Customer Reviews

TRENDnet 54 Mbps Wireless G Broadband Router TEW-432BRP (Blue)

5 star:		(74)
4 star:		(41)
3 star:		(24)
2 star:		(23)
1 star:		(45)

 

 

Upgrading finally from my B router. Probably the last one in the neighborhood to do so.

There are three versions of the TEW-432BRP (the outer casings look slightly different). They're roughly labelled A, B, and C. I wound up with the C one. Its the best G router i've ever seen, for a few reasons:

1. "Easy CD" actually worked and led me through a wizard that had me running in under 5 minutes. It was even intelligent enough to figure out that my cable company's router needed a reset.

2. When you go into the firmware, there are some interesting and unusual settings you can tweak. It has the usual things like 'dont broadcast ssid' and all the rest of it. But it also had unusual settings that I'd never seen before, like the ability to set the output of its signal at "full power" or "half power" or "quarter" or "eigth" or "minimum". Seemed like an interesting option; I usually sit 10 feet from it, maybe I can reduce the microwaves bombarding my brain? I tried it on the various levels and did throughput tests. Interestingly, it was at "quarter power" that I had the fastest throughput. I dont know why, but I can live with that. I was glad to have that option to reduce the output signal's power level in the router, though.

3. Excellent transmission spread, strong signal, and fast. I know the bottleneck is supposed to be the dsl/cable conneciton itself, but I would swear my browsing is faster and snappier now. And my connection speed to my local network drive improved five-fold (which was why I got a g router in the first place).

Its a great deal under twenty-five on sale.

The router works fine, but I wish they had specifically told us that the CD that comes along with contains "only" the installation manual and no s/w. Since I had already installed these kinds of wireless router before, I had no problems, but I am pretty sure that a newbie would struggle with it. They must say that one has to open a web browser and point it to the address http://192.168.1.1 and use "admin" as the default user name and passwd to get into the system admin tool s/w.

I researched what is available on the market, and this router had all the features I wanted - MAC filtering, WPA password protection, 54 Mbps, can be used as a switch, works with PC and Mac. Trendware offered a nice rebate too. All this is great but when there is a wall between my PowerBook and the router, the reception drops a lot, and sometimes completely. It only works well when they are in the same room. This could be due to the fact that there are other wireless networks around which interfere with mine. I don't know. I thought I would give heads up for those looking for a reliable router.

Very easy router to install. Pop the CD into your PC. Keep your PC attached to your modem until instructed to attach it to the Trendnet Modem and that is all there is to it.

The Trendnet modem software learns all of your ISP setting while your PC is attached to your Modem and then sets the Trendnet router correctly to work from the first get go. No fussing with the question of am I on a DSL service or a Cable Broadband service, each of which require different settings as they operate in different ways.

Easy to setup (took less than 45 minutes).

Strong Wi-Fi signal, works fine two rooms across.

Very useful and convenient as it has both wired and wireless options. I use the wired option (LAN connection) for my desktop computer and VOIP phone and the wireless for my laptop.

Definitely recommend it.

All I wanted was an affordable router to keep my Wii connected wirelessly 24/7. This was my first experience with setting up a router, so I was a little lost at first, but once I figured it out, both my Wii and my Nintendo DSi could connect to it flawlessly. Security settings were also easy to enable. This router now allows me to stream Netflix movies to my Wii in a matter of seconds, and plays them without interruption; it's absolutely wonderful! It also has four ethernet ports for all your other wired connections, which for the first time has allowed my wife and I to have both our computers connected to the internet simultaneously. It's been a godsend.

So: The bottom line is, if your connection needs are simple AND you're on a tight budget, then this is absolutely the router for you. It really works great, and I remain absolutely delighted with mine!

