Networking Reviews

I purchased a [$$$] "Etherengine" card from a different vendor and had nothing but headaches. After spending hours and hours re-installing sofware and downloading patches for Windows 98SE, I finally gave up and bought the Microsoft card. Within 20 minutes I was up and running! The software is fool-proof and the manual is easy to understand. This card is worth it's money.

The Intel network adaptor that came with my IBM PC failed and I wasn't too confident of finding an alternative that would be easy to install on my Windows ME system. The first attempt, with a LinkSys adaptor, failed to connect to the Internet and I had little indication what might have gone wrong. After returning it, I purchased the Microsoft adaptor. It installed easily using the wizard that runs automatically from the CD. All systems now appear to be go and I'm thrilled to be back on-line with an investment of [$$$] and ten minutes installation time.

I wanted to upgrade my home network from a 10M/sec hub built into my router to a 100M/sec switch. I probably could have gotten by with an 8 port product, but I've wired up a few outlets to a patch panel and didn't want to have to walk to the basement and patch around as I moved around the house. This 16 port version seemed like a good way to go.

The product is very different styling than other Netgear products I have (not that I cared). It is small, not a much larger profile than the plugs themselves need, and the case is very sturdy and solid. With no fans, it makes no noise. My only negative comment is I would have preferred a standard 19 inch width for rack mounting, but others will prefer this more condense case. Fits on a shelf easy, or you could mount it to the wall with screws on the underside.

And the end result -- much faster home network! This would be a good solution for anyone with a larger home or small office wired network, or someone who hosts LAN parties. 16 ports will connect a lot of people!

I had been looking at the FS116 for some time, hoping for the prices to come down. Recently, I was able to get one at a good price from Amazon so I jumped on it.

This switch, unlike many of the Linksys products, is made of *metal*. It is VERY solidly built and quite small - not much taller than the network jacks themselves. It does not have any fans and runs only slightly warm to the touch.

... EVERY port on this device is now uplink capable, not just one port "with a button" as the heading indicates. For me, this was a pleasant surprise as I have several ethernet cables that are designed for uplinking and with this switch, I can use them whenever I need to due to the auto-detection on all 16 ports.

I really like that the LEDs and cables come-out of the front. The trend in consumer level devices is to put the cables on the rear. This does not work for me as I have my "network center" in the basement and all of the cables approach from the front (note, front-connect is how professional-level equipment is built and the fact that the Netgear uses that also harkens to their power-user-level equipment).

Anyway, I have been using this switch transparently for a couple of months now. It functions just as a switch should: without a thought. It just works.

Mike

I have been using Netgear Powerline in my house for almost 10 months some of that time with 4 computers. Have "horse hair plaster walls" and many doors. No problem with using the product and not worried about security issues like with wireless

Both my wife and I work from home two days per week, and we both need high speed Internet access to be our most productive. We created a network in a previous house by purchasing a router and running a cable between two office areas. Now we were in a new home and needed to setup our network again, and running a cable would have been a major construction project. What to do?

We immediately thought of a wireless network. But, as we did our research, we saw repeated reports of the network "dropping off" unexpectedly. Neither of us liked the idea of being in the middle of a discussion with a co-worker, boss, or client while looking at information online and having that information disappear. We wanted reliability and simplicty.

The answer? Powerline networking. New technology had overcome some of the earlier electrical interference problems with powerline networking. We already had a Netgear router from our previous home network that had worked flawlessly for several years. So we purchased the Netgear powerline adapter.

The setup couldn't be much easier: connect the adapter to the router with a standard supplied network cable and plug it in; in the second work location plug in a second adapter, and connect it to your second computer, in our case, my work-supplied laptop.

We've been using this product for 18 months without any problems. On rare occasions my laptop won't "find" the connection. If I unplug the adapter for a minute or two and plug it in again, I'm re-connected. My connection has never dropped off once I'm connected.

The powerline solution isn't quite as "elegant" as a wireless network; you do have to be plugged in to a power outlet, so you don't have the same mobility that you get with wireless. But if you're a serious teleworker, you probably have a work space established, and papers spread out around you anyway. You need to be "at work" not roaming around the yard with your laptop. And if your going to be at work for 8 to 10 hours your laptop will also need to be plugged into an outlet.

If you're looking for a reliable, easy to setup home network system, I highly recommend this Netgear product.

This card is great. It mows your lawn, waxes your ass, and will smack the crap out of you on command. This is a value buy. Buy forty. Crap buy fifty. It's real good baby, real good. Smooth like butter. Don't tell your Mom. She'll hate you.

I got this wireless card based on the recommendation of a friend after I lost my other card. I am VERY happy with it. The configuration is very easy and quick, and the client utility is very well laid out for finding new networks and setting up profiles to save the configuration settings. One word of advice... the version of the client utility that comes with the card is not the latest one. Go to their website and download the 2.4.2.14 version to get the very latest in software and driver. Highly recommened...

Socket designed this SDIO Low Power WLAN Card to be Battery Friendly, which means using this card you will get the maximum possible battery life from your Pocket PC.

