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PC Advisor Best Buy

October 8, 2006

Netgear DG834N

This review appears in the December 06 issue of PC Advisor – available from 19 October – as part of our definitive guide to wireless networking.

This model is slightly different to the other draft-N routers we looked at, in that it has an ADSL2+ modem – the WNR834B is the pure router version. That aside, it has the standard NAT router specification of four fast ethernet ports, an SPI firewall, WEP and WPA-PSK security. The DG834N is appreciably bigger than its 11g predecessor and so has to stand vertically. This is because the somewhat large Mac-friendly glossy-white casing hides the fact that there are no less than two sets of antennae. The DG834N is based on the Marvell TopDog chipset.

Installation was perfectly straightforward, with clearly marked colour-coded sockets on the back of the router. The built-in wizard makes hooking up to and sharing your ADSL broadband connection a piece of cake. When you first set it up, the DG834N isn't very secure; in fact the Wi-Fi security settings aren't enabled by default. However, its web interface, which is common across the Netgear range, is very clear and logically laid out.

Of all the draft-N routers we looked at, the DG834N provided the best overall performance – but only just. Using QCheck, we clocked the DG834N data transfer rate at 48Mbps in our close test and 33Mbps in the far test, bettering the Linksys on the former and matching it for the latter score. If you're looking for performance, Netgear's DG834N is definitely the draft-N router to go for.

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Independent customer reviews from

Netgear DG834N scored:
8.5 out of 10 100% real reviews

The 2 most helpful reviews based on 86 reviews:

05 Nov 2007 Keith, Bradford

9

Good Points

Solid as a rock stability and blisteringly quick performance. The installation was easy and quick. There were no nasty surprises it does what it said on the box and does it well. Initially the price made me wince but after a few weeks of stable connections all was forgiven.

Bad Points

I still can't get any where near the claimed range although it has much longer reach than my last router but I’m not complaining it’s doing the job. It's a vast improvement on traditional router design I'm not going to be putting it on my coffee table.

18 Sep 2006 Anonymous verified purchaser

8

Good Points

good solid signal

Bad Points

firm ware needs updating imediatly

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User Reviews

Monday, 02 June 2008

Reviewed by The Brigadier

Star Rating: rating of 1

Duration of ownership: 5 weeks

Strengths:
Cheap

Weaknesses:
Limited by what you can use it for.

Overall Evaluation:
Unsure as previous versions of worked well

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