Customer Reviews

NETGEAR WNHDEB111-100NAS Wireless N Access Point

5 star:		(33)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

I bought this kit to send HD video from my computer to my TV media device. It has adequate bandwidth and worked out of the box, but I do not get a strong signal from the main floor to the basement of my house, a distance of about 25 feet. There are a couple of walls as well as the floor, and the basement ceiling has metal duct work and pipes above the plasterboard, so I am probably lucky to penetrate all that. I used a laptop to indicate wireless signal strength, and spent a couple of hours orienting each device for the best signal. Now I get a level that varies from 50% to 70%, and that works reliably for HD at 720p. I have not been able to send 1080i over the link without momentary stops and starts in the audio and video; however the link never breaks connection and never needs resetting. It seems to just limit the bandwidth as the signal strength goes lower.

I bought a third WNHDE 111 to connect to another computer, and than link has never been interrupted since I installed it over a month ago. It has always worked well. I had previously used a Linksys G router that was interrupted once or twice a day, and it had to be reinstated manually using the "repair" function in the Windows wireless software. It was my wife's computer in the kitchen, so I had to fix it!

I still have the wireless G system up, and it works well around the house with a third computer, a laptop, but it never gave a reliable signal for my wife's computer in the kitchen; and it would not carry the HD video for the TV. I also use that old G router to connect the ethernet from my main computer to the WNHDE 111.

I recommend this device if you don't have too many walls and floors to penetrate. I am a retired electronics engineer, and I assure everyone that the higher the frequency, the poorer the penetration, but the more bandwidth and the more freedom from interference.

Update: After 7 months, I have better results. With some tweaking of the settings (set the Channel Width to 20 MHz, turn off the "Broadcast SSID", and lower Beacon Period to 50 msec) I can now stream 25 Mbps HD video through all the walls. I think the main problem was that the auto 20/40 Channel Width was trying to run at 40 and was not successful, sometimes switching between 20 and 40. When I reduced the channel width, I got an increase in signal strength. I can now stream 1080i HD for hours without any problem.

Jim

Although this is marketed as an "HD/Gaming" wireless kit, it's important to know what this really is and how to use it.

MOST IMPORTANT: This kit isn't a router -- you cannot create a Wireless N network with it alone. It is designed to add to your existing network... often a wireless 2.4 GHz network (commonly 802.11 b/g). This will provide high-speed "802.11n" at 5 GHz so it doesn't interfere with a current b/g network. Any wireless b/g devices (Xbox wireless adapter, PS3 internal wireless, b/g laptops, b/g network cards, etc.) currently used on the network will be unaffected by this addition.

HOW THIS WORKS: The kit features two identical units -- one unit will plug into your existing network's router via Ethernet as an "access point", and the other unit will plug into the Ethernet device(s) (Xbox, PS3, computer, etc.) as a "bridge". Once the two units sync, it will behave as if the device(s) plugged into the bridge is hardwired to the network router.

Each unit has two Ethernet ports... if you want to plug a 3rd (or more) devices in to the "bridge", you will need to add a switch like NETGEAR FS105 ProSafe 5-Port 10/100 Desktop Switch.

TECH NOTE: The Ethernet ports on these devices are NOT Gigabit ports, so even though the wireless N signal can achieve 300 Mbit/s, the fastest speed you will achieve on these devices is 100 Mbit/s. However, this speed is more than enough for multiple HD streams and high-speed gaming.

BENEFITS: As mentioned, your current B/G network is unchanged, so any wireless activity using that will remain the same. This kit is not designed to replace that network... just add to it. Any device(s) plugged into this Netgear kit will have greater wireless range and a MUCH faster connection than using the older B/G network.

This is the third (and final!) in a series of 802.11n routers I tried over the last few weeks. I upgraded to 'n' since our G router + Linksys Range Expander couldn't effectively reach across our courtyard and into my wife's office. We needed high throughput and reliability in an environment that was tough on the G protocol. There are many houses nearby, so wireless interference is a hindrance and unfortunate reality.

With this router, which I discovered through online computer site reviews and other sources, I think we have beaten the system. It works very well, establishes a high-speed, robust connection between the FIOS modem, and also allows other devices to connect with great 'n' connections as well.

Overall, I am very pleased with this product. It runs as advertised and has solved our quirky problem.

BEWARE, this device only broadcasts on the 802.11n and 802.11a protocols. This is not your everyday router. It will either work with your newest wireless devices (enabled for 802.11n or the very old 802.11a) or you will have to run a second b/g router to work with "older" wireless devices (Tivo, Playstation 3, iPhones etc.). This is not a problem for me, but I didn't think about that before I bought it.

Would recommend this product to anyone looking to provide a dedicated, high-speed wireless connection between two important devices, but not as your everyday router.