Socket's WLAN Utility enables me, as a Network Admin, to monitor wireless network performance, view IP address data, and configure advanced settings. Since most of my employees use Pocket PC 2002, I can use Socket's utility to create, save, and connect to separate WLAN profiles, giving me the flexibility to work with each employee's needs. Employees using Pocket PC 2003 has the advantage of using Microsoft's Zero Configuration utility. My people loves the fact that when their Pocket PC is connected to a wireless LAN, the WLAN card is in idle (listening) mode about 90% of the time, with occasional short bursts of data being transmitted/received. I would strongly recommend this card to anyone working on the go, away from office or school.

This SDIO Wireless LAN Card's 40/64-bit and 128-bit Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) security protects data in transit by adding encryption with minimal impact on performance.

Socket's Low Power SDIO Wireless LAN Card is industry's first SDIO card for WLAN. It is about 54mm long and weighs less than 6g. Being compatible with 802.11b means it interoperates with 802.11b Wi-Fi approved WLAN products from 3COM, Cisco, Aironet, Intel, Breezecom, Lucent, Xircom, Linksys, D-Link, and others including Motorola, which I am using right now. I am able to wireless ActiveSync without any problems. Its Power Save Mode minimizes power usage while maximizing data throughput when I need it the most. As I am always on the go, this card's small external antenna reduces the chance of damage. I highly recommend it for any PDA owners using Pocket PC 2002 or Pocket PC 2003 with a supported SDIO slot.

I can't say enough about this product. I liken this to the enthusiasm most have with Tivo. I bought it last summer when it first shipped. My first one did have a hard drive problem after a couple of days but Yamaha was incredibly responsive and shipped me a brand new one overnight. I was actually very surprised at how easy it was to "get going"....less than 15 minutes including loading my first CD to the hard drive.
Using it is also so straightforward that my kids were able to use it after only a couple of minutes of coaching...they all have their own playlists now which they just love. I actually moved out of my house for a remodel project and set it up in the temporary housing without incident. Also I've gone through one product firmware upgrade and the addition of one "client" also without incident. I have two "clients" in the house and they kids love the ability to play their playlists at the same time in two different rooms.
A couple of things to note...you really need a TV monitor hooked to the server to effectively navigate the menus to do anything more than "play" or "record" (which most people will likely do anyway). Also be aware of the "recording" and "burning" rules/constraints before buying so your expectations are set appropriately if you like to "burn" playlists to CD's for use on portable devices.

I bought one of the MusicCast systems as soon as it was available (after drooling over it at a couple of trade shows). The first thing I did was upgrade the harddrive to 200GB. Required a trip by my dealer to my house, but it gave me much more capacity. The interface is very intuitive. It's very fast at copying from cd to the internal disk. In the background, it converts from PCM to whatever MP3 compression level you've set for default (I always use 320KB). You can remove the PCM version to save space (I keep it for critical listening stuff, but my wife doesn't care, so her PCM's are deleted immediately :-) I have a couple of the MCX-A10 terminals scattered around the house. I've had them connect through ethernet and wireless and seems to work fine for both. Yamaha just released a software update that allows access to the MusicCast database through a web browser. This makes it very easy to fix titles, artists, etc. (You can plug a keyboard into the MusicCast, but it requires powering down which is too much trouble for me). I have to say that the most annoying thing about the MusicCast is the GraceNote CDDB database. Yamaha's implementation is great. The CDDB database is a mess. Album titles are inconistent, misspelled, etc. That's why having the browser editing is such a big deal to me. The best endorsement I can give is that my wife really likes the MusicCast. She was sceptical, but after seeing how it works and being able to browse her music, she's sold. Highly recommended for anyone who just wants to be able to enjoy their music without having to deal with PC's.

This inexpensive little card was a no-brainer to install and has worked like a champ for months. Highly recommend.

We installed two of these in a private school lab and have not had one issue for over a year. I would highly recommend this to anyone who wants an inexpensive, durable, unmanaged switch.

Upon connecting this thing up I was pleasantly surprised, because everything worked the first time. It even dialed the home website to see if a firmware upgrade was available and I then received the new feature set which included support for up to 25 users. The web browser (password protected) set up, gives the network administrator complete control over user defined access and includes multiple ISP setups. A complete set of browser accessible manual troubleshooting/maintenance functions is included. This is probably the only PC related product I have ever purchased that I was completely (and more) satisfied. I am right now considering a DSL upgrade because DSL in now available in my area, but until I find a router which has all of the features of this unit, it will be hard for me to change. If you are in an area where you cannot get high speed DSL or cable access than this is problably the best thing going. I find that I get close to 56k reliably on downloads from my ISP. The multi-user functionality works flawlessly. One drawback is you will need to use an ISP which gives you the DNS settings which is not something the free ISP's like to do. AOL is also not supported by direct dial connection to AOL numbers (must be connected via TCP/IP to the LAN modem through another ISP), but if you're like me you don't want to use AOL anyway.

This product is a solid performer. Unlike other products where you may not be able to carry a notebook in its carrying case, the antenna slides and becomes flush with the body of the notebook. It might seem cosmetic, but the value added is very real.
Otherwise, the card performs as one would expect from a 3Com. The software (driver) is good. The default is to connect to any available router.
There is another software product on the CD which allows you to connect adhoc to any other card but considering the security aspects, you might not wish to use that.