I ordered this for my mother. She has a desktop with no wireless and I got her an ipod touch for Christmas, so my requirements were pretty basic. I needed a router with wireless and wired functionality. I didn't need anything blazing fast, and I didn't need it to support a lot of connections. This gets the job done, cheap. I had it shipped to my mother's house, and since she was very excited about using her ipod with the internet, she tried to set it up herself, and failed miserably. My stepfather also tried, and failed. Together, they had it so messed up that the desktop couldn't even access the internet when they removed the router from the setup and just plugged the computer back into the cable modem. When I got there, I reset everything, opened the setup page (192.168.10.1 or something... it's in the instructions.) and went through the wizard. I had them up and running again in about ten minutes, and I'm terrible with networking stuff. Two days later, my mother called me again, and said that the internet wasn't working. I went back to her house, and sure enough, something was wrong. I didn't take the time to figure out what. Again, I reset everything, went through the same process, and it worked again. It's been about two weeks since the last reset, and it seems to be working fine. I'm assuming either my mother or stepfather screwed something up, and that's why there was trouble again.
Pros:
-cheap
-works fine
Cons:
-Don't get this if you want blazing fast network speeds for file sharing or anything. If you want to access the internet, it's plenty fast for that; your internet connection speed is the bottleneck there, not the wireless g speeds.
-Somewhat sub-par instructions/setup wizard.
-Not the sturdiest constructed router I've ever seen, but it's not like you'll move it around much.

This was my first time using a wireless router and the set up could not be easier. I used the supplied CD-ROM which gave a simple step by step video setup. The whole setup took about 10 minutes.

I am using this to connect my PS3 to the internet. So far I have only lost the connection once, and all I had to do is reconnect which took less then 15 seconds.

I got this on sale from Amazon and after reading the reviews I was a little concerned, but it works, and it works great. The signal however does vary, I saw it as low as 65% and as high as 85% but it stays connected during those times.

All in all, I am happy with the router.

A great cheap router that was only replaced due to technological advancement of the n standard. I've had this router for 5 years when CompUSA was a brick and mortar store and bought it for the cheap price after rebate. It seems many people who gave this a negative score either used the CD or didn't know what they were doing, here's how to set it up for the average home, you don't need to change all fields but these should help. You can view the emunlator to follow along [...]

a. First setup the modem if it's a new install from the service provider since you may need to type in their username & pw and don't use the router setup CD.

b. Connect the router to modem and to the setup computer by wire. Power on the router, modem, and computer.

c. Open up a web browser and in the address bar type in 192.168.1.1 and hit enter. Login using the "admin" without quotes as the username and pw.

d. Under "Main" do the following:
1. Lan & DHCP Server, "Enable" DHCP server and hit "Apply".
2. Wan, select "Obtain IP Automatically", select "Clone MAC Address", and hit "Apply".
3. Password, change the password field (for the router) and hit "Apply".
4. Time, pick your time zone, set your time, and hit "Apply"

e. Under "Wireless" do the following:
1. Basic, select "Enable", change the channel if your connection is intermittent, Extended Range Mode select "Enable", and hit "Apply".
2. Security, Authentication Type select "WPA2", "PSK / EAP" select "PSK", Cipher Type "AES", create a password (this is your wireless password), and hit "Apply".
3. Advanced, Antenna transmit power "Full" hit "Apply".

f. Under "Routing" Dynamic, NAT select "Enable", and hit "Apply".

g. Under "Management" Remote Management, "UPNP" Enable, and hit "Apply"

h. Under "Tools" Settings, "Save".

Restart your modem, after it boots up restart your router, and then you should be good to go by wire. When connecting wirelessly you'll set a network "TRENDnet" and type in your wireless password. If you ever have to reset the router you can restore the router under "Tools" Settings section and restore it by the saved file. The only other problem you may encounter is that you may need to change the router's default ip address if it conflicts with your modem. The only complaint I have about it the router is that it can't be used as a wireless bridge out of the box but then most routers are this way as well.

Firstly, this thing worked for 2 weeks with no problems. Then it slowly began to start dropping the internet connection, & it started getting worse over time. Updates did nothing except give you false hope which adds insult to injury with any bad product. I have had this router for about a year now & it drops the connection on average every 3-5 minutes. It is a headache to deal with...especially when it takes up to 10 times of me turning off my wireless card (air port card) on my Macbook just to get it to re-establish any kind of a connection to the internet, and what really gets me mad about this product is that after all that effort, occasionally the signal drops as soon as it is working again and you have to repeat the process...AGAIN! Turning the power for the router off and on over and over does nothing either. Useless product...I bought a Linksys WRT54G2 and it should be here tomorrow. If you have seen the movie "Office Space" I am SO GOING TO TREAT THIS LIKE THE OFFICE FAX MACHINE with a wood baseball bat, seriously.