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39 of 39 people found the following review helpful: By Stefanie "Stefanie" (San Diego) - See all my reviews This review is from: SMC SMCWGBR14-N Barricade N ProMax Draft 11n Wireless Gigabit Broadband Router (Personal Computers) I'm a Network Engineer and I have a habit of over doing it with my home equipment. I was limping along with my old Linksys router. The Barney of home networking equipment. My Vista laptop did not get along well with it at all. Refusing to upgrade convinced that N was just a stepping stone and the moment I bought a new router they'd release a new better product that actually lived up to the hype. However I was to the point that I would only use the internet if I was wired in. I did a lot of research and I finally chose the SMC Barricade Router. I installed the Barricade yesterday and I was shocked at how many features this router really came with in the Admin console. And my wifi connection is fast, 100% reliable and my laptop hasn't kicked me off of the internet since the moment I turned the router on. Signal...100% excilenta all of the time. Buy it, you'll love it. Stay away from Linksys you deserve better. The only thing that could make me happier with the Barricade is if the...Read more 16 of 17 people found the following review helpful: By Jazzspielen (ER, AK United States) - See all my reviews This review is from: SMC SMCWGBR14-N Barricade N ProMax Draft 11n Wireless Gigabit Broadband Router (Personal Computers) Bought this SMC router on the strength of a CNET review to replace my old, failing Netgear for my home office with four laptops and four desktops. Had some difficulties with installation but a call to SMC tech support helped resolve the problems (SMC tech support is fast and excellent - best tech support I've found in years). Unfortunately, I have to contact Lenovo to have them re-configure inbuilt wireless card in laptop running Vista (adding to my growing distaste for Vista). My Macbook and other laptops running XP connected with no difficulty. My two desktops running Netgear cards will not recognize the router, so I had to call Netgear, but they wanted $36.50 for a half-hour of support b/c my cards were out of warranty. So, that sucked. Looks like I'll need to get SMC adapter cards for the desktops. I suppose I should have just purchased a newer Netgear router. I think the SMC router is very good overall -- I'm getting a strong signal and fast downloads. My problems are...Read more 11 of 11 people found the following review helpful: This review is from: SMC SMCWGBR14-N Barricade N ProMax Draft 11n Wireless Gigabit Broadband Router (Personal Computers) I work in network engineering so I'm used to the stability of expensive commercial routers and APs. Many consumer routers tend to fluctuate in output or have software issues that cause slow downs, connection drops, and even device crashes which require manual reboots to fix. Features and ease of set up are important, but stability is usually the single most important requirement in home networks so that the router can be installed and forgotten.
I have worked with various consumer routers from SMC, Linksys, D-Link, Trendnet, Belkin, Netgear, etc but SMC routers have usually been the most stable one for me that requires the least connection drops and manual restarts since their first 11a/b routers. Linksys routers do have the best software and most features so they are popular for enthusiasts, but they simply don't match SMC's stability with various types of networks. SMCWGBR14-N is another rock solid router from SMC that doesn't require routine manual...Read more |