Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I've never written a review before, b/c I usually don't have anything to contribute that someone hasn't already said. This is an exception! If you're like me, this thing works great - when it's working. But the connection often drops, and seems to get worse with time. It has nothing to do with being too far from the router - when the right-most ("Link Rate") light is on, it's green. But the problem is that it often turns off intermittently (i.e. the connection breaks). As far as I can tell, that's the reason why the ratings from some are low on Amazon. You may also notice that the left-most (WPS) light flashes. This is actually what causes the problem. I have searched long and hard, and finally found a solution (buried in some forum, not here on Amazon). Now for 2 weeks I have not had a dropped connection once - all 4 lights are always solid green. Follow these steps. If you're like me, you're a tech idiot. This solution seemed to be too complicated and I actually didn't try it for a couple weeks because of that. But once I decided to do it, it took me less than 15 minutes, and it was the only thing that I found that worked consistently. I can tell you I spent a whole lot more time on other possibilities. 1. Write down the "MAC" numbers/addresses for all the devices you want to be able to connect to the extender. I didn't have a clue what this number was, but I Google'd it and was able to find out how to get them for all my devices (iPhones, laptops, desktops). See step 6 below for another way to get them, too. It should actually be pretty easy. It is always the same for a particular device, like a digital serial number. Here's an example: B4:C2:5F:1C:08:71 2. Go into the extender's wireless settings website: (...)mywifiext.net. I believe(...)mywifiext.com also works. NOTE: You have to be successfully connected to the extender on the device you are trying to use first. Otherwise it will redirect you to the Netgear website. This caused me many headaches, because at that point I was hardly ever able to get it to stay connected long enough to work in the settings website, because the connection was so bad or kept dropping so frequently. It may help if you try to access it with another device, or to reset the connector and set it up again from scratch. 3. Once you are in the settings website, go to "Advanced Wireless Settings". 4. Click the "Setup Access List" button. 5. Click the "Turn Access Control On" checkbox. 6. Enter each of the MAC addresses that you wrote down earlier. If you had trouble finding them, you can actually go to the "Maintenance" tab of the settings website, and look for "Attached Devices" or "Network Devices". It will give you a list of MAC addresses that are currently connected to the extender - at minimum, the one your working on will show up. 7. Save, and you should be good to go! I didn't even need to reset the extender or anything. It immediately worked, and has ever since. I don't believe you have to upgrade your firmware first to do this, but it might help. I upgraded first, hoping that alone would fix my problems. It did not, but the above steps did. It took me a long time to figure out how to upgrade the firmware, and to be able to stay connected long enough to do it. By God's grace my connection didn't drop while I was upgrading it. If I had to do it again, I would have done the above steps first. The drawback of this solution is that if you want another device to be able to use the extender, you have to add its MAC address to the list on the settings website. Once you do it once though, it is pretty easy to do. You will be solidly connected, so it's easy to work in the settings website once it's set up this way. This is another reason I hesitated to do this, but it's not too inconvenient and it's much less of a headache than dealing with dropped connections. The benefit is that (I assume) there is better security, since others can't possible use the extender unless their device is on the MAC list. I really hope this helps you out! It is my way of paying it forward because of all the wonderful solutions the internet has provided me over the years. I wish you didn't have to do this to get it to work well, so for that it gets 4 stars. Other than that, I believe it's a 5-star product. For those who care, I believe (from the source I read - I know nothing about this technical stuff) that this problem is due to interferences with other wireless signals in your area, particularly those with WPS security.