NETGEAR Wireless Router - N600 Dual Band Gigabit (WNDR3700)

• Supports Windows 8
• High-performance wireless router with speeds up to 600 Mbps; ideal for video streaming and online gaming
• Simultaneous Dual Band - Doubles bandwidth and reduce WiFi interference for better connections
• NETGEAR Genie® App - Easy-to-use dashboard to monitor, control & repair home networks
• Wireless security with the highest grade protection

This router is fast, easy to set-up and smartly engineered. Although this is a high-end feature-rich consumer router, out of the box, I had this running in just a few minutes. Using the simple color-coded 1-2-3 step setup process, an expert, or a novice, can have this router up and running very quickly.

Modifying the two dual band networks for different names and passwords is straight forward, and I preferred to do it manually. After logging into the firmware, the screens are divided into three panels. The left panel is the list of the feature sets, such as "wireless settings," or "guest network" settings; the middle panel has the pick list of options for the feature set; and the right panel on the screen explains, in the easiest of terms, what the features and options mean. There is little need to refer to the product manual or other help. Everything is in one place, and in the right place.

I attained maximum speeds with each of the dual bands when my laptops were in close proximity to the router. My throughput on the 5 Ghertz band using the "n" protocol was a blazing 300 Mbps. With my previous router, I was never able to achieve anything faster than 130 Mbps. As is the case with the 5 Ghertz channel, this speed drops off quickly as I moved my laptop away from the router. By 30 feet, I was down to 100 Mbps a second, but still relatively fast when compared to the legacy "g" speeds. On the 2.4 Ghertz band, using the "g" protocol, I saw very little degradation within 50 feet of the router.

I streamed a Netflix movie to an HD television flawlessly through a Toshiba laptop and an HDMI cable. There was no stutter in the picture, and the picture quality was excellent. Unlike past video streaming, I did not experience a dropped picture while waiting for the video buffer to reload.

I connected a USB disk drive to the router and shared it among three laptops without incident. I established read and read/write passwords for various file folders on the disk drive. I also made the drive available for access through the Internet, and again this process was straightforward in creating. I plan on backing up the three laptops to the USB drive on the router, as well as sharing photos and other files with family and friends by having them access the password protected IP address of my new network-based disk drive.

In total, you can establish four networks on this router. One for each of the dual bands, and two more as guest networks for each of the dual bands as well. The guest networks are nice as they can completely isolate guests from accessing sensitive information on other PCs or devices on the network. (Or you can open up the guest networks to everything on the network.)

Some other features worth noting are the automatic checking for firmware updates every time you log into the router; the "traffic meter" that shows daily, weekly and monthly internet usage that can be configured to throttle it; and the ability to backup personalized firmware settings in case of an emergency restore. With regard to the latter, it would be nice to also get a saved PDF file of what the settings are for each of the backed-up firmware configurations.

The Netgear WNDR3700 replaced two Linksys routers that I had connected together to essentially create a "dual band" environment. One was an older "g" unit, while the other was a newer "n" router. Together they got the job done in a mixed environment of video and Internet surfing. But the WNDR3700 takes routing to a newer level, with faster processors driving the dual bands to faster speeds and better range; and a big feature set that is easy to use, understand and configure.

SIX-MONTH UPDATE This router has been powered up constantly for six months now, and it continues to run flawlessly. During this time, two firmware updates have been automatically flagged and applied without incident.

I use many of the key features of this router across the three laptops that are connected wirelessly to the dual bands. Video streaming from Netflix and other Internet sites continues to work smoothly.

Being able to connect a USB disk drive to the router has become a heavily-used feature. The router-based disk drive is the central location for backing up the data from the three laptops. I can backup these laptops locally, or from anywhere using the Internet. When traveling with a camera and a laptop, I am able to easily backup digital pictures to the router's USB disk drive. It is another way to save and protect files when away.

This router is my third, and best to date.

