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Of course, neither the NetGear site, nor any other, would come up at that point. He asked me to do it anyway, then try to access the NetGear site from the instructions (note that an hour and a half into the call, this was the first time we had even tried to do the step that I was hung up on). An hour-and-a-half into the call, he had me enter a particular IP address into my network settings; I knew that by doing that, instead of using the "automatically obtain an IP address" option, I would no longer be able to access the internet and told him so.
The instructions tell you to hook up the device to your computer, then access a particular IP address at NetGear, which is supposed to step you through the process (other wireless devices I've worked with do basically the same thing).I could not get that website to come up, even though I was definitely connected to the internet (other sites worked fine). It was clear this engineer had never worked with this particular product, and that he was handling two calls at once, since he put me on hold multiple times. I got hung up very early in the instructions.
He was also completely unfamiliar with Vista. He was about to put me on hold again when I finally ran out of patience and told him I'd just return the device, which I did.So I guess bottom line: If you can get it to work, great; if you need support in order to address any issues, you'd be just as well off asking your cat for advice. So I called netgear's customer support, figuring it was probably a known, common problem related to Vista.
After holding for 15 minutes, during which the same 3 marketing messages repeated on a 30-second cycle, I finally spoke to a support engineer.
Their support would undoubtedly still be trying to solve the problem with me, but I ultimately chose to take a hardwired approach to solve the problem, running a CAT5e into my attic that was attached to the Actiontec in the basement and a WPN802 in the attic. With this in mind, and ignoring other warnings in reviews that the repeater mode had issues, I purchased a second WPN802 as it seems they are only supposed to act as repeaters for another WPN802. but nothing worked. I tried this on 3 different Dell Inspiron laptops using both Dell's wireless utility and the Windows network connections utility.this is pretty common equipment.
I'll provide detail below, but to summarize my review, this product works fine as a standalone wireless access point but did not work at all for me as a wireless repeater, even when using 2 of these devices with one as the primary and the second as the repeater.Here is the problem I was trying to solve with this product.after re-locating my office and Verizon Fios Actiontec wireless router into the basement of my home, I found that the Actiontec was not strong enough to provide reliable wireless service to the front half of the first and second floors of my home. The WPN802 in the attic is exhibiting great range and covering those areas not being serviced properly by the Actiontec.Due to the obvious repeater functionality flaws, I cannot rate this product higher than a 3, and I rate it at that high a level only because it does work well as a standalone wireless access point and because I was impressed by the professional nature of Netgear's support. This was not easy as we had to continually do a hard reset on the 802s, and as has been mentioned in previous reviews you need to be directly attached to the 802 to re-configure it. Having read the great reviews of the WPN802 as a wireless access point with very strong range, I purchased one and connected it to my router to act as its own access point (I did not attempt to use it as a repeater for the Actiontec as I have read mixed results of using other devices with the Actiontec, and also learned that the WPN802 is only supposed to act as a repeater for another WPN802).
I spent 5 hours on the phone with Netgear's technical support in the Philipines trying to get the repeater mode to work; I must compliment them for their thorough and knowledgeable nature as well as responsiveness - we tried pretty much everything in terms of assigning static IP addresses, different channels, access control, etc. If all I wanted was an access point however I could have gotten something cheaper, and now I have 2 of these (which thankfully I do have uses for). I found that the WPN802 only had marginally better range than my Actiontec, and so this wasn't a solution to my problem; given that both my Actiontec and the WPN802 were in my basement, I assumed that the foundation of the house must be interfering with the signal and so the answer was likely to place a wireless repeater somewhere above the basement. I placed the second WPN802 on the first floor of my home and configured it as a repeater for the WPN802 in the basement; the signal from the second WPN802 was very strong, however it was impossible to connect to this second WPN802.you see, in order to configure the repeater mode both WPN802s must use the same SSID, and without fail my laptop always connected to the first WPN802 with the weaker signal.
You can find those by searching on Amazon. The final solution was to get cameras that operate on 5.8 Mhz. This access point however did work fine, and was easy to set up. This product worked as advertised, but it didn't solve the problem we got it for, which was interference from wireless surveillance cameras. Even with this access point in the same room, I couldn't get an iPod Touch to reliably use Wi-Fi connectivity if the surveillance cameras were active.
This issue could have been covered in the really skimpy User docs. However, once I learned how to access my router I found the allocated IP address of the 802 and I was able to adjust its settings. The Netgear WPN802 access point performed well once installed. I'm a novice at the networking stuff and had a bit of trouble accessing the 802 once it was deployed because of dynamic IP address.
Do NOT expect to plug a dsl or cable modem into this device and have it work as a router. With this device, you can give your whole residential neighborhood wi-fi access if you mount it high enough. This product is meant to be used with a router, it plugs into a router. You MUST have a router. It is basically a long range antenna, and is a real flame thrower. It can be used with your existing wireless router to vastly extend it's range, or to make a non wireless router a wireless router.
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