Review of the Netgear WN802Tv2 Wireless-N Access Point

March 27, 2009 by admin 

I am a member of the Amazon Vine Voices program. Every month Amazon sends me a few products that are new or coming soon to market to review on their site.  This month they sent me a Netgear Wireless-N WN802Tv2 Access Point to review.

So here’s the deal: if all you do is surf the web on your laptop, or you’re looking for a ‘plug and play’ wireless-N routing solution this is NOT the product for you. If you are a medium to advanced computer user and are looking to add Wireless-N speeds to your existing network, this Netgear product is worthy of consideration.

CONFIGURATION
Network neophytes should stay away. This device is not plug and play and will require your PC or Mac to be on a 192.168.0.xxx network to connect to its web based control panel. More than likely that means you will need to manually change your computer’s networking configuration in order to set the access point’s IP address for your network. It will not receive an IP address automatically.

Security is off by default so you’ll want to set that up during the initial configuration. IMPORTANT NOTE: Using WPA will force the unit to operate in the slower Wireless G mode (at least with a Macbook Pro). You’ll want to use WPA2 encryption in order to get Wireless-N speeds. This was not spelled out in the documentation nor was it explained on the unit’s control panel.

After it is configured installation is relatively painless. Just connect it to an available ethernet port and wireless clients will have access to your network.

PERFORMANCE
Having used a Wireless-G router/access point for the last four years, the difference in speed for file sharing, video work, printing, etc. on this wireless-N device is substantial and immediately noticeable.

To test throughput I transmitted a 310 megabyte file from my desktop to my Macbook Pro using both this Netgear product and my older Linksys Wireless-G access point/router. The Macbook was in the kitchen directly underneath the room containing the access points.

The Linksys wireless router delivered the file in 3 minutes, 48 seconds. The Netgear Wireless N access point delivered the same file in 41.1 seconds. A sizable performance increase.

CONCLUSION
Netgear Wireless-N WN802Tv2 feels very ‘spartan’ and could use better documentation both in the box and also through its web based control panel. Hopefully Netgear will improve the control panel in future versions of its firmware, including adding an option to only allow the unit to operate in N mode (mixing G and N clients impacts performance).

I have not experienced the connectivity issues others have talked about in their reviews, but I will update this review if I come across them.

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