Customer Reviews

NETGEAR 3G Mobile Broadband Router (Black)

5 star:		(30)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(21)

 

 

This replaces an older Netgear wireless router at my house. The setup was easy and worked the first try. It identified and connected to my Verizon usb727 mobile broadband card without problem. Now all my equipment has internet access.

Note that the included usb cable seems to be required for the broadband card to work. Plugging the card directly into the router powered the card, but the router reported that no usb device was plugged in.

I purchased this for use at a trade show where they were charging $250 for internet connections - it worked out even better than I expected. I was able to run my credit card machine off of it using the physical wired connection, and my laptop off of the wireless connection. No issues with the signal, and setup didn't take long at all.

This is a perfect router for those needing wireless capability and hardwire capability from a 3G router. In our case we installed our nTelos Novatel 3G aircard (I'ts the same as the (Sprint MC727)in the Netgear Mobile Broadband Router and bam! We were up and running. This router has tons of features for the cost and is very easy to setup, it took less than 5 minutes. Our entire office now runs on this 3G router, both with wireless for our laptops and hardwired for our desktop units. There are four ports on the back for hardwire capability in addition to the wireless capability!

I highly recommend this router for anyone needing to multiply the use of their 3G aircard!

Just make sure your particular aircard is compatible, but most are!

What a great little product. We need it to do in hotel room demos with a video streaming device and there was simply no way to log into the hotel internet even if it was free because the device did not have a browser. This solved all of the problems, it allowed us to stream video through it as well as log in with 2 additional laptops all on one ATT USB 3G modem. It takes about 3 minutes to configure and set this baby up and from then on it knows exactly what to do, you never have to hook it up to a computer again, make sure you set a WEP key, and then it just dials out as soon as an authorized user logs in.

I had no problems getting the router to recognize my AT&T Sierra Mercury card. The router is working perfectly.
I like that I can connect and disconnect from the internet remotely, and also reboot the router through the router software from my computer instead of running all the way upstairs to unplug the card or the router.
I am running XP SP3 with the desktop on ethernet and laptop on wireless.

I received this router and had few problems setting it up and getting it to operate. Then the problem started. I have the mercury aircard with at&t, the one that is in the ad picture. After getting it up and running, not exactly a smooth no problem operation, I noticed a speed problem. I checked my speed on speakeasy and found that I was getting download speeds of a whopping 76k and uploads of about 50K. After three hours on the phone with tech support, they managed to get my dl speed close to normal but up was about 300k. The tech guy, whom I could hardly understand, finally told me to reboot my computer and all would be ok, have a nice night seeya! and he hung up on me. When I rebooted, my speed was worse than when I started, about 36k down and even lower up. Shades of dial up. I promptly repackaged and returned to Amazon, which I would like to say makes this very easy with the print out prepaid mailer label. Thank you Amazon, you performed well, but the router was a mistake.

It never was able to detect my usb modem. 3 calls to technical support plus a firmware update failed to solve the problem. I'd avoid this product if you are using Sierra Wireless Mercury even though that's what pictured on the box and its listed as an approved USB modem for ATT on the back. It was a very bad user experience. I am using a MacBook running OSX 10.5.6

The Netgear Router is a breeze to set up and use. Best of all for my use was that it works perfect with the Verizon USB720 modem. Desktop setup is simple and direct with Windows XP-Pro. The wireless setup to my Lenovo laptop using Vista Home Basic was simple Plug-N-Play. The Netgear site lists a good selection of compatable modems. Overall a good buy with easy setup.

i ordered this thru amazon, good price, figured it was a good product, i found my wireless broadband model number on their chart, but when i got it could not get it to work unfortunately. but amazon is wonderful, was able to return it right away and purchased the cradlepoint wireless router, which works wonderfully with virgin mobile broadband.

OK, so the connectivity with both 802.11b/g wireless and to Verizon through our Verizon USB 760 modem was spotty, at best. Used it for 2 weeks, and was about to take it back. Did extensive testing, and it sure seemed like interference. So, I added another 3 foot USB extension in addition to the 3 foot cradle cable that comes with the router, which allowed me to put the modem another 2+ feet away from the Netgear router. Since doing that, it is much more relible. Before adding the extension, every single day there would be at least one phone drop and so required reboot of the Netgear router before you could reconnect to Verizon (apparently the firmware cannot automatically reconnect except the first time on boot up). So, at least now we can use it without babysitting daily (or more often).

