Netgear WGR614 Wireless-G Router

by Netgear

• 802.11g router offers an easy way to set up a network with wired and wireless connections
• Delivers up to 54 Mbps of wireless throughput
• Four RJ-45 Ethernet ports allow for wired connections to the network
• Enhanced security includes a double firewall, and WPA and 128-bit WEP encryption
• Device measures 6.9 x 1.1 x 4.7 inches (WxHxD)
• Supports Windows 8

Product Details

Product Manual [3.68mb PDF]

• Product Dimensions: 11.2 x 9.2 x 2.8 inches ; 1 pounds
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S.
• ASIN: B00008SCFL
• Item model number: WGR614NA
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1,155 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
  • #49 in Electronics > Computers & Add-Ons > Routers
• Date first available at Amazon.com: March 8, 2003

Product Description

Amazon.com

The NETGEAR WGR614 54 Mbps 802.11g Wireless Router offers: 802.11g wireless network router for home and office. Four RJ-45 Ethernet ports for wired networking. Configurable network security including double firewall for extra protection.

The NETGEAR WGR614 54 Mbps 802.11g Wireless Router lets you easily set up a wireless network in your home so you can share a single internet connection with everyone in your household or office at speeds up to 54 Mbps.

The WGR614 offers speeds up to 54 Mbps with the 802.11g wireless standard. View larger.

Beautiful Design and Easy Setup
The WGR614 is a very attractive unit about the size of a small paperback with a silver exterior and rounded edges. An included plastic stand lets you stand the router on its edge to take up less space.

The WGR614 makes it easy for even a novice to set up a wireless network: just plug the included Ethernet cable from your internet connection into the router and insert the included CD into any computer on the network, which will provide step-by-step instructions. The WGR614 employs a web-based interface for configuration, and the router will automatically do the initial setup by getting your DNS settings and determining your IP address. The firmware is also upgradeable via the web interface so you can be sure your router will always be up-to-date.

Fast and Secure
Supporting the 802.11g standard, the NETGEAR WGR614 offers wireless data speeds of up to 54 Mbps, making it possible to share a broadband internet connection, stream music without hiccups, watch videos with less load time, and videoconference without problems. Downloading files is up to five times faster than it was with 802.11b. If you still have computers that use 802.11b, don't fret as the router is backwards compatible with the older wireless standard and can be set so all your computers can connect to the network and the WGR614 will automatically figure out the connection type and work accordingly.

In addition to wireless access, there are four 10/100 Mbps RJ-45 Ethernet ports in the back for connecting computers to the network via a faster, wired connection.

The WGR614 offers many security options to ensure your data is private. Double firewall protection keeps your network shielded from outside attacks. To ensure the security of your wireless data, both 40/64-bit, 128-bit, and 152-bit (802.11g only) WEP encryption is available, as well as WPA (Wi-Fi Protected Access). You can also use MAC address authentication to allow only authorized users onto the network.

Keep Tabs on Kids
This router is an especially good choice for parents as it allows settings to log all sites that are visited, lets you block specific sites based on whether it contains specific keywords, and lets you set time schedules for certain computers to work.

The NETGEAR WGR614 54 Mbps 802.11g Wireless Router is backed by a 1-year warranty.

What's in the Box
WGR614 54 Mbps 802.11g Wireless Router, power adapter, Ethernet cable, setup CD, vertical stand, warranty/support information card.

Product Description

NETGEAR's Cable/DSL 54 Mbps Wireless Router lets you experience the blazing-fast network wireless speeds of 54 Mbps - up to five times faster than the popular 802.11b wireless network. These higher speeds make it a snap to surf the Web, download large files, videoconference, stream high-quality digital movies, MP3 music, and photos, and play online games. This wireless router also works with 802.11b wireless products so you can use it with your existing 802.11b devices and your new 54 Mbps (802.11g) devices. Auto-sensing chooses the fastest connections possible on your 10/100 Mbps wide area network and four local area network ports

See all Product Description

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

243 of 267 people found the following review helpful

1.0 out of 5 stars Major problems, which Netgear has acknowledged - AVOID February 24, 2006

By WordLover

Do NOT purchase this router. I have been a happy Netgear customer in the past, and am technical enough to keep both home and small office wireless networks running fine, but this model has a hardware problem that Netgear tech support has finally acknowledged, but for which they are not providing an adequate fix. As others have mentioned, the router will often drop connectivity, and rebooting is the only solution. I bought one, had these problems start (luckily within the 90 day tech support window), and returned the router to Netgear (at my expense) in exchange for another one, which demonstrated the SAME problem less than 24 hours after installation. After yet another long call to India the latest tech support rep acknowledged that lots of these models are having the same problem, and upgrading to the latest firmware (which I did immediately upon installing both of these routers) won't fix it, so her solution was... send this one back (AGAIN at my expense) and they would send me yet another one of the SAME model, which she (for no defensible reason) assures me will work. For more background please see the Netgear tech support forums, where you will see scores of people experiencing the same problem and the same non-solution from Netgear. Save yourself the trouble and buy a different wireless router.

395 of 441 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent router with no problems whatsoever September 13, 2004

By Lihkin

Amazon Verified Purchase

This is an exceptional router and at this price you can't find a better choice. I see a lot of disgruntled people here who can't connect to the router wirelessly after changing settings. I would like to give a couple of tips. First of all, make sure you configure the router when you are hard wired. You have to ensure that you are connected to the router via a LAN cable whenever you are making any changes to the router's configuration. This way when the router restarts etc. you will still be connected to it. If you are carrying out any changes to the router through your wireless card, for example if you have changed the WEP encryption code in the router, then once you submit those changes, the router will not let your wireless card connect until your laptop's card is configured for the same WEP key. So once again, please ensure you carry out changes to the router only when hard wired. The moment you get your router, I suggest you carry out a firmware upgrade (go to netgear's support site and download the latest firmware for your model from there). Once again follow instructions and make sure you are connected through a cable to carry out the same. Now log onto the router and then do a couple of things.