I purchased this kit from Amazon as soon as they were available, as I was eager to replace my existing G-based bridges. Setup was relatively straight forward, and speeds were roughly double what I was getting with G; your mileage may vary. Unfortunately, one of the units has a habit of locking up or crashing completely every 4-24 hours. I opened a thread at the Netgear support forum, but I suspect this is a hardware or firmware issue. I should have really return these units to Amazon... but by the time I isolated the problem to one of the units, the return period had expired. Oh well, that's the price I pay for being an early adopter.

I like this set. I did take me two tries at a wireless card for my notebook to figure out that it only uses the 5 Ghz band for wireless connections. I manually set the mode of each box on the back of each unit and they have been working great.

Things to note:

-- This package contains two identical units that operate as an access point and a bridge. One needs to be connect to your router. The other can be put anywhere in your house that you need internet access. Just plug it into an outlet ant then plug an Ethernet cable into it and connect it to your wired device. There are two wired ports on the back of each unit.

-- To connect to these access points with a wireless device, that device must have a wireless N with the 5Ghz band. A wireless card with just wireless N 2.4 Ghz will not connect. I bought a RangeMax WNDA3100 Dual Band Wireless-N Router USB connector and it works great with my laptop. I connect at speeds from 220 to 300 kps. Things are a lot snappier then they were with wireless g. I can now watch videos. With wireless g they stopped and started.

-- It seems to make things go a lot easier if you use the switch on the back and set the unit that connects to your router to access point and the other one to bridge. Using the auto setting can cause problems.

-- There is a switch on the back that lets you turn off the lights on the unit. This is very cool for placing it in a bedroom where you don't want to see the light in the middle of the night. The unit does not make any noise.

-- The web interface to set the options is easy to use and pretty straight forward.

-- This is a very easy way to get internet access into a room where you can't feasibly run a wire but still want a decent speed.

I have been struggling with wireless networking for two and a half years. The home we moved into would have cost a bundle to run CAT5 cable everywhere we needed it. I tried four or five different wireless router/adapter systems, and none of them worked reliably.

I picked up a WNHDEB111 kit based on a review I read. It was the simplest wireless system I've ever used. Setup was brain-dead simple. Once I had it connected, I took the bridge unit and a laptop to every room in the house. I got a strong, fast connection everywhere. Even in the basement, where I have never been able to get a connection at all.

I now have eight units around the house. Each unit is connected to a network switch, and connected to those are 12 computers, four TiVos, and a couple of network printers. And it's a huge benefit to be able to plug standard network switches into the units, and not have to put wireless adapters on all the computers.

After I had installed four of the units, I started experiencing connection drops and very poor performance. I did some web searches, and based on some recommendations I found, I turned off the WISH feature on all the units. Bingo... I was back to full speed and rock solid connections everywhere in the house.

I also don't believe in letting boxes make their own decisions about things. So where there's a choice, I select the best option so the box doesn't have to think about it.

So in the 'Wireless Settings' section of the configuration, I set:

- 802.11 Mode to '802.11n only'
- WPA Mode to 'WPA2 only'
- Cipher Type to 'AES'

This is a fantastic product. I recommend it to anyone who needs wireless access.

SO I bought this almost a month ago and wanted to review it after a good testing. First let me tell you what I paired this with - the netgear WNR3500 (wireless N Gigabit router). And although the setup of the router was a bit akward using a cd-rom it worked out decently. But I digress. After the set up of my router I attached these 2 bridges and it was pretty simple. Almost as simple of pushing buttons but setup may neccesitate logging into the router to establish the initial connection... With that in mind the performance has been awesome! I have not had any disconnections and it provides amazing coverage throughout the house upstairs and downstairs. No deadspots in the house and connection to my laptop is consistently 300 mbps. Definitely worth the purchase.

Ok, I needed to find a product that would allow me to get an improvement over my existing wireless G connection with my XBOX 360. I'm running a Wireless N router but currently connecting with a wireless G XBOX 360 adapter. It currently connects at about 50% 100ft and two rooms away from my DLink-655 Wireless N router. It slows down quite a bit when streaming video so I wanted a solution that took advantage of Draft N wireless. Supposedly the 5GHz Netgear AP and Bridge are supposed to provide faster speed with better range that is less susceptible to interference.

Real world results were not very good. The AP and Bridge connected quickly and the XBOX 360 saw the ethernet connection no problem. For a while everything was working well. 30 minutes later I was getting erradic behavior. Shortly after that it disconnected all together. I've since spent two days trying to get them to work reliably. Network perfomance tests reveal anywhere from full signal to no signal at all and it consistently fluctuates. Both units have the updated firmware and I tried manually setting the mode switch instead of using the auto settings. Nothing has worked.

