Customer Reviews

Netgear WGT634U 108 Mbps Wireless Media Router

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(22)

 

 

I use pretty much use all Netgear stuff for my home network, including a couple of wireless router/access points. I picked up the WGT634U when it first came out thinking I'd be able to extend the range of my wireless network, plug in a monster USB drive for backup and file sharing, and then turn off my home file server.

To quote the great Homer... Doh!

I guess I got what I deserved for going on the bleeding edge and not waiting to see some reviews. This thing has one MAJOR design flaw that makes it basically useless for me... you can't write files on it when it's formatted as NTFS, and formatting as FAT32 limits you to 32GB under WinXP! Not only that, but files are limited to 4GB in FAT32. That makes this thing pretty much useless unless I really want to maintain 10 partitions on my 300GB drive and find a backup program that will break the file up into 4GB chunks. That's just not going to happen.

I purchased this Netgear WGT634U router to work with a laptop with built-in Intel Centrino wi-fi at 54mbps, another PC with Netgear WG311T 108mbps PCI card, and finally another one with a plain RJ45 100BaseTx card. The RJ45 plugs via a cable directly into the one of the 4 available RJ45 ports. The broadband to the internet plugs into another port (5th one) dedicated to uplink. My setup uses PPPOE, and the router upon bootup had a wizard that automatically detected this type of connection and asked for login details. (this router has a built in webserver that serves pages just for configuring it via a browser). Because I have a mixed speed setting (54mpbs and 108 mbps), I chose the 108mbps Auto setting, which will allow multiple speeds to connect to the router. The 100BaseTX computer by default uses 100mbps. In summary, I was able to get all three to connect and share files and printers (make sure you add an account with the same account and password on all your three computers), but I had lots of problems before finally resolving them.

Problem resolutions: I have read a lot of reports on this router, and I had my share of them with constant reboots, connection drops, etc. I tried both the Netgear utility on the 108mbps pci card, and also microsoft's utility. I also upgraded the firmware on the router (via their web interface), and the latest drivers on the PCI wifi card. But the connection just keeps dropping. If it worked, it would work for a certain period of time before problems appeared again. I used secure WPA for the two wireless connections, tampered with lots of settings. But they didn't seem to isolate the problem.

Finally, after weeks of reading and experimenting, I nailed down the main problem: It is the HEAT of the chip that is causing it to misbehave. Luckily the design of the casing allows you to cut along the vent holes on the top cover to remove a round piece of plastic from the top of the router to expose the board with chips to air. The front panel and two side ones can also be removed (after removing and replacing 4 screws). So what I did was cut out along the vent holes on the top of the casing, and removed the two side panels and screwed the case back. This allowed free airflow to the board and chips. Did it solve the problem? YES! The thing worked like a charm. No connection drops, full signal, and perfect working order. (I don't have a compabitle USB drive to test the that ftp drive though, so I may update this info later).

So in essense, if you have purchased this router, just cut along the vent holes on the top casing to expose the chip to air, and remove two of the side panels, and you are set to go. After the firmware upgrade, its the HEAT HEAT HEAT! Nothing else is wrong with it. To upgrade the router (and get the better WPA security included in firmware versions 1.4.1.5 and above), its just clicks away after pointing your browser to it. This product would have gotten a 5 star if not for the heat problem. I suggest also to put it on its included stands to make it stand upright. This makes air flow even better. If you want heavy duty operation in hot areas, just buy one of those tiny USB fans and point the fan at the heatsink of the biggest chip on the board (assuming you just removed the hole in the top cover like I mentioned above).

Some interesting notes: Before I removed the cover to cool it, it would constantly reboot during certain times. There is a switch on it where you poke a pen into a small hole that resets the router. If you press and hold it for 5 seconds or more, it erases all your settings (login info etc) but the firmware upgraded software is never erased.

So in essense, this router works great, but because of the slim design, and poor heat dissipation of the casing, it overheats very often. Removing the hole on the cover and two of the side panels, the product is rock solid and connection is great.

Hello - I have been a fan of Netgear products for many years. I feel, unfortunately, that their products are being released with more and more bugs. This is by far the worst I've ever owned.

I got an ill feeling when I opened the box, and the first thing that comes out is a bright yellow sheet of paper saying to be sure to check their website for any bug fixes before using the wireless capabilities. Hmmmm....

Then I hooked it up and ran security scans from GRC.com. The router fails - it has ports 13 and 21 WIDE OPEN for all the world to see. In addition, the default is to respond to all pings from the internet.

Then I upgraded the firmware as advised and tried the wireless. First, there is no WPA on this router yet. They claim it will come later. Then it would not reliably connect with my 108mbps Netgear wireless card even though the boxes said it would. It would fail authentication for about 2 minutes then all of a sudden would establish the connection.

And the last straw was the error messages. They are in poor English. For example, when my wireless connections got dropped and I tried to log back on, the router displayed this message: USER ALREADY LOGINED ON. Logined on? What the heck is that?

