Product Review: Netgear WGR-614v5 54 Mbps Wireless Router

The unit looks very nice.  You can see from the stock photo provided that it is compact, white and looks as if Apple may have designed it.  I plugged it in and connected a cable from one of the LAN ports to my laptop.  Upon opening my web browser, I was immediately redirected to a SmartWizard which showed itself as http://www.routerwizard.com.  I wasn't able to get around this screen immediately and being that I wasn't going to use the WAN port at all, this was a problem.  After searching around for only a few minutes, I found a document from Netgear which shows how to get around the wizard to manually configure the router.

As easily as it turned on, I set the SSID and  WPA-PSK wireless encryption key and connected an ethernet cable to the lan port of my other router.  My laptop immediately saw the wireless and authenticated.  DHCP worked through the wireless bridge (I have it disabled on this router and enabled on the integrated ISP one).  I walked to the other room, still having excellent signal strength and all was good.

Overall, I didn't get to use too many features of this router but I can say that for what I needed it for and the price it's offered at, it worked perfectly.  I wish they would have provided a link for manual configuration on the router's web interface, but other than that I have nothing to complain about.  It was cheap and works well for me.