Netgear N900 Dual Band Wi-Fi Router

Disclosure: I have my CCNA and work on an IPv6 backbone; I feel confident with my routing knowledge. I have never felt so slighted by a purchase. I could write a book titled "One million and one reasons not to use this router," but I'll try and keep the ranting to a minimum and be concise. I know Netgear reps say to contact them, but they can never rectify this unless they can give back my time and dignity. I used to like Netgear. This router was supposed to replace a $15 router that worked great, but didn't have IPv6 capability. I have my main router/modem that has never had any problems and then always put a second router in the DMZ to act as my private network. -- Day 0 -- When first connecting the router in it's factory default condition it runs a setup wizard. It takes roughly 5-7 minutes and there is no way around it. This becomes a time consuming hassle even after the first "reset to factory default" let alone many. When I first connected it the Genie said it recommended putting the router in Access Point mode so I did. My entire network immediately went down. I had to reset and reconfigure everything. I know not to do that now. Once my original network was up and running again I tried again. This time I ignored the recommendation and set it as a router. Then I put it in the DMZ and configured everything exactly like the router it was replacing with one addition -- IPv6 in pass through mode. It worked brilliantly. I was getting extra speed through IPv6. Latency was non-existent. Pages loaded so quick I couldn't even tell they changed. My phone was on the other side of the house getting full bandwidth on the 5GHz network and the Gigabit ports meant my LAN was bottlenecked at the CPU and not the NIC for the first time ever. All tests showed that this was a good decision to splurge on the most expensive router I've ever purchased. -- Day 1 -- I came home from work urgently needing to close out some day trade positions. Pages are loading, but at a crawl. My private network was at a standstill (good thing I had another network I could use). I reboot the router. Reboots take about 3-5 minutes; it's no big deal. Except, rebooting doesn't solve the issue. "Maybe it's not the router," I think. So I reboot everything: router, computers, and phones. Still it's crawling. "Maybe the cable is bad." So I switch out my cable with the new one that came in the box. Still it's crawling. "Maybe it's IPv6." So I disable IPv6. Still, it's crawling. "Maybe if I updated the firmware? It does say there is an update and it is recommended." I update the firmware. 20 minutes later, it's still crawling. Each tiny change I make has to be applied. Then the "please wait" screen shows. Every little change takes 5 minutes. My $15 router could apply changes faster. And even after applying they don't look like they are actually applied. I turned off the 5GHz network and applied it and according the device list my phone is still connected to the 5GHz network. I change the name of the 5GHz network and forget all the networks in my phone (that one was painful). It isn't the phone. My phone says it's connected to one network. The router is reporting the phone is connected to the 5GHz network of the changed name that my phone doesn't even know exists. Only rebooting the router seemed to apply the settings. So now each change I make means applying the change... 3 - 5 minutes. Then rebooting the router... another 5-7 minutes. "Maybe I could upload the settings backup I made while it was working beautifully," I think. 5 minutes later the settings from when it was working have been uploaded to the router and still it is crawling. I don't get it. Hardwired devices should be straightforward. It's able to resolve addresses, but my network monitor says that my bandwidth is 2Kbps. I could do better with my old 56k. "Well maybe all this changing of settings really screwed something up. I'll do a factory reset." The router is reset to factory defaults. It takes 3-5 minutes. But remember when you first connect it after a factory reset it has to do an initial configuration thing that can't be skipped. That takes another 5-7 minutes. I load up the settings backup file and wait for it to apply the settings. Everything came back up. My speeds are back to full bandwidth. WiFi is working great. I come here to write a review. Uh-oh, Amazon only loads half way. The settings only worked for 15 minutes before going back to a crawl. At that point, I would gladly have taken one of the other routers commenters were saying they needed to reboot every day. At least the reboot got them another day. A factory reset and reconfiguration can't even get my 15 minutes. So I decided to go simple. I set up the most basic network I can come up with. WiFi -- Off. IPv6 -- Off. Devices connected -- One. Let's not even worry about DNS -- IP addresses only. Advanced Tab -- Don't touch it... Basic Tab settings only. ReadyShare -- Off. Parental Controls -- Off. The router says the internet status is "GOOD". Yet I'm still only getting 2Kbps. At the bottom is a typical ping output using this router. As you can see there is 70.6% packet loss. I plug in the TP-Link router I was replacing for a test. Immediately everything is back to full bandwidth. No issues, except it doesn't support IPv6. So there it is. Out $80+tax for an absolute POS router that lasted less than 24 hours and back on my $15, 3 year old TP-Link that I should have never tried to replace to begin with. I learned my lesson so you don't have to. The Netgear engineers should be ashamed with how bad of a product they made. Netgear should feel even worse putting it on the market. -- PROS -- It comes with a CAT5e ethernet cable. -- CONS -- It takes its sweet time doing everything. Hopefully you never need to make a change, do a reboot, or reset to factory defaults because it's going to be a while. It lasts about as long as Jim Levenstein in American Pie. It is more expensive than most other home routers on the market. Right when you need internet the most is when it is going to have no connectivity. It's GUI is slow and not user friendly... and I used to like Netgear's GUI. Although it supports IPv6, the options are severely limited, but who needs options on something that doesn't work. Takes up more space in the trash than it is worth. If anything changes I will be sure to update this review. Here is the ping example I referenced: ping 74.125.239.46 PING 74.125.239.46: 56 data bytes 64 bytes from 74.125.239.46: icmp_seq=0 ttl=54 time=25.135 ms 64 bytes from 74.125.239.46: icmp_seq=1 ttl=54 time=23.394 ms Request timeout for icmp_seq 2 Request timeout for icmp_seq 3 Request timeout for icmp_seq 4 Request timeout for icmp_seq 5 Request timeout for icmp_seq 6 64 bytes from 74.125.239.46: icmp_seq=7 ttl=54 time=752.532 ms 64 bytes from 74.125.239.46: icmp_seq=8 ttl=54 time=23.825 ms Request timeout for icmp_seq 9 Request timeout for icmp_seq 10 64 bytes from 74.125.239.46: icmp_seq=11 ttl=54 time=23.707 ms Request timeout for icmp_seq 12 Request timeout for icmp_seq 13 Request timeout for icmp_seq 14 Request timeout for icmp_seq 15 --- 74.125.239.46 ping statistics --- 17 packets transmitted, 5 packets received, 70.6% packet loss round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 23.394/169.719/752.532/291.407 ms