So it went back to the store. I'll stick with my old Netgear products for now until they all die.

I have installed over 20 different wireless routers. This is by far the worst wireless product I have ever seen. For starters, of the 3 computers that I have, only one could actually detect the wireless signal (coincidentally, the one with a Netgear wireless card). Even that PC could only connect to the signal some of the time. Also, despite claims on the Netgear website that it "Works with all USB compliant external flash and hard drives", it wouldn't work with the one I have. And, though the box advertises that it supports WPA-PSK, they fail to mention that you need to download an upgrade to use that feature. I would not recommend this device to anyone.

I could do two pages on the ordeal I have been through with TWO different WGT634U s.

I will however give a synopsis.

BUGGY - not sure if it is firmware or hardware but this router needs constant rebooting.

HOT - Quite possibly one reason for the buggy nature. I have a fan on mine though and it still has problems.

FRUSTRATING TECH SUPPORT - outsourced to India.

Only reason this POS is getting a 2 is how fast it is when it does work.

I've been a Netgear fan for quite some time.

This device sounds like a dream but has been a total nightmare, even with the latest firmware from Netgear's website:

1) Wireless connection flat out doesn't work for me. Both the laptop card and previous wireless router where Netgear branded product and worked great together (802.11b).

2) USB drive connection is unstable. After formatting the drive with FAT32 and lots of little (32GB) partitions, I copied everything to the drive and connected it to router. The router reports the shares properly and reports correct directory structure but files are only visible intermittently via Windows networking. When files are copied FROM the device - the copies are truncated/corrupt. THIS COULD BE A AN 'INCOMPATIBLE' USB ENCLOSURE PROBLEM. However, I've had no similar issues when connecting the enclosure directly to USB port on my computer.

3) FTP to USB shares flat out didn't work for me. FTP program sees the FTP server but username/password is never successfully authenticated.

4) Web administration interface is buggy: after successfully connecting to the internet via a wired port on the router, web administration attached device list does NOT show my computer as being attached.

5) Netgear support forums website unreachable. The cherry on the cake of my WGT634U experience? The links to Netgear's support forum have been unreachable for the past few days. Perhaps they are overloaded with traffic due to complaints and questions about this unbelievably poor product.

What the HECK has happened at Netgear that they would let a product like this out the door?!?!

This is absolutely the worst piece of high tech equipment I have ever bought. The QA people at NetGear must be shot. The router is full of software bugs. Every single feature is buggy and work inconsistently. It would stop working with no apparent reason and requires reboot almost daily. In a few instances, the only remedy is to wipe out the NVRAM setting and start all over again. Then it will still hang hopelessly a few days later.

After honestly trying to make it work for 2-3 months, and updating firmware several times to no avail , I finally gave up and bought a D-link router which works like a charm and took all of 5 minutes to setup.

Worst thing is, I bought a $200+ USB hard drive to use with this router, and 2 PC Card wirelss adapters. I ended up buying a DLink router and a Buffalo LinkStation. The Netgear driver seems buggy also but after the latest firmware upgrade, the NetGear PCMCIA card started working with my new D-Link router in 108Mpbs mode. My my expensive USB hard drive is now useless since the Linkstation comes with a built-in hard drive. All in all, I lost about $350 with this little mis-adventure with Netgear.

All in all, the whole package costed me close to $500 (Netgear P.O.S. router, hard drive, and 2 PCMCIA Cards). And it is $500 down the drain.

DO NOT BUY THIS P.O.S.! This is such a bad experience, I have lost any faith in the brand. Judging by the rest of the reviews here, I am not the only one that suffered.

Extremely buggy router. Each router has a unique problem. FTP doesn't work on one, support asked me to return it to store. Second one constantly reboots. Third refues to connect.

I design elec. circuits for a living and I have one recommendation to make, stay away from this router WGT634U.

Customer Support: Just hope and clueless!!

Shame on you NETGEAR. Fifth bad experience with your products in less than 4 months.

I bought this with the hope that i could store all my pictures and music in one central place on the network. But my drive is NTFS, which this device only supports read only access, so i couldn't add any new files through the network. I was willing to live with that with the hope that at some point a firmware revision would solve that problem.

I had to return it because it wouldn't keep a wireless connection to any of my devices for a consistant period of time. Some of these devices had compatible Netgear SuperG cards and some didn't. I was absolutely maddening to watch the little pop up box in the system tray lose, then find, then lose my connection.

Maybe if I was new to this stuff this might not have bothered me so much, but I replaced an old Linksys 802.11b wireless router that had just worked for years without so much as a hiccup. I am very disappointed in this product and wouldn't recommend it.

I have used many Netgear products over the years with great satisfaction. This particular router was a disappointment:

- connection drops off; requires reboot often

- needs 2 minutes to boot! my old Netgear wireless router is

up in 10 seconds

- insecure: port 21 (FTP) is open on WAN. I couldn't find an

option in the config menu to turn this off - even though I

upgraded to the latest firmware on Netgear site.