In the TG Lab: NETGEAR’s N600 WNDR3700 Router

In an iteration of “In the TG Lab” I posted last month, I talked a bit about the network card that would become a crucial part of our NAS box testing, Intel’s I340. At the time, I wasn’t quite settled on which router could become the second half of the equation, but thanks to a recommendation in our forums, that router ended up being NETGEAR’s WNDR3700. So far, I’m totally digging it.

Before committing to the router, I read a couple of reviews around the Web, and they backed up Greg’s thoughts from our forums. At one site in particular, the editor said it was one of the best-performing routers the site has ever tested, and also one of the most feature-rich. From what I’ve seen so far, that’s absolutely the case.

One of the biggest features of the WNDR3700 is the fact that it’s a dual-band offering. That means that it can emit more than one wireless signal at a time, so that you can connect to it with a wireless device that supports a 2.4GHz connection and another that supports a 5GHz one. You can also independently control security for each mode, which is a huge plus.

The main reason I had to give up on my previous gigabit router is because I could never quite achieve those high speeds when I needed them… it was hit or miss. After hooking up and testing NETGEAR’s router for the first time, that issue became a thing of the past. With my absolute first transfer from PC to PC, I was reaching an excess of 100MB/s. This required absolutely no configuration tweaking on my part.

Another major plus is that the router detected and configured my Internet connection automatically, and literally three minutes after plugging in my WAN and LAN cables, I was online. This is how things should be, but on my previous router, this procedure was again hit or miss, so to see something so seamless was appreciated.

Like the network card I talked about before, I’m not going to be reviewing this router but rather just wanted to talk a bit about it since it will become an integral part of our NAS testing, and possibly other network-related content in the future. The WNDR3700 is somewhat expensive, but I can already highly recommend it to anyone looking for a truly reliable and high-performance solution. If you wish to read more into it, I recommend checking out this review at SmallNetBuilder.

The NETGEAR N600 Wireless Dual Band Gigabit Router is the Ultimate Networking Machine. It offers the high performance wireless Internet access needed for demanding applications, such as streaming HD video and multiplayer gaming. Dual band technology avoids interference, ensuring top speeds and the greatest range, while Gigabit offers ultra-fast wired connections.