Product Description

RangeMax NEXT extends the possibilities of your wireless home network by providing a Steady-Stream of up to 300Mbps, and is compliant with draft 802.11n. This next generation wireless standard utilizes advanced MIMO (Multi-In, Multi-Out) technology, which delivers incredible speed and range, and for the first time provides wireless interoperability at the highest speeds with other products with TopDog. A RangeMax NEXT wireless network creates and maintains stable connections and enough bandwidth to surf the Internet, download MP3s, make Internet phone calls, share files, play network games, and stream high-definition videos, simultaneously at any distance or location in the home or small office. Because RangeMax NEXT is compatible with all legacy b and g wireless products, you are sure to be connected. Preset internal antennas and draft 11n-True-Test, high-performance testing and tuning, provides maximum performance and high-quality streaming every time. Touchless WiFi Security makes creating the highest level of network security easy and includes WEP, WPA-PSK, or WPA2-PSK. Setup is simple thanks to NETGEARs Smart WizardTM and 24/7 technical support. Steady-Stream technology ensures you have enough streaming bandwidth to support all of your applications, all over your home, all at once.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #54240 in Consumer Electronics
• Brand: NetGear
• Model: WNR854T-100UKS
• Released on: 2006-09-04
• Dimensions: 2.60 pounds

Manufacturer's Description
RangeMax NEXT extends the possibilities of your wireless home network by providing a Steady-Stream of up to 300 Mbps, and is compliant with draft 802.11n. This next generation wireless standard utilizes advanced MIMO (Multi-In, Multi-Out) technology, which delivers incredible speed and range, and for the first time provides wireless interoperability at the highest speeds with other products with Top Dog".

A RangeMax NEXT wireless network creates and maintains stable connection and enough bandwidth to surf the Internet, download MP3s, make Internet phone calls, share files, play network games, and stream high-definition videos, simultaneously at any distance or location in the home or office. Because RangeMax NEXT is compatible with all legacy b and g wireless products, you are sure to be connected.

Preset internal antennas and 11-n True -Test high-performance testing and tuning, provides maximum performance and high-quality streaming every time. Touchless WiFi Security makes creating the highest level of network security easy and includes WEP, WPA-PSK, or WPA2-PSK. Setup is simple thanks to NETGEAR's Smart Wizard" and 24/7 technical support.

NETGEAR's WNR854T RangeMax" NEXT wireless router provides maximum coverage and bandwidth, enabling you and your entire household to simultaneously connect to multiple Internet services and online media. The built in 5-port Gigabit (10/100/1000) Switch maximises connectivity to wired devices.

To explain the capabilities of this RangeMax" NEXT wireless router further: Imagine connecting to the Internet from anywhere in the house. Then imagine everyone in the house connecting at the same time, and all doing things online or over the network - all at the same time: Watching a Hi-Definition video or TV programme in the living room, browsing the Internet in the study, playing online games in the den, downloading MP3 music from the dining room - all at the same time.

Box Contents

Customer Reviews

Good in parts - like a curate's egg!!
I bought this device almost a year ago to replace the excellent dg834pn (MIMO) ADSL router. I have almost binned the wnr854t many times due to innumerable firmware bugs. These have manifested themselves in many ways. For example, the unit will crash, not provide an internet connection (Note: You will need a separate ADSL modem to get online), and fail mid-way through a network file transfer.

Over the months I have upgraded the firmware many many times from netgear's website. You will see the sheer number of versions posted because there were so many bugs. However, I am happy to report that crashing is now rare.

If you need to stream video and games over the home wireless network, this router is ideal for the job. However, if you don't know much about PCs and networks, I'd recommend the cheaper dg834pn. I never had any problems with it, although it was much slower that the wnr854t.

To get the most of the wnr854t you need to buy N-wireless adapters for your PCs (WN121T or WN311B). However, I've had problems with these as well, which I put down to Netgear rushing their products to market.

Good speed and range
I bought a refurbished unit for £40 and a couple of matching WN121T usb adapters for my desktop PCs. I upgraded from a Belkin Pre-N router which was struggling to reach through two floors to my laptop and Squeezebox Duet controller. I found the speed and reliability of the connection much improved even for my laptops and Duet controller using the older 802.11g networking.

One of the PCs with the WN121T usb adapter connected at an indicated 162Mbps even through two floors which was a useful improvement over the 108Mbps of the Belkin router. Also the PC furthest away struggled to get any connection with an 802.11g adapter and now connects reliably around 25-39Mbps.

OK, but temperamental and lacks top-end features
Caveat: I am a network security specialist, so your mileage may well vary!

Initial installation and set-up of this unit is a breeze, and the web-based interface is easy enough to navigate... I had mine installed within 5 minutes of unpacking, and was browsing the Internet within another 10 minutes (at most).

I have had the unit for about a month now, and it works fine for the most part. I especially love the inclusion of WPA2-PSK(AES) as an encryption option. Remember, WEP (64-bit and 128-bit) can be broken by an eavesdropper in seconds nowadays, while no successful attacks have (yet) been published against either WPA or WPA2. Nice to finally have AES encryption included!

The 4 PCs in my household (2 of which use NetGear NEXT wireless adapters, the other 2 use 802.11g adapters) do backups to a 1.5TB Thecus N5200 Roustor unit wired directly to one of the WNR854T router's Gigabit ports. Although throughput speeds have been impressive and the Thecus bulletproof in all "wired" tests, I found that during initial backup runs across the wireless LAN all four PCs would sometimes lose the connection, causing the backup to fail. This would also sometimes happen during large (multi-GB) file transfers between machines on the wireless network.

Sometimes, wireless connection speeds and signal quality can vary a lot, even from my desktop PC that never moves anywhere! It could be a MIMO issue depending on where other machines are in the house and garden, but this is a pain at times, especially as I forked out for NEXT adapters and often can't get beyond standard 801.11g speeds.

These issues could probably be solved if NetGear enabled the user to exert a bit more control over the router via the web interface... sadly, "professional-grade" options are not available on the router.

It would be REALLY nice to be able to control the router's radio strength, do some traffic shaping by setting priorities based on protocol, port and source/destination (so that I could access a remote Exchange Server and download large work files at adequate speeds while other household members Skype, videocast and so on...), more advanced DHCP features (including relay and multiple DHCP pools), advanced routing control and metrics, and so on.

The "SPI firewall", as with all NetGear's other routers, is rubbish and all but impossible to configure with "real" firewall rules, and the content filtering feature is equally dumb. A simple "real" firewall would have been great, as would be a downloadable URL and keyword category list... as well as whitelisting and exceptions for certain machines/IPs/users (I may want to stop kids from browsing violence sites, but certainly not myself)!

In summary: the router performs its core function well with a few minor but annoying glitches, but don't expect more than that... a crying shame at the price!