But all is not rosy. The firewall in the router is pretty meager, by today's standards. It will block everything from the Internet that you don't explicitly open, which pretty much any of these will, but it won't do any more sophisticated analysis or protocol inspection, which many newer routers will. Probably fine for most, but if you want a current generation router/firewall, this isn't it.

And, come on, only G in this day of N routers?? There really is no excuse. I know, Netgear just came out with a N router with wireless broadband connectivity, but without any Ethernet ports (basically a very large MyFi if you ask me, and again, a two vendor solution; if you want to go that way, just get the MyFi IMO).

Let alone it's a 100 mbps switch, not 1 gbps, for the Ethernet ports - again, it's behind the times.

And it doesn't have a separate uplink Ethernet port you can use with DSL, which some others do, so there is no failover that it will support. Given we don't have DSL in the first place here, I didn't count that against it, but you might depending on your needs.

Also, the firmware in the router is only mostly OK. There is a known problem that it will sometimes stop routing some types of packets, such as when one of the connected wireless devices (clients) loses connectivity for any reason, and after that you can't print or use file shares (or even ping) that device until you reboot the router. This may indeed be related to the interference problem mentioned above, because I haven't seen this happen since I added the extension. Possibly the router gets into a bad state due to interference and reducing the interference (with distance between the modem and router) may cure or help this. But it had been an almost constant problem. Having to reboot the router just to use a printer or to let my Playstation see the computer sharing media is indeed not optimal. Before adding the extension cable, my media serving computer would lose wireless every 15 or 30 m, so it was not usable at all really.

Then there is download speed. The USB760 will get reliable 1.5 Mbps down connected to a computer and using the Verizon client app. Connected to the Router, I've rarely seen over 750 kbps (what I'm getting now). Before adding the USB extension cable, so in the context of the interference I mentioned, 400 kbps was more typical. Given you can't get more than 5 GB per month limit any longer, having a connection that's too fast is probably asking for trouble anyway, and 750 kbps is reasonable (and better than the dial up we had before). But just so you know with some modems you won't get full speed. If you read the forums, you will get full speed with other modems (most from AT&T it seems). So YMMV.

So, having looked at the options we went with this one, and now with an extra 3' extension on the USB, will probably keep it. I also looked at the Linksys alternative, but after finding that there isn't a single current modem on it's compat list, and given it's PC card and so you need a PC card to Express Card adapter to make it work (also spotty reviews), I decided to go with the USB/Netgear option. Of course, a MyFi is the other option, which is about the same cost (at least for us), but without any hard Ethernet ports we decided against that one.

If we change our mind and return this (still have 10 days left to do that), I'll update my review.

I gave it 3 stars because I don't trust we won't have issues down the road. I might give it 4 stars after adding the extension, but with only 24 h of testing I can't say yet it's reliable. And you shouldn't have to modify the device to make it work. Even Netgear doesn't seem to be able to tell us what to do. Showing that when you buy something that requires 2 vendors to make it work (here Netgear and a phone company), when it doesn't work, you can't count on any help from either vendor. That's the other reason a MyFi sounds good - you have only one company to call if/when it stops working.

If this router came with a 6' USB cable rather than a 3' cable, I probably would not have developed such a dislike for it. And if AT&T wasn't 2x as much for the modem, I probably would have gone that way and been happy with the performance there, too (we have good 3G here, and my iPhone gives me 2.88 Mbps tethered reliably so I would imagine an AT&T USB modem would also do that). But, again, Verizon was 1/2 the cost for the USB760 (no contract price) than for the cheapest AT&T option I could find.

I've owned 2 other Netgear wireless routers (not wireless broadband compat), and had few is any issues with them. I also have a DLINK (the one they had at Costco with 3 antennas) and that one is great, but of course no wireless broadband interface. I'm an IT/Network engineer by occupation (I would I'm sure have given up on this if I didn't know what to try).

Good luck. And in the end, it's better than dial-up or satellite, but you need to know a bit about these devices to debug the issues (or be willing to read a lot of reviews like this one) if you have a problem.