I bought the NetGear DGND3300v2 RangeMax Dual Band Wireless Router in the beginning of the year wanting a router with a range greater than the Netgear DG834 to cover all the rooms in the house. I saw the youtube video of the smart antennas and fell for all the marketing gimics. Surely a wireless router from a manufacturer which is more expensive than the entry level model will have a better range.
Wrong. I have tweaked all the setting and tried all the possible permutations for the Wireless G. There is nothing I can do to make it work with a proper range. The range is just as the same or worse than my 10th of the price Linksys router. So I bought a Wirless N stick but the range for it is worse than the Wireless G. Go figure.
Hoping that a future firmware update would improve range.
So in December 2010 firmware V2.1.00.46 came around via an auto update and suddenly wireless range decreased to a maximum of 2 meters. Manually reverted to V2.1.00.42 firmware again after scratching my head wondering what happened. Seems like Netgear support put a faulty firmware update on their server and only removed it after a week despite knowing about the problem due to so many users reporting it. Some users even reported Netgear was asking for paid support to look at the issue.
Here is a
forum post on the Netgear support forums describing the issue.
This device is much better than the standard Billion router however I would suggest for a large house to buy a router that has removable antenna which you can adjust, replace or hack with your own.
