Customer Reviews

NETGEAR MA311 - Network adapter - PCI - 802.11b

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

I use this card with the Netgear MR814 802.11b Wireless 4-Port Cable/DSL Router and they work together flawlessly.
I've had my network up since November every single day without spending more than 2 hours to set it all up. The signal strength I get is really good even with two floors between the router and the wireless card.
For those of you interested this card works great with Linux as well. I use kernel 2.4.24 and I never have a problem, while I had some issues with versions up to 2.4.20.

It works equally well with XP and 2K as well.

I purchased a couple of MA311s and MA401 and a MR814 access point. Installation was very simple. It installs like most other PCI cards but the instructions say to install the drivers and configuration utility first. I installed the MA311s in a Windows Me machine and a Windows 98SE box and both went in without a hitch. The antenna is removeable which facilitates installation and onced installed is easily oriented to maximize signal reception. Signal strength is very good. The router is on the third floor and one computer is on the first. Signal strength is well above 70% and Link strength is >80%.

The configuration software is easy to use and setup. Offers basic functions that support WEP and MAC address filtering of the router.

Overall a solid wireless networking card and with the current rebate offered by Netgear a fair deal.

Software & support 1 star, card 5 stars. I have two of these, and they work quite well with M$ generic drivers for Windows 2000 & XP, and Linux Orinoco drivers.

Netgear's own software is lousy on Windows- aside from the installer corrupting my registry once and putting a bunch of icons on my desktop, it doesn't add anything beyond Microsoft's. Their drivers don't even exist for Linux, but since they use a generic chipset, most distributions can support it. Their telephone support doesn't exist, and it is nearly impossible to find any helpful information on the MA311 on their website.

Those negatives aside, the card works quite well, which is the most important issue for me. If you're technically competent and don't need any handholding, this isn't a bad card.

Never worked properly in windows 2000, but that could be due to something else. However:

If you have this MA311 card in a Windows 2000 computer then upgrade to XP, IT WILL NOT WORK!

I have tried this process on two separate PCs; the card is then unusable in that machine afterwards, no amount of changing PCI slots, un/reinstalling drivers helps, you just various annoying windows errors such as 'driver installation was unsuccessful'.

Tech support are quite useless and sound very much like they're reading from a script, mainly because that's exactly what they're doing.

I bought this card with the Netgear MR814 router and I couldn't have been happier. All of the issues I had with installing the card were due to my own screwups. The reception is not bad. My PC is about 150 feet & one floor away in a big old house that my cell doesn't work to well in, so I was a little worried about signal strength, but it's just fine.

I purchased three of these cards(for myself and my kids). Installation of each card went well(no problem with win XP) configured each machine and we were on line in minutes with great range from each machine to the router(router is in the basement) I would hightly recommend this product to anyone who is thinking of going wireless!!

I purchased this to go with my 814 router. I set up the card in my kid's computer and I could not get it to work. Even though the machines could see each other, data wouldn't transmit. It looked like the WEP encryption was incorrect. I spent many hours trying to get it working and finally contacted tech support. I got a reply with a list of suggestions which I had already tried. I had a hunch that the WEP encryption probably changed the upper/lower case to something else(can't verify it since all you see is '***' because I could put in the WEP code and it would work until restarting, when it wouldn't work again. The workaround was to change my WEP to numbers only, no ascii. It has been working fine since.

Take a look at Netgear's knowledgebase and you'll see that some of these adapters are sent out misconfigured--you need to use a driver for the MA312 instead of the MA311. I'm not sure if that's the problem with mine--still waiting after an hour in the support queue. And this is the second call. Email also went unanswered. I love Netgear products and always buy them over other companies networking products but this is too much. They are forcing me to reinstall the card before they'll issue an RMA. This is despite my trying for three hours, downloading the latest drivers and everything else in their knowledgebase. (I'm a software developer so I do have some inkling of what I'm doing.)

Between D-Link, Linksys and other manufactures of wireless PCI Cards, Netgear offers the best performance, efficiency and support. I am using MA311 with the NetGear Wireless Router MR814. It works perfectly as the description says. I installed it on a AMD with WindowsXP Pro, everything is working fine. The signal strength is great as well as the link quality. I recommend buying this product if you are using NetGear MR814 as well as other wireless routers using 802.11b standard. Excellent technical support and a solid product from NetGear.

My MA311 PCI card works well when it's not in WEP (wireless equivalent protocol) mode. WEP is basically encryption that encodes the wireless traffic, providing some protection from hackers.

The MA311 does NOT work in WEP mode with the MR814 router. Period.

Technical support hold times for Netgear are typically over 2 hours. After spending a total of 3 hours on the phone with their technical support person, my problem was "forwarded" to an "engineer" at Netgear for follow-up. That was 2 months ago. They never bothered to contact me.

Not terribly impressive, the company or their product. Avoid Netgear.