I just bought my third wireless router to extend my Wifi setup. It's a Netgear WNDR3700 (or N600) Wireless Dual Band Router. I only just installed the router this evening, so I can't say much about its performance. Its setup was quite a disappointment though. I guess that has to do with the setup I wanted to use it for. I use one of the three routers as my main router (basically, connecting to the Internet-modem and doing DHCP). This one's located in the basement. I use the others as switches and Wifi access points, merely to extend the wireless range (not that I would live in a particularly big house, but you know how disappointing Wifi range is). They all serve the same SSID but I have them running on different channels.
Now, I bought the WNDR3700 because it is dual-band and has guest WLAN support. So I followed
this excellent set of instructions to configure the router as an access point, offering a guest WLAN. Unfortunately, the important part comes right at the end:
Check Allow guest to access My Local Network in Guest Network Settings or the guest computer won't be able to access the internet.
Well, that kind of defeats having a guest network, doesn't it? I also read an excellent explanation of what might be the reason for that dilemma. In any case, I was so pissed that I installed DD-WRT onto the router. But that was only the start of 3 hours of wasted time (which I would better have spent sleeping
). With the DD-WRT detour I found out that the WNDR3700 does obviously not support scheduled Wifi. I also have the WNDR3500 and it does have that feature (and I also use it on both my other Wifi routers). In the end, I re-installed stock firmware and went to bed, frustrated.
I have now made the WNDR3700 my main router. It's located in the basement, so I don't care so much that I can't switch it off over night (it doesn't reach my bedrooms anyway). Making it the router connecting to the Internet-modem also solves the 'Don't allow guests to access my local network' problem. I can't offer my guests the best-possible wifi signal, but the signal's good enough I guess. (We also do not have many guests asking for Wifi access
)
So I guess if you use the WNDR3700 as your only router it's probably not a bad product (if you don't need scheduled Wifi). I think the price is ok for a dual-band router. I can't say anything about its performance yet.
I'm running DD-WRT on both my other routers by the way. I would maybe have left it on the WNDR3700 as well, but for one thing, people report that it performs better with the stock firmware, and for the other thing, setting up a guest network is easier with the stock firmware than with DD-WRT.
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I can't disagree on that one!
. It seems to be the de-facto alternative to iCloud (which has no Windows client that can automatically sync documents at the moment).
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