The Netgear WNDR3700 family of products is not reliable. It currently exists in three flavors; WNDR3700v1, WNDR3700v2, and WNDR37AV. It’s basically the same product. By the time you read this, Netgear may have come up with some other fancy name for it — but it’s still the same product. You cannot say Netgear isn’t consistent at least; they have managed to bring out three different products (by their own standards), that all fail.
This is a SOHO Gigabit Router Firewall Gateway WLAN type gizmo.. you can even attach an USB storage to it and share it among your users.
The configuration and set-up is fairly simple; you’ll be up and running in less than five minutes. Add some MAC filtering for your WLAN clients (because you always do this, right?), and Bob’s your uncle. It will stream video on the WLAN with decent performance to most types of clients (multimedia boxes, laptops, smartphones, and so on). The user interface in the administration screens is OK. Firmware upgrades are also simple to apply. Those that are released from Netgear.
This product family has a serious load of issues that have not yet been resolved. I recommend that you head on over to the Netgear user/community forums and read anything you can find on “3700” there. Some issues are minor, some may not affect you, but they are there. And there are alternatives to this product. Netgear, however, seems to think they’re the only ones putting out a product like it.
If you, like me, need stable TCP/IP sessions (“Pidgin”, “IRC”, “SSH”, etc), then you’re in for a surprise. This is 2010/2011, and Netgear has managed to bring out a product in this segment that drops TCP/IP sessions cold. Yes, that’s right, it will terminate your ongoing terminal sessions, kick you out of IRC channels, and a lot of other “minor” issues.
Given that Netgear actually has put out quality products in the past, one can only wonder if they have a fair mix of developers and engineers at hand. One team that can’t find an RJ45 plug with both their hands if their life depended on it, and another team that really knows what they’re doing. Hey, Netgear, here’s an idea: Get these guys to talk to each other. Who knows, maybe you’ll actually manage to release a decent firmware before your brand reputation is gone.
Review in one word: FAIL
Some other reviews of this product:
SmallNetBuilder.com