Netgear tech support was a disaster. I got right through but when speaking to them all you can hear is the sound of other tech people in the background. The first time he called I could barely hear the guy over all the background noise. He told me that I had a bad connection and should call back. The second time I called I got the same background noise but the guy attempted to help me with my issue. It was obvious right away that he didn't have any idea what he was talking about. He asked me about my wireless setup and then proceded to tell me that my wireless G laptop would not connect to the Access Point. I still don't know what he's talking about. My laptop is wireless N 2.4GHz through my DLink router and had nothing to do with my Netgear problem. He then put me on hold for several minutes came back and told me to put both switches on both units to bridges mode. What is he talking about? The Access point is supposed to be in AP mode and only the bridge should be in Bridge mode! He then puts me on hold again and he asks the distance between units. He says that my distance is too far and he can no longer help me. I tried to explain that I am currently getting a better connection and speed with my wireless G equipment so the 5GHz Wireless N setup should get better than that with the same distance. "Sorry Sir that's all I can do for you." CLICK..............WTF??

Needless to say I'm returning these. Maybe at closer distances they will work well but that kind of defeats the point! The whole purpose of wireless N is added range and speed. For people with short runs this product will probably work fine but for me I don't think it lives up to the hype!

It's been a long time coming, getting everything *just so* on my home network, and the Netgear WNHDEB111 - 100NAS Wireless N Access Point has been a perfect finishing touch. I use this device specifically for my PS3 because the built-in wireless connection on the PS3 is too slow to properly stream high-resolution media, and my physical connection to the Internet is too far away from the PS3 to use a cable.

The way this product is designed, it's actually just a bundle of two identical Access Points (APs). However these APs are smart: when you plug the first one into your Router, it says, "I am an Access Point" and starts sending out a signal. When you plug the second one into another device (such as my console), it says, "I am a Bridge" and starts looking for the first. They find each other, handshake, and all is good--easy as pressing a button (details below).

I've not logged a ton of hours on the Netgear yet, but here's what I can tell you:

- My neighborhood is drowning in a ridiculous number of wireless networks of all types. This setup is designed to dedicate the unit that is connected on my PS3 to the unit that is connected to the Router--in effect, this means ignores all the outsiders. It can be secured to prevent nosy neighbors from tapping it as well.

- Many people who bought the unit earlier had lots of problems with signal strength. I am pleased to say that the problem appears to be fixed: my wireless signal has to cross the house, pass through 2 walls, a floor and my TV, and ignore the 5N band I already have on my router in order to get to the PS3, tuning out the neighbors along the way. I used this unit out of the box, with no need for firmware updates, and I have a strong signal with no dropouts.

- Setup really was one of the simplest things I've ever had to do:

1) Connect one adapter to your router but don't plug it on or turn it on. Make sure the switch on the back of it is set to "Auto"
2) Connect the other adapter to your device (in my case, the PS3) but don't plug it in or turn it on. Make sure the switch on the back of it is set to "Auto"
3) Plug in the first adapter and turn it on.
4) Plug in the second adapter and turn it on.
5) Press the button on the front of the first adapter, then step over to the second adapter and press the button on it.

Within less than a minute, they locked on to each other and were ready to go. Amazing. I've pushed it to its limits, using multiple large HD videos on my home server (one of which came from a PAL DVD) and making it fast-forward, rewind, and jump back and forth at different speeds: it behaves just like a DVD would if it were in the player, with no hiccups or freezes waiting on the network to catch up. I can't wait to try gaming!

If you have an older Wireless Router that's not N-speeds, this pair will give that router N-speed access for all the devices on your network. The additional AP can take a slower device and give it a nice fast upgrade that is easy to use. As an added bonus, both devices have a second Ethernet plug, allowing you to physically connect a second device if you wish. If you have a newer N router, the Netgear does a nice job of mapping around it. What this means in my case is that my LinkSys WRT610N gives variable-speed access to anything I want it to, up to N. Then I have a high-speed 5N network for my newest machines...and thanks to the Netgear, I have an entirely separate high-speed channel that can stream to my TV uninterrupted and with no traffic.

I bought this bridge/access point with a NetGear WNDR3300. I was formerly using an AirLink101 and Belkin router on the G-band of Wifi. I decided once I started streaming video and music to my XBOX360, while playing on-line multiplayer games, that an upgrade was needed to resolve lag.

First, my iMac screams now. Before, even though the iMac was inches from the Belkin router and I have a cable modem, there was always a bit of a pause for common websites with good servers (Yahoo, Google, etc). The first benefit of this upgrade is there is NO pause on those pages now. Secondly, I turned on full encryption and left the NAT up for my game and it was lag free. I have yet to stream audio while playing.

