vehicle transfer of data at offices. When I tested the MIMO from netgear I was astounded. ...

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Summary: I am a network engineer in OK. I am testing different wireless devices for vehicle transfer of data at offices. When I tested the MIMO from netgear I was astounded. I mounted the router on the roof and installed the pccard in my laptop. I was able to walk 600 feet with 240 Mbs connection. I then proceeded to test data transfer and was able to copy 400 MB in about 60 seconds. I then walked another 600 feet and although the signal decreased I could easily surf the net at a 5 MB connection. I use my test unit in my office so when I eat lunch across the street (300 feet away)I have a perfect signal.

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Summary: This card's working well so far. I've got a Netgear G Mimo router, and this works great with it. I don't use this at super-long distances, but ...

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Summary: This card's working well so far. I've got a Netgear G Mimo router, and this works great with it. I don't use this at super-long distances, but at 100/150 feet it works fine.
The software setup is pretty straight forward, but there was an issue with my particular computer with the Windows XP "new hardware" setup. I just uninstalled/reinstalled & tried a different option with the Windows' setup & it works fine now.

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Summary: I would steer clear of this, and of any Netgear product, since they appear to have no interest in tech support unless it's a new product or you're ...

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Summary: I would steer clear of this, and of any Netgear product, since they appear to have no interest in tech support unless it's a new product or you're paying. One call to paid tech support costs more than the hardware did. My WPNT511, a reconditioned unit, performed just fine from about February to July, 2007, in my vintage lapotp. Suddenly the SmartWizard driver software didn't appear automatically on bootup as it had before. It would not appear when I clicked on the desktop icon, or in the Startup menu. No fooling with firewall or reinstallation helped. I appealed on the Netgear support forum, which didn't help, either, in fact other members complained about a similar problem -- and no help or interest from Netgear. I now own a worthless piece of equipment, and you may imagine my opinion of Netgear.

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Summary: This product is pretty good, best performance so far I can see but only the weakness of this product is why it scan for router acess point and give the ...

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Summary: This product is pretty good, best performance so far I can see but only the weakness of this product is why it scan for router acess point and give the result, it say 73-75% is for the most router that you can't use it. Sometime even you go for like 500ft away, it keep telling same %.

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Summary: I had a Netgear FM114P router/wireless station which I was very happy with. But after a couple of years of good service the wireless crapped out. The one problem ...

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Summary: I had a Netgear FM114P router/wireless station which I was very happy with. But after a couple of years of good service the wireless crapped out. The one problem it had before was it wouldn't cover the front of my house.

After some reading I decided to try the RangeMax. It has a virtually identical web based setup to the FM114P, and it promised to extend my range.

On the range it delivered. I get good (3 bar) connections in the front of my house despite intervening metal appliances (washer/dryer stack, oven, refrigerator).

But I was disappointed to find that the actual router features are somewhat downgraded. It lets me port forward like the FM114P did, but it doesn't let me set up different logging rules for the different port forwarding. With the FM114P I could log hits to ssh and mail, and drop hits to my web server, for instance. There is no way to do that with the RangeMax. In fact, logging on the RangeMax is pretty much unconfigurable in any useful way.

And I recently discovered that iSight video conferencing, which I could just barely do before with my parents across the country (me dsl, them cable), now no longer works (too poor a connection). I have the old router setup too and confirmed that switching back to it fixes the problem.

I'm really not sure why the RangeMax, which is from the same company, can't deal with the video traffic. Is it doing too much packet inspection? When I do download/upload tests I get the same performance as I did with the older router, so I'm not sure what's special about video.

All in all if you don't need logging functionality, and aren't using video conferencing, the RangeMax is a good router and will extend your working wireless range. But beware the cons. They are going to force me to try again with a different router.

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