RT314 (RT311 with a 4 port switch) - great router
Written: Jun 05 '01
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Very reliable unit. Supports both DSL and Cable Modem.
Cons: May be hard to set up for non-technical people. Only supports PPPoE
The Bottom Line: What better way to attach mutiple computers to the internet than this router? Only supports PPPoE for DSL - older DSL may use PPPoA
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| matwood's Full Review: NetGear RT311 (RT311NA) Router |
Background
When I moved to Kansas from Illinois, I now can get both DSL and Cable Modems. I actually subscribed to both and tested this router on both. Sprint, the big DSL provider, could not provision 8 Meg x 1 Meg. Only SBC and Telocity could give me 1.5 x 256. In their fine print, the speeds are 385K – 1.5M x 256K, and boy did I ever get the low end of ~400K. As you can guess, I am going with the Cable Modem, where I have been getting speeds at the 1.5 MB and higher and is far cheaper than DSL!
Installation of Hardware
Installation was very easy. Plug in the power supply, attach the Internet port to the cable modem or DSL modem, and then plug the your computers into the built-in 4 port hub. If you are like me, you can add another hub (up to 253 total computers can access this) and keep on adding computers. Note: you still need the crossover cable to hook up your cable or DSL modem to this router – a standard Ethernet cable will not work!
Software Installation/Router Configuration
Software installation was a breeze; however, configuring the router could be challenging to beginning Internet junkies. To set up the router, you have two choices - “Telenetting” to the router or using a Web Browser. If you use a web browser, change your settings on your network card to support DHCP, and then you can access the router directly. Since the IP address in the router undoubtedly will not match your internal network, you will need to access the router through a serial connection. This could either be a PC or laptop. For me, the laptop was the easiest route to go. Once this was done, you simply entered in the following:
1. Your ISP Login ID and password (required for some installations, not for my cable modem)
2. Your ISP IP address (or select DHCP – which I used for cable modem, static for DSL) WAN Settings
3. Your router internal IP address, or it could be configured as a DHCP router. LAN settings
4. Any NAT translation.
Here is some more advice. I have RoadRunner and TimeWarner does not support or assist you in router configuration. You cannot use the router to automatically dispense the DNS server from the ISP. Rather, you need to put in each machine, the address of the DNS server. Since TimeWarner does not tell you this on their website, nor will their customer service give you this information, simply go to whois.com, put in the domain (i.e. kc.rr.com) and do a lookup. You will get the name of the DNS server. Just PING these names, it will resolve to IP addresses, and use this for you DNS server configuration on each machine. Without this, you will never resolve IP addresses to names!
More help: This only supports DSL with PPPoE. Earlier systems used PPPoA, or ATM cards to support DSL and will not work with this or for that matter, many of the routers on the market today. The good news is that most providers support PPPoE (PPP over Ethernet).
NAT
A word on NAT. NAT stands for Network Address Translation. It keeps a table of IP addresses for your internal network, and routes to the Internet via the static or dynamic IP address assigned by your ISP. Here is where the fun sets in – if you play online games, some of them require NAT to be set up. Also, if you run a web server, you would also set up NAT to direct people to your server for FTP, Telnet, HTTP, etc. to that specific machine. When you play online games that do not support specific addressing such as Red Alert, you need to assign one machine in your network, that will be the default machine for all protocols (1st setting in NAT translation). By doing this, games like Red Alert will run fine, but only on that machine. Furthermore, any websites that use odd port #’s (including pop up ads), will only function properly on this machine. This is not a problem unique to Netgear, rather a problem to all routers that use NAT. Fortunately, current games like Quake III have taken this into consideration and will work on these types of routers on all machines! Also, in order for NAT to work, all your machines MUST have static IP addresses, so you cannot take advantage of the DHCP built into the router.
Quality of Unit
Up 24 x 7, never disconnected me, worked flawless. Really, Netgear, Linksys, etc. do make reliable products at a fraction of the cost that Cisco, Intel, 3Com sell their products for. Buying this router for a DSL or Cable Modem connection is a no-brainer decision.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
matwood
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Member: Michelle Atwood
Reviews written: 21
Trusted by: 3 members
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