SmallNetBuilder

I have had several problems with this router!!! Every time there is a glitch in power the router seems to lose its firmware load. Another issue is that the Wi-FI continually hangs up or bogs the system wireless system and clients cannot connect to the router and I have to restart the router. Customer service based OCONUS is terrible too. I believe my support was India based. While trying to figure out how to reload my firmware by talking to the India support center, I was hung up on 2x because they could not fix my problem I guess. And after being passed around to several support personnel this is frustrating. Also to reload your firmware, you must be familiar with tftp. Really!! Why can't Netgear come up with a software package that will automatically reinstall the firmware.

Features - a firewall with more features would be great.

On a positive note, when the router is running it is fairly fast.

Extremely frustrating! It will not hook up wirelessly to my Netgear adapter. I have reviewed all the documentation (what little there is) and checked all the settings, tried the setupo wizard that came with the adapter card and tried Windows network setup. Nothing. Called the free 24/7 technical help line, 4 time and failed to reach anybody who could help. Looks like it goes back to Fry's

I did install today the wireless router. The download performance is good (WAN LAN), the full 95Mbit is achieved. The upload is very bad, it's only 30Mbit (WAN LAN) and very unstable speed. With my old wifi router (WL306) 92Mbit could be achieved.

Don't buy this router for the good performance!

I have been running this router for about a month now without any problems WHATSOEVER. I have 14 devices connected including a FIOS router, ROKU, PS3, Wii, 3 iPhones, iPod touches, and PCs. I get my fully provisioned speed (download and upload) through WAN when testing with a gigabit hard wired PC.

I am quite surprised about the poor 2.4 performance tests, but maybe less is better. In comparison to the RT-56U, which I also used previously, there is no stuttering at all when streaming to a PS3 through the media server. Likewise, streaming to a ROKU works flawlessly. Signals are stable throughout my 3-level home with no disconnects. inSSIDer shows that the 2.4 defaults to 217 Mbps, while the 5 radio defaults to 450 Mbps.

Guest network also works great, something RT-N56U does not even offer. The guest network, however, is not on a different subnet as in the E4200 (advantage for E4200).

The Web interface seems a bit slow, but it has all the information you need, including attached devices and traffic meter. I personally like the RT-N56U interface better, though.

IPv6 seems to work automatically (6to4), although FIOS does not support it.

I needed something to replace my really old WRT54G. After a lot of research, I decided on the WNDR4500. I had also looked at the Asus RT-N56U, the Cisco E4200 and the Netgear 3800 and 4000. You can find somebody with negative comments about anything and usually it is their own fault but, even though they seemed to have high performance, it sounded like the Asus was prone to reliability issues and the Cisco lacked features. I was ready to purchase the Netgear 4000 when I heard about the 4500 (which had just been released). Per some additional research, the features and performance looked very promising. I didn't need all the 3-stream immediately, but may in the near future. That and the improved LAN-WAN performance, among other things, made it seem worth the few extra dollars.

I purchased it from Amazon and got it the next day (thank you Amazon Prime). After unboxing it and checking everything out, I hooked it up to the dsl modem and hard wired it to the laptop. It determined the settings of my ISP automatically and I was connected to the internet within a few minutes. I let it update the bios and then set up the basic wireless. After about 15-20 minutes, most basic users could be done.

I spent the next couple of hours maticulously going feature by feature. I set up the IPV6 tunneling and custom wireless SSIDs and security. I set up the static IP addresses for the QNAP TS-219P+, the PS3, the B/W laser and the Color multi-function. I then set up wireless for the Dell laptop, the Macbook Pro and the NOOK. I set up a few more features, but was really impressed with the parental surfing controls. They work great. Much better than software!

So far, I have not had any drops and have had strong signals everywhere on the first and second floors (the router is in the basement and I have a wood framed house). The wireless speeds are SIGNIFICANTLY faster than my WRT54G. I know, not much of a comparison, but it also seems much faster than any other networks that I connect to (Panera, Starbucks, hotels, etc.). The actual hard-wired routing is blazing fast. The speeds between my desktop and NAS are incredible. I have no complaints with performance yet.

My only beef is Netgear's warranty information, or lack thereof. They heavily advertise a lifetime warranty on several other WNDR products. On their website, the WNDR4500 is listed as "varies by location" and does not have the lifetime warranty icon/picture. Newegg says it is lifetime. BestBuy says 1 year. Amazon says nothing about warranty. I sent an email to Netgear Tech Support and they replied that it had a 1 year warrant. I called Netgear Customer Service with a pre-sales question and they said it was lifetime. I emailed Tech Support again (explaining the phone call) and they replied that Customer Service had better information than Tech Support and to go with them. I re-called Customer Service who reiterated that the warranty is lifetime. I purchased the WNDR4500 with the understanding that it has a lifetime warranty, so it better!

Either way, I love the router!!!