Netgear Wireless Router Port Forwarding

NOTE - this is not an easy to use product, it is not intended for the average computer user, some degree of technical know-how is required! I have a small but busy network in my house. I work out of the home, and there are 4 people online all day every day gaming, watching movies, and generally abusing the internet bandwidth. In recent years with broadband in my area breaking the 30 meg range, I started noticing something. I wasn't getting the speeds advertised to me by my cable company. At first, when the speeds were advertised at 40 or 50 megs, I just assumed I was getting it on a bad day when I came back with 35 meg speed tests (cable internet does fluctuate after all). But now a days I'm told I have a 90 meg line, and I still only get 35 megs max on a good day. I'm a programmer, but I'm not much a network guy, so I started going out and researching it a bit. Turns out despite having a gigabit switch, the biggest bottleneck will be the NAT throughput... how fast your router can redirect packets from the outside of your network to the ip addresses in your local subnet. Sure enough, all the consumer routers out there have really low throughput, or in the case of mine ALSO had the issue of overheating constantly which also hurt it. I continued researching, found this little guy (srsly, the size of this thing is amazing), and noted that users were getting several hundred megs NAT throughput, if not near gigabit speed through it. Well over my 90 meg line. So I snatched one up, as well as an Wi-Fi Access Point (decided separate the two) and sure enough my speeds went to what is advertised to me. My ONLY complaint is that the model I got (the ER-X) had a bug in the firmware version that made the 'port forwarding' wizard not work. You can still set it up using actual NAT destinations (which port-forwarding really is a wrapper around). It's just really annoying to stare at the 1 click port-forwarding wizard when you're writing you firewall rules.

Super fast speeds. UI is a little complicated for port forwarding, faster gaming. The blast package thing is cool until they want you to purchase more. But once everything up and running as I have it paired with zenpro towers for mesh system.

Both ethernet and wifi have been great. I finally was able to setup port forwarding and static ip rules with no issues. Also love the traffic analyzer in the GUI.

Upon doing a lot of research between other cable modem/router combos, I finally decided the Netgear Nighthawk AC1900 was the best selection to fit my needs. I live in a home that is 1850 square ft and the wireless coverage reaches in all areas of the entire house with no problem as I performed multiple speed tests and the results were very consistent throughout. The setup through the router setup management interface was seamless and very user friendly. I was able to set up my 2.4Ghz, 5 GHz, and guest wireless networks in 3 minutes. I also like the fact that you can set parental controls to manage usage time and block inappropriate websites. The Netgear ReadyShare Vault is extremely handy for me so that I can share movies, pictures, and files across the network. Overall, I would highly recommend this product!

Purchased after having difficult experience with the Netgear Orbi. This Synology Wireless Tri-Band Mesh Router coupled with the Synology RT2600 AC Wireless Dual Band Gigabit Router serve as the backbone for my 1.3k sqft apartment and I've experience no drops with higher throughput (compared to the Netgear Orbi). Great products, highly recommend.

This Netgear Modem is great. I did a speed test and hit 890Mbps which is insane! One thing to know is that it is non wireless. You will need a router if you have more than 1 wireless device. It was worth every penny though. I recommend getting a router anyway, it will improve a lot. Ditch your company rent boxes and get this!

I replace my Cox cable modem and wireless router with Netgear. The signal strength throughout my 2200 sqft house is great. I can even connect my outdoor TV to the internet now. I get the same speed on wireless as I do with the computer plugged into the internet. Great products.

This router is such a great replacement to the old Netgear router we had.

Great speed, over expectations with netgear router.

The Netgear cable modem provides 1000mbs to my router just like it says!