By Ki Grinsing

Netgear WNDR4000 N750 wireless dual band gigabit router is one of high performance routers introduced by Netgear in Jan 2011

Overview

In CES-2011 Netgear showcased some new lines of wireless products including the High performance routers, Powerline AV adapters, home theaters wireless networking, and ADSL2 modem router. Netgear WNDR4000 N750 is one of the new High performance routers introduced by Netgear.

WNDR4000 competitors

Netgear 4000 was released in the market a few months later than its competitors Linksys E4200 series. In the second quarter of 2011, Belkin shipped its new product into the market the maximum speed of Belkin N750 DB router (latest generation). Both Linksys E4200 and Belkin N750 DB are based on N750 technology with the maximum speeds up to 450Mbps.

What this WNDR4000 N750 product does?

Main features

• Based on wireless N750 dual band
• Gigabit interfaces both LAN and WAN ports
• USB port
• Guest network
• WMM based QoS

High Speeds

The demand of gamers is their routers could deliver a very good performance at all in order to enjoy very responsive gaming. And the main thing is the router can provide a very high speed and solid connection.

Wireless speed

Netgear N750 technology could theoretically provide speed up to 750mbps total both bands because this router is dual band simultaneously both the 2.4GHz band (300Mbps) and the 5GHz band (450Mbps). It is ideal environments for new laptops with built-in Centrino6300 wireless that supports the high speeds up to 450Mbps

But in the real world, the wireless routers never reach the speed they specified due to many environmental factors. The router is ideal for larger home / home with multiple floors for smooth gaming, streaming HD media and less interference.

Gigabit interfaces

Like WNDR37AV, the Netgear 4000 N750 is equipped with the gigabit Ethernet ports for both its LAN (4 ports) and WAN (1 port) interfaces.

Although some of our computers at home are older models that do not come with gigabit NIC adapter, at least we’ve got a router that is already ready with gigabit interfaces. Indeed, a new generation of computer almost all equipped with gigabit ports.

Do you really need the gigabit speed? In business network environments which contain hundreds of computers, the gigabit speed is used as the backbone cable. In home usage with couple of computers I think you don’t need gigabit speed for normal works. But the speed difference will be apparent if you use it for streaming HD video and gaming as well large file data transfer.

Should you connect the Gigabit Ethernet ports to any gigabit-enabled computers, you must use Cat5e or Cat6 UTP network cable for maximum data throughput. Cat5e is the enhanced version of standard Cat5 twisted cables.

With gigabit WAN Ethernet port; you can optimally connect to the new DOSSIC 3 cable modem such as SBG6120 which includes gigabit Ethernet port. Gigabit WAN port doesn’t help you boost your internet connection actually. But the performance of your broadband internet from your ISP takes the important role in the performance of your internet connectivity. Increasing the bandwidth of your broadband internet will help.

USB Port

Netgear 4000 N750 is equipped with one USB port, unfortunately, can only be used to share storage. To share a printer, Netgear began to introduce this feature in the WNDR3800 premium edition. Even for the latest series Wndr4500 equipped with two USB ports that allow you to share storage and printer at the same time.

So if you need to share your printer across the network you can do it manually by attaching the printer to the computer and configure it for share. But if the volume of the print jobs is big enough, this consequently degrades the performance of your computer and can frequently freeze it if the computer is not powerful enough.

Advanced Security

How secure the router is? Like other Netgear high performance routers, besides typical wireless security WPA/WPA2, the Netgear 4000 N750 router allows you to create Guest network each band. Totally the router supports up to four SSIDs. With Guest network you can create separate network to grant your guests / visitors internet access but with limited access rights to your local network. Thus, you can assure that they will not compromise the security of your internal network. The other important feature is free Live Parental Control to help you customize the internet filter settings for safe internet experiences for the family members.

Ratings

In the Amazon, the average customer rating is 3.3 out of 5 stars. This is a rating that is less encouraging results in the perspective of users in online retail.

While its competitor Linksys E4200 get an average rating of 3.5 out of 5 stars slightly higher than Netgear. Belkin get a rating that is also slightly higher than both routers that is 3.8 out of 5 stars.

Netgear comparisons

There are many models of N750 routers on the market such as Linksys 4200 and Belkin N750 db. Actually Netgear also offers the new model of N750 router WNDR4300 which supports time machine and USB storage is accessible across the internet.

Netgear WNDR4000 N750 Vs Belkin N750 DB

You can compare this Netgear N750 router with similar router Belkin N750 DB and the main differences can be listed in the following table.

Netgear WNDR4000 N750 Vs Apple Airport Extreme

The comparison between Netgear N750 with Apple airport extreme, as usual that people will try to compare new router with Apple Extreme, can be shown in the table as follows:

Now you can consider the ultimate speed and range of new Netgear WNDR4500 N900 router with two USB ports.

Networking diagram

The following diagram is general networking solution in homes wireless network that uses WNDR4000 N750 wireless N dual band gigabit router.

Connect the WAN port of the WNDR4000 router to the Ethernet port of broadband modem using the included network cable. With your XBOX console you can connect to the network by installing the wireless XBOX adapter such as Netgear WNCE2001 universal wireless internet adapter. You can also add Apple TV or Roku to stream the HD media to your wide screen HDTV.

The Netgear 4000 N750 wireless N dual band gigabit router is a new high speed router for high performance wireless environment for smooth gaming and HD media streaming. For simple networking with solid wireless connectivity, consider Amazon best seller (always in the top five best seller products) in router category: Medialink N150 router.

Cons and Pros

Pros:

1. Simultaneous Dual band technology – double bandwidth and supports Gigabit ports
2. Guest network
3. Averagely four stars customer ratings in Amazon

Cons:

1. USB port cannot be used to host shared printer

By Ki Grinsing