Networking Reviews

I bought this Lan adapter 6 months ago (from a different store) and could never get it to work. The device is actually manufactured by Realtec and their website lists all kinds of patches and other instructions to work around it's shortcomings. After hours and hours of fruitless efforts, I gave up and bought a Microsoft Lan adapter. It worked within 20 minutes! I cannot recommend this card if you are using Windows 98SE.

By Netgear's own admission, this card is not fully PCI compliant because it is unwilling to share an IRQ. This works with Windows 9x if you know how to tell Windows to not share IRQ's with this card. You will also need to manually change one of the driver settings from "Auto" to "Fully Asychronous" to achieve full speed.

This card will not work at all with the Windows 2K/XP hardware abstraction layer (HAL) because the new HAL does not permit overriding IRQ settings. Therefore, the most you will get out of this card with IRQ sharing is about 100 bps (far from the rated 100,000,000 bps). You might as well use your old RS-232 port.

I had to throw all of my and my companies cards out.

I got it and after a week of trying to set it up I gave up. Why? Let me tell you, I took forever to configure my desktop to work with the router and than the wireless PC card would not work with my laptop no matter what I did and how hard I try. I did this for one week and than I took it back to the store and I got Linksys wireless AP cable/dsl 4 point router and wireless PC card to go with it. Best thing I've ever done. I got home, got it out of the box and in less than one hour I was up and running - wireless. It was simple and easy to configure, the CD did most of the work and it communicate good with the PC card on my laptop. If you looking for a wireless network - get Linksys, they also have 1 800 number for help and support and also Linksys has other wireless products. Great product and good price.

I purchased this product instead of a comparable (in fact, faster) D-Link router because of this wireless gateway's print server capability. Sure, it cost a bit more (D-Link offered rebates) and it didn't have the positive reviews and buzz that D-Link had received, but I thought it would allow me to print wirelessly.

Two weeks after first installing this thing, I have spent lots of my own precious weekday time (and long distance dollars) on the phone with tech support. As of this moment, the router works with my IOGear 54g PC Card Adapter and my wife's integrated Broadcom 54g Max Performance adapter. But it still does not allow me to enable WEP encryption (to create a reasonably protected wireless LAN) and I still can't print to my HP PSC 750 printer, one of the natively supported printers that tech support insists "hasn't been a problem" for IOGear equipment.

I understand that networking can be tricky. And when it comes to technology, I'm a relatively patient guy who feels it's a worthwhile challenge to get new solutions up and running. But my patience with this product and its manufacturer is quickly wearing thin. My second call to IOGear tech support was spent listening to a new IOGear employee who, while having worked in networking for ages, admittedly knew very little about the company's products (and nothing about Windows XP. So on my dime, he pontificated about the importance of setting all device properties exactly the same when getting network nodes to talk to each other. So we slogged through every control panel and dialog box on both laptops and -- well whaddaya know? -- I had them all set correctly. Still no success, and thanks to the total lack of product-specific expertise from the tech support guy, it was another phone call wasted.

My distaste for going through this process again with D-Link products (or someone else's) just might inspire me to hold onto these products for another week, at least to attempt to get WEP encryption up and running. If I can do that, then maybe -- just maybe -- I'll find a way to activate the print server function. As it is, however, this product has provided only a third of what I wanted from it. We're getting a nice, fast 54 Mbps connection, but it's a completely unprotected network and it thoroughly lacks printing capabilities. On top of that, the customer "service" -- available only by calling on my own dime and only during weekday business hours -- is growing more infuriating and disappointing with every encounter. In fact, the more I write about this, the more I'm convinced that this just ain't worth it.

After years of using a 10/100 hub I decided to "upgrade" to a switch. Expecting a good product from Linksys, especially since they were acquired by Cisco, I purchased the SD208 8-port 10/100 switch. I put it on my network and the problems began. Any time I would attempt to transfer large volumes (1GB+) of data between two of my PC's the switch would freeze up on me and I'd have to unplug it and plug it back in to regain network connectivity.

I've put old reliable hub back in place and I'm returning the Linksys back to Amazon. I think I'll give D-Link a try.

Monster Cable is well known for having way-overpriced products and this is absolutely NO exception. You can construct a kit like this for less than $50! All you need is any plain 10-Mbit hub and 5 patch cables. There is NO need for "high-quality" connectors that "perform at 5 times the capacity of regular cat-5 wiring." Computers are VERY good at detecting problems and fixing them, so this is simply way overkill.

And the worst part is that they are not available! You would think that Netgear makes these dongles so vulnerable to make a business replacing them at ... a piece. But they are so hard to find! I guess they want you to buy a new card. But if you bite that bullet, why would you buy a new card from them? Sounds to me like marketing geniuses. Too far ahead of their time to be understood.

The item delivered was a four port hub, not a five port hub as advertised. It has the same part number as the item pictured, but is a different item. I will return it.

This product is now a never stocked item! It is offered by a small division of Siemens and the people are rude beyond belief. This is not the Siemens most people know and respect. The people do not return calls for hours, then inform you that they are a tiny division of Siemens and never stock this part! In fact they do not know the delivery time frame either.

Tech support was difficult they recommended by return the product my feeling is the g standard isn't really ready. Stay away from this item for Windows X P.