Cons: Needs GB Ethernet. Grade C+.

Amazon Link: RangeMax WNDR3300 Dual Band Wireless-N Router. Street Price $99.

Install

The CD installer is designed for a first time user, who has never connected a router to an existing cable modem/DSL connection.  It pops up a windows message box for each required step of the install. ex: “Unplug ethernet cable from your PC, click next to continue”. Theres at least a dozen of these pop-ups, but eventually you are pushed onto a revised Netgear internal web page config (www.routerlogin.com) this is nice for novice users, who might be confused by entering in a static ip address (192.168.1.1) to config the router. 

I let the router run its interal config wizard, which walks the user step by step thru the details of the WAN connection and the wireless settings.  This worked nicely, and it auto-detected that my cable modem was assigning IP addresses, although it prompted me for an account name. I dont ever recall having to use an account name for a cable/dsl router.  After this it resets itself and a minute later displayed the full Basic Settings web page.  Minor Nit: there is an apply button on this page that will reboot the router even if you haven’t changed anything on the page.

Wireless Configuration

The wireless config is straightforward, you are asked for the 802.11N and 802.11G SSIDs, by default these are set to NETGEAR-DUALBAND-N and NETGEAR-2.4-G. Another Nit: the help text to the right side of the SSID prompt explains that the default SSIDs are ”NETGEAR” for both. I don’t know how QA missed that discrepency, its even on the same page!  It’s documentation discrepencies like this that start to confuse the average consumer.

A more problematic issue:  There is no explanation of why I would want to put different SSIDs on each band.

I think having the same SSID for 11N and 11G makes the most sense once you have figured out what channels actually work in your house. In fact unless you have different SSIDs its not easy to determine if you are able to connect at 5Ghz if your operating in dual-band modes.

Four Wireless Modes

The WNDR 3300 AP has 4 different operating modes, and depending on how you configure it, it can support your older adapters at 54Mbps AND  provide up to 270Mbps with new wireless-N adapters.  

I suppose if you purchased a dual-band AP you are looking for more channels to work around interference issues.  Two of the modes use multiple channels simultaneously, called wide channels. If you can find wide channels without interference, then you can try and get 270Mbps.  I was able to get mode 1 to connect at 270Mbps with more than 1 adapter from different manufacturers.

Mode 1:  270 Mbps at 2.4Ghz.  Note: in this mode standard wireless-g adapters can still connect, but only at 54Mbps. In this mode you can only configure the 2.4 GHz SSID and channels.

Mode 2: 270Mbps at 5Ghz & 54Mbps @ 2.4 GHz. This is the “Dual-Band” Mode.  You can configure the two unique SSID’s or use the same SSID for each band.

Mode 3: 130 Mbps at 2.4Ghz. In this mode you can only configure the 2.4 GHz SSID and channels.

Mode 4: 130 Mbps at 5Ghz & 54Mbps at 2.4 GHz. This is another Dual-Band mode.  You can configure the two unique SSID’s or use the same SSID for each band.

Interference Problems

At first I used the NETGEAR default wireless configuration (Mode 2)  and used the same SSID for each band. I kept the channels for each band at the default settings, and using a laptop computer right next to the AP I tried to connect. I was only able to connect at 54Mbps. After some fiddling around, I discovered that the default channel for the 5Ghz band wasn’t good.  It wasn’t obvious to me that I was only connecting on the 2.h GHz band. There was no information explaining any of this,  it just didnt connect at 5GHz.  

Until I changed the SSID of the 5Ghz to a different name I wasn’t able to isolate this issue. So channel inteference is a real problem, even right next to the AP with no obstructions or other wireless devices nearby.

I tried changing the 5Ghz channels incrementally and after a few changes still no luck. It worked when I moved it to the last possible channel, and the connect speed displayed 270Mbps. 

Nice Status LEDs

One nice feature of this router is that it has a unique blue LED on front panel that blinks with 5Ghz wireless activity, and an orange LED for 2.4Ghz activity, so if you have it configured as dual band with devices connected on each band you will have both LED’s flashing. Had I noticed this earlier it would have been much easier to see that I wasn’t actually connecting on the 5Ghz channel.

Performance Testing 
Mode 1, 270Mbps at 2.4Ghz.