First of all, rename the SSID to anything you want (eg. Joan's Arc). Then go to the wireless settings, then to wireless access, and click on 'Disable SSID broadcast'. This ensures that the SSID is not broadcast to others around you who have a wireless machine. So when their software searches for a wireless access point all they will see is a blank name. To be able to connect to your network they would have to know the name of your SSID (Joan's Arc in this case) and manually type it in their machines (Highly unlikely that they will be able to think of the same name as you do.... You can make your name even harder to obtain by simply using numeric characters in it.. for example Joan's Arc2004). Secondly, to make it secure use a 128 bit WEP key (this has to be a 26 digit key consisting of alphanumeric and numeric characters. You can use only certain alphabets in small and large case so you need to check that out. Also remember that you have to feed the same WEP key number in your laptop wireless card software (or the windows wireless settings if you are not using your wireless card's software). Finally you can ensure that only the wireless devices you specify can logon to your router. Go to the Wireless settings, then to wireless access setup and then click on 'enable wireless access'... Thereafter click on 'Setup access list'. Once there add your wireless device by using its mac address (the mac address is a unique number given to a wireless device, very much like a phone number- this enables the router to identify the device trying to connect to it). The mac address will be listed on your wireless device and you can also see all the devices that you can allow to connect to your router in the router's configuration window. (One important note to remember is that if you have already enabled WEP then you will have to first feed in the same key into your wireless device software settings before the router will display it in it's list of devices). Select the device that you want to allow to connect to your router and apply.

Hope this helps to a certain extent to configure your routers. Trust me, this is an amazing router and if you are having connection problems, it most likely is due to the settings in the router- not because the router is faulty. Read more ›

46 of 49 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Finally Stablized the Connection! September 12, 2003

By A Customer

Amazon Verified Purchase

ok... I have spent many hours trying to figure out how to stabilize the connection. After being connected, the connection would drop after x minutes and not return unless I reset the wireless settings by clicking "Apply" using the Netgear html interface. I checked out all the forums and did not find anything that would help. I was ready to give up and return the item. But Thank God I finally found the solution.

Originally, I thought it was interference with my 2.4 ghz Panasonic phone but that wasn't it... Here's the solution and I hope this helps those who seem to be experiencing the same thing:

1. Update the firmware (not sure if this is really necessary but I did this after reading this on some forums)
2. Change channels. You have options 1 to 11. Mine works great on Channel 7 and it doesn't seem to interfere with my 2.4 ghz Panasonic cordless phone. Experiment and see which channel gives you the best signal and stable connection.
3. Place the router (if possible) in the center of the area that you will be working in to maximize the signal. I currently have the router at the end of my house and want to move it somewhere to the center to improve signal strength.
4. In the advanced settings for LAN IP set-up (and this is the one that solved the majority of my connection problems), you must reserve a dedicated ip address for each computer on the wireless LAN by using the "Address Reservation" option. Before I did this, I would sometimes get the message "IP address conflict with xx.xx.xx.xx" on each PC that I had connected to the router with the WG311 wireless PCI card. Basically, both computers were fighting for the same IP address and causing the connection to crash.... So the problem was eliminated when I assigned dedicated IP addresses for each computer.

I give this router only 4 stars because this stuff should have been clearly stated in the manual. Now everything works fine and I get very few disconnects (notice how I didn't state zero disconnects). Anyway, ta da! Netgear should pay me for this. Seriously. p.s. There's been many price drops on this router recently so shop around. Read more ›

33 of 34 people found the following review helpful

1.0 out of 5 stars Do not buy this router. October 16, 2005

By Keith Bostic

I bought a Netgear WGR614 (version 6) router to front-end a pair

of networks connecting to Comcast cable. The network was

already up and running, I simply wanted to swap out an Airport

Extreme that was working fine in that location.

The Netgear WGR614 was easy to configure.

The problem is the Netgear WGR614 can't handle any reasonable

DNS load. If I connected my laptop directly to the Comcast

network, I could get DNS answers from Comcast's servers as fast

as I could send them. If I put the Netgear WGR614 between my

laptop and Comcast, 1 or 2 out of each 10-15 DNS requests would

time out. If I connected the mail servers to the Netgear

WGR614, 5 out of 10 DNS requests would time out, and I would

often see strings of 10-20 DNS requests time out in a row. This

was severely damaging to the network: browser URL lookups would

fail, host lookups for spam filtering would fail, and so on.

Netgear support was easy to get in touch with, and initially

responsive. However, once we got through the basics (is the

power on?) all they could suggest was manually configuring all

of the computers behind the router to use static routes to the

name servers (which I wasn't willing to do, and, in a simple

test failed to fix the problem), or upgrade the firmware to a

beta release, version 1.0.7. I did upgrade the firmware, but

it had no effect at all on the problem.

Netgear support told me twice they would escalate my support

case to "level 2", but after each escalation, I never heard

from them again....

Remember the Airport Extreme had no problem working in this

location? After Netgear support failed to fix the problem, I

bought a Linksys WRT54G, it handles the DSN request load just

fine! Read more ›