NETGEAR WNDR3700 Reviewed

[thiggins]

Beisser: I've round that link rate is only remotely related to actual throughput.

Bluesherpa: Bessier is correct. I didn't notice that you were quoting MBytes/sec, not bits. 14 MB/s is very good indeed.

 

[bluesherpa]

Thanks! I feel a lot better now knowing that my router is working properly.

 

[beisser]

Beisser: I've round that link rate is only remotely related to actual throughput.

Bluesherpa: Bessier is correct. I didn't notice that you were quoting MBytes/sec, not bits. 14 MB/s is very good indeed.

that may be but as a rule of thumb you can usually say that actual throughput rarely exceeeds 50% of linkrate. at least thats what my own experience and countless tests using iperf showed me.

 

[Crusher]

bad wifi speed

My max transfer rate is 5,5 MB from both 2 wireless clients.. from the closest range
What could be wrong?
I have max signal and the windows utility says 300mb/s .. but.. that's the result MAX 5,5 MB

 

[V1King]

NETGEAR WNDR3700 or Belkin N+ ?

Hello
Please help me decide, which would you recommend, NETGEAR WNDR3700 or Belkin N+ ?

Thanks in advance!

 

[Gingernut]

Well there is a big price difference between the two. The Belkin N+ is not dual band so it's hard to compare both as they are different.

I suppose it all depends if you want/need dual band wireless and what you are willing to spend.

 

[V1King]

I bought the Netgear wndr3700 router.

 

[Delekhan]

Hi,

just wanted to let you know that there is a donation going on in the dd-wrt forums to buy Brainslayer a WNDR3700.
You can get further details here: http://www.dd-wrt.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=53016&start=45

Would be great if we have ~120€ together soon, cause I hate the standard GUI.

-- Markus

 

[totoro]

I apologise for my simple question amidst your highly technical discussions, but I need to know one simple thing about this router. I heard that it does not support asymmetrical port forwarding, that is, it does not have an option to forward an external port with one number to a local port with another number. Could you please tell me if that is true?

 

[beisser]

I apologise for my simple question amidst your highly technical discussions, but I need to know one simple thing about this router. I heard that it does not support asymmetrical port forwarding, that is, it does not have an option to forward an external port with one number to a local port with another number. Could you please tell me if that is true?

no it doesnt support port translation.

 

[Unregistered]

B/G and N clients simultaneous on different radios

This will limit the performance of both flavors of clients. See Add, Don't Replace When Upgrading to 802.11n

Since one radio is serving clients and the bridge, bandwidth will be shared. So, no.

Yes. Again one radio, so bandwidth is shared.

If you want full performance from N, especially used for streamed/media connections, then put your wireless clients on a separate G network.

I am still not 100% clear on this. I read and understand your article about adding and not replacing when going N. I also know there is no "5GHz Only" mode on the 3700. However, each radio supports its own SSID right? So let's say I set the 2.4 radio to 54Mbps mode and connect ONLY my B and G clients to that SSID. Then I set the 5GHz radio to 300Mbps mode and connect ONLY my N clients to that SSID. This will allow both B/G and N clients to transmit simultaneously without slowdown because they are using different radios right? Won't this be the same as using a G router and separate single band N router?

If I'm mistaken and there is still slowdown, then I'd have to say that I don't see a point in a dual radio router.

Anyway, thanks for the great review!

 

[thiggins]

I am still not 100% clear on this. I read and understand your article about adding and not replacing when going N....

See http://forums.smallnetbuilder.com/showthread.php?t=2506

 

[totoro]

no it doesnt support port translation.

That's a real pity. Thanks for your answer.

 

[lffisher]

USB NAS as video streamer?

I know this isn't the right forum, but could someone please tell me in a few sentences how to use a USB NAS drive on this router which has DVD VOB files on it to get the movie to play on my TV?

I have a Panasonic 58" 1080p TV and a Denon 3808CI receiver, so I have good equipment. What device would read the VOB files from the NAS drive and send it into the receiver for display?

