Customer Reviews

NETGEAR WebSafe RP114 DSL/Cable Router & 4-Port 10/100Mbps Fast Ethernet Switch

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I used it for less than a month. It replaced an Netgear RT-314 I had before. I was happy with the basic functionality of the RT-314, and I wanted to add some kind of parental control (essentially limit the hours my children could use the Internet).
The RP114 is advertised as having that capability, but it is quite limited. You can only set global access hours, there is no way to target different users. I also found that both the RT-314 and RP-114 would not allow multiple VPN sessions simultaneously, and I had to reboot the router to be able to connect to ATT Net Client after my wife had connected to her company. This was a great annoyance, and I finally returned the RP114 and bought an SMC Barricade 7004-ABR. That solved the problem with VPN. And to my surprise, the Barricade has the parental controls I needed, but they are not trumpeted on the box like netgear does, plus it has a print server. All for about [price] more....

This is the road I took to finally being able to stay with this router. I have a tendency of being really indecisive when buying things. I bought the RP114 and returned it and got the Linsys BEFSR41, then returned it and got the RP114 again. If you have a choice of between RT114, RT314, RP114 then get the RP114 because it's the newer model and is functionally the same as the RT114 plus more. RT314 will likely be discontinued.

What I like:
The RP114 has a solid construction made of metal. It feels solid and durable in my hands, unlike the Linksys model, which is made of plastic. Of course, this doesn't really say much, but I like my hardware to have some weight to it. Plus, the 4 little rubber feet (?) at the base of the router is well balanced and helps it from moving around too much. The Linksys wasn't balanced at all. It kept rocking back and forth because one of the rubber feets were higher than the other. What I also like about this router is that it's got little holes on the bottom of the router so that you can mount it on the wall. My desk is really cluttered from zip drive to palm docking station to left over food to you name it. And the wall mounting feature really saves me valuable space and helps keep it in place without much movement.
It has a Link/Activity indicator, for each of four LAN ports and the WAN port. It also has a 100 BaseT indicator to show whether the NIC is connected at 100 Mbps to the router (of course, they are auto-sensing 10/100 BaseT). The unit is firmware upgradable.

It also has Content Filtering where you can enter up to 255 keywords. If someone tries to bring up a web page or url contain these keywords it'll display a message saying that this page is blocked. Albeit it seems a very simple thing, I really like that it displays a message saying that it's blocked instead of the web page just hanging and not showing anything, making the user think that something is wrong with the router. It's very useful if you have children and want to control what they can and can't view! You can also log these access and have it scheduled to send an email to a user.

The following two were the deciding factors for me. I used to share my internet connection through a regular dial up connection with ICS before I got my cable modem connection. Thus, I bought myself a 50 ft cross-over cable. I was delighted to find out that the LAN ports on the RP114 are able to distinguish between the two different types of cables (MDI/MDI-X)! So I just used my old cross-over cables and didn't have to hand over another $30 or so on a new 50 ft cable.
The second deciding factor was the high configurability of the router. I like the web interface to configure the system, but you can also telnet into the router and do so much more!

What I don't like & Wish list:
The only reason it doesn't deserve 5 stars are as follows. I don't know if it's just me or not, but I really like having a printed manual. The unit ships with practically no printed manual. It comes with a one page Installation Guide. All the other manuals are on the CD in PDF or HTML.

This shortcoming probably isn't something I can blame Netgear for, because this is the nature of the beast -- NAT routers work by allowing multiple computers to share a single IP address. When I use IRC, the server checks my IDENTD server. I can use port forwarding on port 113 (?) to make it connect to the built in IDENTD server in MIRC, which is fine and dandy, but I have to always have either MIRC with IDENTD server running, or run a separate IDENTD server on my machine. This is fine, too, except I share my connection with my brother and he gets the same user@host as me, because port forwarding only fetches the first entry in its list and uses that for all the computers. This can be problematic because some servers don't let multiple instances on their servers. This means a specific port number can only be assigned to one machine. If me and my brother both run a FTP server on port 21, it will ALWAYS be forwarded to the first entry in the port mapping. This is okay when we are in control of what port number to use, but in cases like IRC and IDENT, all the server seems to connect to port 113, so this is out of the clients' control. I think this would also be a problem with sending files over Instant Messenging programs and DCC in IRC. I remember Linksys had something to overcome this (not entirely sure?), but it wasn't working correctly for some reason. It would have been nice to have a work around for this.

Bottom line:
From practical use, I've had no problems whatsoever save for the minor annoyance with the port mapping and server port sharing. I haven't had to reset the router yet for any reason, and my status page shows my uptime to be 1104 hours (46 days). I'd highly recommend this router to anyone looking for a home router to share broadband.

So I got DSL through SBC (wonderful service, BTW) and since there's 3 computers in my home we decided to pick up a router. I mostly grabbed the Netgear over Linksys due to the name and the not so great history Linksys has compared to Netgear's historically stellar quality. This thing is great, works right out of the box (if you have Cable, DSL you need to give it your username and password for DSL) and should take you less than 3 minutes to set up including waiting for it to boot up. I haven't reset it in months and she's been doing great... highly recommended.

This router is an excellent choice for establishing a home or small business network. I have extensive experience with computer hardware, but this was my first experience with setting up a home network. I looked at this router and the Linksys BEFSR41, and ended up going with the Netgear. I'm very glad that I did. Reviews of both routers complain about customer service. I wouldn't know how Netgear's customer service is because I never had to call them. I was setting up a network with three computers, all running XP. Withing fifteen minutes of taking the router out of the box, all three machines were hooked to the network and working flawlessly. I used the setup instructions that came with the router, which told me everything I needed to do. Installation was a breeze, it quite simply couldn't have been any easier. I have been running it now as an "always on" network for over a month, and it has never frozen or locked up; I have not had to reboot or reset it a single time.

