NETGEAR WNR2500 reviewed

[Fraoch]

Neat, this router is actually pretty impressive.

What took me by surprise is how well this thing does at long range. It almost matches the 2.4 GHz leader, the ASUS RT-N66U, yet it only costs half as much:

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/lanw...-asus-rtn66u-dark-knight/1238-netgear-wnr2500

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/lanw...-asus-rtn66u-dark-knight/1238-netgear-wnr2500

If range is your utmost concern the router's lack of 5 GHz is a moot point because 5 GHz doesn't work as well as 2.4 GHz at long ranges anyway.

At short ranges the router's 10/100 ports obviously hold it back, but still...

The router's simultaneous throughput looked bad at first, but with the limited upload of Internet connections at least around here where 4, 3, 2 Mbps and even 512 Kbps are typical, you likely won't see much reduction in throughput if you're maxing out both downloading and uploading. Connections with 10 Mbps upload might not even be able to hit it.

Impressive given the price. I guess 802.11n still has some life left in it, and tweaks of older chipsets can still produce surprising results.

 

[Razor512]

They should have added gigabit ports. 100mbit ports cant be that much cheaper that it is worth crippling the router.

I would have loved if they could make a N450 version of the jnr3210

I use it as a second router (provides an extra access point)

it may not be a well known router from them and lacks 3rd party firmware, but it is extremely stable. (never ever had to reboot it outside of a firmware update)

Only thing that was annoying about it was the lights on the netgear logo that blinked with network activity and they were extremely bright (bright enough to be able to read a news paper with it being the only light source)

luckily it also has the option to disable the annoying lights.

It also supports USB soundcards for both sending and receiving audio, and it actually works (tried it with a cheap $2 USB soundcard from ebay, though I have not used the audio feature after those few initial test due to software limits. they did not add the function to create a wireless bridge so the device has to be wired to use the speaker function.

If it offered a wireless bridge feature, I would use it as a device to also make any pair of speakers into wireless ones, eg being able to use a tablet or smartphone as a remote and have the audio come from a my PC.

 

[Italiano]

The range this router has is by far the best on the market at this price point. At least according to SmallNetBuilder. However I live in Europe and can't find it anywhere to buy. I couldn't get a single response on the topic from Netgear. Does anybody know whether this router will ever be sold in Europe? Thanks.