Can a video streaming Blu-Ray like the Sony N460 or Panasonic BD80 do that? Are people using a PC to somehow read the NAS drive and send HDMI into their receiver?

Thanks in advance.
Larry

 

[thiggins]

Use media players like:
NETGEAR EVA2000 Digital Entertainer Live Reviewed

Mvix MX-800HD Ultio 1080p Media Center Reviewed

DragonTech ioBox-100HD Networked Media Tank Reviewed

NETGEAR EVA9150 Digital Entertainer Elite Reviewed

 

[Unregistered]

can this thing printer share through the usb port?

 

[thiggins]

No it doesn't.

 

[Rigolo]

no DHCP and DNS integration on WNDR3700

I have just "upgraded" my Via Mini-ITX router running openwrt 8.09.1 to a brand new WNDR3700. And then my network started to fail.

It turns out that the WNDR3700 DHCP server and the DNS resolver do not work together on the WNDR3700. When the DHCP server hands out an IP address to a device on the LAN that asks for it, it does not record that information in such a way that the DNS server that runs on the router can use it. But the DHCP response that the router returns does set the router as the DNS server. From that moment on you can no longer resolve local IP addresses. So if you have multiple machines on the LAN they can not determine each others IP through a DNS lookup. So if you have a local webserver running (like on your Netgear NAS) you can only connect to it via it's IP address not it's host name.

Even if you use the address reservation option of the router to reserve a specific IP for a specific MAC address and also add the hostname on this reservation it is NOT USED.

Even the menu option "connected devices" is not using DNS and DHCP reservation to determine the list of connected devices. It is relying on a "net-scan" program that runs on the router to listing to ARP request on the network to find connected hosts. And when it finds them it will use different techniques to determine the host names (like asking for a Windows NetBIOS hostname) and displays them in a list.

So the lack of DHCP and DNS integration makes the internal DNS server kind of useless, but you can NOT disable it, or tell the DHCP server to set a different IP address as the DNS server that it should return to the clients asking for a IP address. So there is no use in keeping the routers DHCP server active if it results in a not usable DNS infrastructure.

There is an option to disable the DHCP server on the router. So if you place an other device that is capable of responding the DHCP request and also integrate's that with the DNS server you could use that. That would mean that this device will handle all the DNS requests of the local network and it will forward request for other domains to the ISP (or other) DNS server.

But there is an other "trick" that this router is performing. It will "HIJACK" each DNS request that is see's pasing through it. It will examine the contents of ALL the DNS request. Even if this DNS request is not coming from the router but from an other device. If the request is for a specific domain it will ALWAYS respond with the router's LAN IP address as the DNS response. So basically the router is doing DNS Spoofing. It does this for the domains routerlogin.com and routerlogin.net (and the www. variation) but who knows what other addresses it "HiJacks". From the released GPL source code you can see that this is a specific netgear requirment and that this is mandatory on ALL netgear routers.

So although the WNDR3700 is a very good and speedy router, the firmware is holding back it's true potential. And the most intresting part is that the firmware contains all the software nessesary to correctly perform the DHCP and DNS integration. But somehow netgear has decided to NOT use it and put some extra "features" into the firmware that are very close, if not exactly like, malware/spyware that performs DNS Spoofing.

 

[thiggins]

I think your main point is, simply put, the WNDR3700 doesn't support NAT loopback and that it supports DNS relay. Both are common in consumer routers.

 

[Rigolo]

I think your main point is, simply put, the WNDR3700 doesn't support NAT loopback and that it supports DNS relay. Both are common in consumer routers.

My main point is that the WNDR3700 comes with a broken local DNS implementation that prevents you from accessing local machines via their local host names. With the WNDR3700 as your DHCP server in your network you can no longer access the Web Based management tools of your NAS via the hostname of that NAS.

I did not check to see if NAT Loopback works on this router.

The router does perform a DNS Relay function if you set the router as the main DNS server in your network. But even if you do not use your router as the main DNS server in your network it still intercepts and examine any DNS Request when they pass through the router. And this "feature" can not be turned off.