Buy NETGEAR Wireless Router - N600 Dual Band Gigabit (WNDR3700) Now

This high-end wireless router by Netgear is well-designed and comes with a lot of features out of the box. I loved the ability to skip the "insert this CD rom in your computer" installation for dummies method and go straight to the web GUI to set it up. The feature I was most interested in is the USB storage sharing. This feature allows you to plug in any external USB drive, and then share it over the network. This was a convenient target for pushing automatic backups to. If our computer's hard drive catches on fire, I still have backups that I've saved on the USB drive attached to this router. Unfortunately, I ran into a bug when trying out this feature. Netgear support was helpful, however, and helped me get it working in a day.

Pros:

Feature rich, high-performance.

Nice vertical stand included.

USB storage feature turns your external drive into a network share.

Comes with QoS (a must for VOIP), dynamic DNS, firewall, features.

Easy to upgrade the firmware and it will automatically check for updates.

Good documentation.

Dead-simple installation and you can skip the Insert This CD-ROM install method.

Ability to set up "guest" network with separate settings in addition to your main network.

Cons:

Traffic bandwidth monitoring is rudimentary. It is actually very good for an off-the shelf router, but I'm spoiled by my home router which runs Tomato firmware: it has pretty graphs.

USB storage feature needs work. You can only use your router's admin password to protect your shares. Configuring settings with Google Chrome or non-firefox, non-IE browsers may silently fail (as it did for me). The workaround is to reapply settings with IE or Firefox.

All in all a very solid product. I give it 4.5 stars, as I wasted time chasing down the Chrome/Web GUI bug. I have no doubt this will become a 5-star product as Netgear pushes out new firmware updates.

Read Best Reviews of NETGEAR Wireless Router - N600 Dual Band Gigabit (WNDR3700) Here

Have been running a D-Link DGL-4300 for several years with good results. Needed a replacement with more speed and processing power to handle multi-media, large LAN file transfers and N wireless services.

Tried the D-Link DIR-825, but undocumented MAC address restrictions killed the deal. The router would not accept a non-zero value for the first two characters of the WAN MAC address.

Looked at the Linksys WRT-610N, but was concerned with past Linksys product performance.

Purchased the Netgear WNDR3700 which was getting very good reviews and selling out quickly after release.

Configuration was a breeze with typical Netgear menus. LAN and WiFI speed are excellent.

The DLNA USB device option works great, streaming pictures to our LAN connected Samsung TV.

Guest WiFi access with LAN restrictions makes sharing with guests or visiting family easy.

There have been no issues using Vonage VoIP and transferring large amounts of data at the same time. QOS settings are available in the WNDR3700, but I'm not currently using it. Even with QOS and rules active, the DGL-4300 would sometimes cause the VoIP to stutter during large transfers.

Port Address Translation (PAT) is not available. This makes it difficult to access multiple Port 80 LAN devices from the WAN side.

I rate the unit 4.5+ stars. PAT would have made it a five.

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As you have no doubt read in other reviews, the firmware on this model is buggy but is progressively getting better. I am currently able to use the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands without problems. I am also able to use the network file server feature without problems.

My main gripe is that the media server feature does not work currently, and will cause the issue where the router suddenly stops working (but will still respond to ping and appear on the local network). The only fix when the router freezes like this is to turn it off and on.

If you want to read more, type 'NETGEAR WNDR3700 freeze' into your favorite search engine (no quotes) and navigate to the Netgear forums link that is returned.

My opinion is that Netgear pushed this router out too fast, and figured the early adopter's testing would be enough for them to work out all the issues. If that is the case, they were wrong this time.

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When it works, this router is fine. The 2.4ghz range and throughput is everything one could want. As written about other routers, 5ghz range is quite limited. The usb hard drive functiality is very very slow. Nowhere near a replacement for a NAS.

I've been experiencing lockups about once a week. After multiple calls, tech said probably a hardware problem. That's when I find out that it is Netgear's policy to charge for swapping the router. If I want to send it in and wait for a replacement,its free. If I want them to send me working router first, and then send back the defective unit, they charge $16.00! This is a first in my experience. In addition,their own community shows lots of postings about this weekly lock up problem (see : )

All in all, not very happy to have to throw more money at a one month old router that is supposed to be Netgear's top of the line.

Update: received replacement RMA router. It still has the same problem, and now my 90 day support window is closed. There is no email for netgear support to even inform them of a bug. Looks like I'll be spending more money on a Linksys soon. Netgear = buggy router, and infuriating support and support policies.