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Netgear aims to get you up and running as quickly as possible and a startup wizard has a go at automatically detecting your Internet connection when you log on. We found this worked fine with our BTOpenWorld test connection and we just had to enter our account details to get straight online.

The DG834G has lots of features on offer and the tidy web interface makes light work of accessing them all. Wireless security is good enough for the target market as along with both 64 and 128bit WEP encryption the router supports WPA-PSK. Not that many are likely to use it but WPA using a RADIUS server isn’t on the list.

MAC address filtering is available but you can only allow access to those systems on the list and not create a deny list as well. However, this is made a lot easier as the router displays all associated wireless clients along with their MAC addresses. Thus far the Netgear was looking good but results from the wireless tests spoiled the day as performance was down near the bottom with the Linksys and USR. We also reran the tests using a 3Com 802.11g PC Card but saw no appreciable improvements.

The SPI firewall defaults to blocking all inbound traffic unless it is as the result of a request originating on the LAN but you can create your own rules to determine the firewall’s behaviour. As always we recommend extreme caution with these but at least the copious documentation provides clear guidance along with examples and plenty of advice. Web site blocking by URL or keyword is supported and you can create lists of IP addresses on the LAN that are exempt from these. Schedules are also provided so firewall rules and web site blocking lists can be applied at specific times of the day or week.

As with SMC, Netgear also provides facilities for email alerting to one address and along with notifications of intruder attacks or port scans it will also let you know if a user has tried to access a blocked web site. There’s more as the router maintains a detailed log of all activity which can be emailed at regular intervals to the same address.

Verdict

Stylish design and a fine set of features for the price. These include good security for wired and wireless clients and useful notification facilities but the below average wireless performance is cause for concern.

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