The WPS auto detect and configure feature didn't work for me, but it may be because I didn't completely follow their instructions correctly. For example, they say to connect the WNHDEB111 to the WNDR3300 __BEFORE__ turning it on. I read that instruction after having already turned it on while not connected. In essence, I wasted 90 minutes fooling with the auto-config before just doing what I planned on doing manually all along.

So, here is what I did.

1. Write down my MAC. I have a cable modem with Cox, who in the past locked accounts to a MAC address. Meaning, if you changed computers hooked up to the cable modem, you would have to call them to reset. Routers have a MAC clone feature to avert this inconvenience. I went into my OLD router and wrote down the "WAN MAC Address".

2. Turn off old Router.

3. Hook laptop up to new router (WNDR3300) with Cat5 cable and turned on the new router. Once laptop was up, manually configured it to 192.168.1.10 and entered "192.168.1.1" in Internet Explorer to hit the router's config page. I didn't use the router's provided CD at all.

4. Configured router with MAC written down on step 1 (it's the last option for configuring WAN, "Use provided MAC"), turned on WPA2 + WPA (whatever the last option is) and put in a "passphase". After configuring the WAN MAC, the router reboots automatically and I also connected it to the cable modem at this point.

5. Turn on iMac, let it self-discover the networks. The iMac (as well as Dell Laptop which later had it's WiFi turned on) will see TWO networks. It will see the N and G networks, which are easily identifiable by their default name given by NetGear. Even if you change the network name on the Router, you still saw Netgear...G and NetGear N. I just clicked on "N" and entered my passphrase.

6. Just to double check step #5, turned on Dell laptop, selected "N" network on Wireless Utility (under control panel, and often an icon on the lower right corner where your time is).

7. Surfed a little on both computers to just make sure connectivity was ok.

8. Switch NetGear WNHDEB111 Wireless AP/Bridge from auto to "Bridge" mode. I know what I needed was a bridge, so after fooling with APS this is what ended up working.

9. Connect laptop to NetGear WNHDEB111 Wireless AP/Bridge and reboot both. Put in the config disk that comes with the NetGear WNHDEB111 Wireless AP/Bridge. This is a critical step because the utility that launches on the disk will find the NetGear WNHDEB111 Wireless AP/Bridge, even though it's on a different subnet.

10. The application will scan, find the NetGear WNHDEB111 Wireless AP/Bridge, and then say, "Would you like to change the IP?". I said yes and manually told it an IP address within the range of the WNDR3300 Router, "192.168.1.20".

11. Go through the manual configuration pages for the wireless security and enter the passphrase you used to configure the WNDR3300. Also, using a static IP didn't seem to work (it did on the Belkin/Airlink combo), and so I ended up being forced to using DHCP to configure the WNHDEB111 IP/Subnet/Gateway.

12. Rebooted everything (yeah, probably not necessary but this way I know after a power outage/restoral everything will come up clean), and double checked laptop physically connected (Ethernet cable, with WiFi turned off) could surf and resolve its own IP address from DHCP server.

13. Unplug NetGear WNHDEB111 Wireless AP/Bridge and walk over to XBOX360 to install. Plugged in power, and Ethernet. Turned on XBOX360 and changed to "Automatic" network configuration (IP/Sub/Gateway) since again, static IPs didn't work. SIDENOTE: My Belkin seemed to work ok with static IPs that hadn't been assigned by the router's DHCP, but the NetGear router doesn't seem to tolerate it, even with the NAT filter turned off.

14. Ran network tests (XBOX360 will force you to do this), and then played a few games of Gears of War 2 lag free.

A few notes to add. When I tried assigning the XBOX360 as a DMZ, the 360 instantly complained about moderate NAT filtering. This is even with strict NAT filtering turned off. It also seemed unhappy when I turned off UPnp. Universal Plug and Play is a notoriously "dirty" feature to leave on because it creates a lot of unnecessary traffic to support auto-discovery. I don't commonly connect new wireless devices and need them to auto config, so I had wanted to turn it off. I tried playing with UPnP off and on, as well as DMZs assigned and not assigned, while also playing with NAT filter on and off. It was nearing the 2 hour point since the total upgrade began and I had friends waiting to play online so I cut it short with the final configuration being: NAT Strict Filter off, UPnp On, and no DMZ assigned to the XBOX360.

This evening I will be streaming music while playing and so we'll see. I also haven't verified the additional range over G yet. I have a pool in the backyard and the old network barely worked after going outside, and was dead before the pool. I will also test the range.

One very nice feature on the WNDR3300 is that if you push the big blue button in the middle for two seconds, it turns off the LEDs showing which internal antennas are getting the strongest signal. So unless you really enjoy obnoxiously blue, bright LEDs creating a Disco in your room, you'll be pushing it everytime you reboot the router. Yes, everytime it reboots the lights default to on. Nice! :)