With a Netgear recommended adapter, the WNDA3100 11g/n USB 2.0 Adapter I got mixed results:

Adjacent to Router: Approx 10 Mbps.
Kitchen -> Router: I couldn’t connect at all.
2nd Floor Office -> Router: Approx 13 Mbps.

Using a Trendnet Wireless-N USB Adapter (Trendnet Model # TEW-624UB)  I got much better results:

Adjacent to Router: 30 Mbps TX, 32 Mbps RX.
Kitchen -> Router: I couldn’t connect at all.
2nd Floor Office -> Router: 27 Mbps TX Text, 16-21 Mbps RX Test.

Overall I didn’t see a huge 5X improvement in speed that you might expect after reading the packaging, but compared to the 16-20 Mbps speed I get using Wireless-G, getting 30Mbps from wireless-N is 50% faster.

Thats not too bad!

Work to be done

I’m planning on testing this product with some internal PCI wireless-N adapters, I’ll post the results later.

Summary: Super easy to install, but these only work well if you are connecting two outlets in same room. Avoid these products if you are trying to connect different rooms together.

Installation

This time I decided to compare Netgear HDXB101 product against its competitors, and also measure the actual performance of each.

All of the products I tried are extremely easy to install. Plug one of the adapters into an AC outlet near your cable/dsl router, plug the other adapter into AC outlets in the rooms you need to connect. No drivers to install.

That’s the only positive thing to say about all of these products.

I tried to use all these products to connect 3 different places in the house to the router in the basement. The Kitchen, The 2nd floor office, and the Basement family room. The basement family room was probably the best case scenario since its about 15 feet from the router.

The Kitchen
I could only make the Linksys Powerline AV product connect. All of these products have an LED on the front that indicates if they have linked with another adapter, so it was pretty easy to tell if they are working. Unfortunately while the Linksys may have indicated that it was connected, it was only able to ping 25% of the time and when I tried to use it, it dropped the connection constantly. So NO performance results from the kitchen.

The Office
The Linksys and Netgear products both connected here, but not the Airlink APL-8511 Turbo. Not that it really mattered. Both the Linksys and Netgear products constantly dropped connections during my performance testing (basically just copying files to and from my local test server).

Basement Family Room
This was the only area where the PowerLine adapters would work reliably. The Netgear product has a utility that shows the link connection speed. In this spot the HDXB101 showed ~50Mbps link speed (between this room and the adjacent office containing the other powerline adapter). The actual throughput was much lower: 7.5 Mbps. During this testing, the networking utilization was jumping all over the place, from 1Mbps to 18Mbps, no consistency at all. As a network driver developer, that tells me something is wrong with either the hardware or the software.

Same Wall Testing!
Since I wasn’t getting very consistent results with the fastest rated adapter in the basement family room, I decided to move the testing into the very same room as the router. I used adjacent wall outlets about 6 feet apart.

Now the Netgear Diag utility displayed a 160Mbps TX / 140Mbps Rx.

I tested all three adapters from this “best case” location. Here are the results:

Oh I have two file copy tests, a TX test that copies files from my laptop to the server. And a RX Test that copies two different same sized files from the server to the laptop. The measured speeds are averages of a few runs of each test type.

1. Netgear PowerLine HD
TX Testing: 33 Mbps. Rx Testing: 30 Mbps. The network utilization still jumped around crazily.
2. Linksys PowerLine AV
TX Testing: 40 Mbps. Rx Testing: 30 Mbps. The network utilization was solid for both RX and TX testing.
3. Airlink Turbo 85 Powerline AV
TX Testing: 17.5 Mbps. Rx Testing: 16 Mbps.

Very consistent network throughput during Cisco powerline AV testing

It was interesting to me that the 100 Mbps rated Linksys PLK200 product performs better than the 200 Mbps rated Netgear HDXB101. But as I said earlier I suspect that the HDXB101 has hardware/firmware or software issues keeping it from performing better.

I am disappointed with these products, and I cannot think of any scenario where I would recommend them. They just don’t have the range or speed of even standard wireless-G adapters.

In the basement family room, I can consisently get 20 Mbps with a wireless-G product, and 30 Mbps with a wireless-N adapter. And If I had two machines in the same room, I would just connect them with standard 100Mb (or 1Gb!) Ethernet and get 80 Mbps +.

I’m really curious what lab conditions are at Linksys that enable them to get results of any where near 200 Mbps.