My only complaint is the orientation of the plugs. All the network connections are on the front of the box, while the power jack is on the back, which makes it hard to put anywhere on a desk. But this objection is cosmetic and nit-picky. However, the outside of the unit is made of metal and is very sturdy. Overall, it is a very competitively priced router that doesn't necessarily have all the bells of whistles of other models, but it is very dependable and good at what it does. If you're looking for a nice priced, very dependable router for home or small business networks, pick this little guy up today.

I used this router to connect 3 computers to the internet, one computer running XP, one NT and another one Win95. Since my cable company, Comcast, does not require username or password, setup was basically 'plug-and-play', 15 minutes max (mostly becaues of rebooting all the computers throughout the house).

I have used my RP114 for about a month and it has been fast and stable so far. I bought RP114 largely because I like RT314 very much. I have upgraded the firmware from v3.24 to v3.25 for improved management functionality and extra features (e.g. port range forwarding).

Strength : - once you set it up, it's maintenance-free - Small footprint - All 4 ports are autosensing MDI/MDIX - Keyword-based filtering and URL logging are great additions to already-good RT314.

Weakness : - Forward-facing ethernet ports (may be a strength) - The power tranformer block is too big. - Management functions are not entirely web-browser-based just yet. Certain management functions are still telnet-based. - It would be nice if it includes a print server.

I bought this little unit because I've purchased netgear products before (a 4-port hub, and a 56K Modem/Router combo). The biggest thing I hated about the RP411 was the interface. The HTTP interface only allowed you to configure SOME of the routers settings. The Telnet interface, while more complete, didn't have the content filtering section or the DHCP listing that the HTTP interface had. (Maybe I just didn't see in the Telnet interface... this is entirely possible). I was used to using WinRoute Pro, a software router, which is so easy to setup that going from it to the netgear router was a step backwards.

Even more than having to go into two different interfaces to configure the router, the filtering and port forwarding setup was so confusing. It took me days to figure out how to open the web and ftp ports. In my research for help in this area, the netgear site was unuseful. I did find many other people with the same questions and finally found one answer on someone personal website on how to do things properly. (Keep in mind I didn't read the router manual and as far as I'm concerned I shouldn't have to.)

I do believe the router can do anything you want it to do, which is why I gave it 3 stars. I also believe you'll have a hard time configuring the router to do what you want it to do, which is why it didn't get 5 stars.

I ended up returning the RP411 router and replacing it with the Siemens SpeedStream 2-Port DSL/Cable Router. It was cheaper and the interface was incredibly easy. It only comes with two ports, but I have hubs so no big deal. And to top it off the internet connection was faster using the SpeedStream rather than the RP411. I did notice when I was trying to fix my open port problem with the RP411 that many commented that the router slowed their internet access speed.

Several reviewers have posted and said that after a certain period of time, the router starts dropping their Internet connection randomly. I too have had the same thing happen, but have traced it to a DNS problem, not a connection issue. What this means is that the router (for whatever reason) loses its ability to translate numeric Innternet IP addresses (such as 216.109.117.10) to names (www.yahoo.com). So, if your Internet connection appears to have died, bring up a command prompt and try pinging 216.109.117.106 (or any other IP address). If that works, then you have a DNS problem.

To resolve this issue, contact your ISP and find out what their DNS server IP addresses are, and then plug that information into the router's configuration or into the TCP/IP network settings for each machine connected to the Internet.

I don't know why this problem occurs, but once I manually entered the DNS settings, everything worked fine. I have had no other issues with this router, other than the network connections being in the front of the device instead of the back (as others have commented on already).

If you are reading this review trying to decide whether to get this router, I wold advise against buying anything from Netgear or Linksys. If you read the reviews for pretty much any Netgear or Linksys router on this site, you will see that most of them get horrible reviews for reliability issues. Plus, many have stated that Netgear customer support is horrible, and I can attest to that. I sent them an email once and it took weeks before they responded back.

You may want to consider something like the Zyxel Prestige 324 instead. It may cost a little more, but word on the street is that its a better product, and more secure also. I plan on buying one to replace my Netgear PR114.

I bought the D-Link DI-704 for my home network, to share my DSL connection to four computers running Linux, Mac OS-X and Windows 2000 and XP. The DI-704 seemed to have all the features needed (NAT for my server, web-based configuration) for the task.

Unfortunately, it wouldn't run for more than about 6 hours before freezing the network. Sometimes the subnet (inside the firewall) would remain working, sometimes not. I upgraded the firmware, tried several different configurations, reset the thing repeatedly, and always had the same problem: when network traffic got heavy (say, when my web server got several requests or when several of us were using the network), the thing would freeze, requiring a hardware reset.

I ended up buying ther NetGear equivalent product (the RP-114), plugged it in, configured it and haven't had a single problem with it. It's worth the extra cash.

Netgear often makes reliable products. This router has good Parental control of web browsing and Auditing and e-mail reporting of web browsing activities. As usual, it has the RT314 stuffs which are built in 4-port switch enables Cable/DSL Internet sharing, NAT routing security. I think this one is very good for small company does not have admin, but need to have internet access. In addition, this can be used in a big family with control on different age of members.