NETGEAR N600 WiFi Range Extender (WN3500RP)

So I finally took the plunge and bought myself a nice big HDTV and mounted it on a wall in my family room. HD programming looks amazing. Problem was with Netflix which needs to connect via a wifi signal (hard wiring not an option). Turns out that room was a wifi dead zone. Unbelievable considering my house is a paltry 1400 sf. If I would get Netflix on it would take awhile to load a movie and when it began to play the picture would look crappy at best. At its worst, it would just stop playing. So frustrating.I started doing research on how to fix this problem and found an article recommending a wifi range extender. Found this Netgear Universal Dual Band Wi-Fi Range Extender Wall-Plug Edition on Amazon and decided to give it a try based on the reviews. What did I have to lose? I just finished watching a 2 hour movie on Netflix and not only did it play all the way through without stopping but the picture was 100% perfect the whole time! Hallelujah! I've also connected the cell phones, iPods and laptops to the extender so they can get a good wifi signal in that room as well.Set up was a cinch. I was a little baffled by the comments the other reviewers made about pressing the WAP button on the extender then running to the other end of the house to press the WAP button on their router. The directions clearly state to make the connection between the extender and your router in the same room then move the extender to about the halfway point between the router and the dead zone. It couldn't have been an easier process.A bit about the setup of the house to help you decide if this product might work for you. My router is on the ground floor on the extreme east side of a straight ranch and the dead zone is on the main floor on the extreme west side. The room is an addition to the house which probably has something to do with the weak wifi signal as the walls used to be the exterior walls of the house. I placed the extender near the first outlet at the top of the stairs which is probably a little more than halfway from the router. It works perfectly. I now have a very strong signal.I've only had this product for a few hours so can't attest to its longevity. If I find any problems with it in the future (some reviewers said it just stopped working one day) then I will update this post.Go ahead and give this product a try. You can always return it if it doesn't work and you have nothing to lose and a whole lot of signal strength to gain! Good luck!

I bought this extender 3 months and 2 days ago, and during that entire time, I have had to reboot it every 1 or 2 days because it kept dropping the devices connected to it and not allowing reconnection. Given that my router and DSL modem continuously provided service with no interruptions, that makes it sound like a hardware issue with the extender, right?Because I was 2 days past my technical support warranty period (hardware support is 1 year), Netgear's overseas support personnel insisted on charging me to determine the issue. How much do they want?6 months' support = $79.991 year's support = $129.992 years' support = $199.99Mind you, this is for a wireless extender that only costs $69.99 here on Amazon!I made Reign (that was her name) promise me that if, after going through all their diagnostics it was determined that this was a hardware issue, they would refund my support charge. She checked with her supervisor. She agreed.Over the course of 1.75 hours, Reign 'checked with her supervisor' no less than 14 times. She also guided me haltingly through stuffing a paperclip into the Reset hole 2 different times, after which we painstakingly reentered passwords and setup information on my phone's tiny screen each time. I say 'tiny screen', not just because it's physically tiny, but also because the browser feed from this extender is not optimized for mobile - even though they recommend using a phone to set it up!At the end of it all, Reign's supervisor agreed that it was indeed a hardware issue, and I was given an RMA number.Reign advised me I would be receiving an email with the information necessary to complete the RMA process, and she seemed awfully anxious to get off the call. Once I followed the links in the email, I could see why!If you just want the free exchange option, it's not really free - you have to pay postage to send the defective unit back! Once Netgear receives it, they will send you another extender... after 10 working days!If you want to pay for cross shipping, it'll cost you $16.90. They promise to send the replacement extender via ground shipment from Tennessee and to provide you with a label for returning the defective unit.If you want things to happen faster than that, you can pay $29.90 for rush shipping, and they'll also provide you with a label.I chose the $16.90 option. You know what I got? A Word document with their address on it! :-D That it! That's the label, and I still have to pay to return the defective unit to Netgear! Oh wait, there's more. I also got a tersely worded advisement that if they didn't get the defective unit back within 10 days, I would be charged full price for the replacement unit. And if they got the defective unit back after they had already charged me for the replacement unit, Netgear would charge me $20 as a penalty!If you get a good unit and it works well for you, all well and good. But if you get a bad unit, between your phone time and your shipping costs, you're almost better off throwing this thing in the garbage and buying another one.According to the professional reviewers, Netgear is supposed to make products with great feature sets for the money. IMHO, however, I don't think it pencils out to buy anything from these clowns, and won't be doing so in the future.UPDATE:The replacement unit arrived, and setup was as troublesome as many have reported. I thought I got the unit set up properly, but it too started dropping connections and needing to be constantly rebooted. So I called tech support.What a joke. This time, I was on the phone for 3:18:23 with Rueen (please forgive me if I've misspelled his name). Again, I had to reset the unit over and over and over again as we fought through the unit's not taking commands properly. After the sixth attempt, it was able to support the basic configuration, but when I turned on the Fastlane feature and tried to apply that setting, it failed again.At first, Rueen didn't know what Fastlane technology was. Then he tried to convince me that wasn't something Netgear produced. Then he tried to tell me Fastlane technology doesn't work, and that no one he knows uses it, and that I shouldn't either.Finally, I got Rueen to agree to replace this unit - a second time! One good thing: When I demanded not to have to pay for shipping, he sprung for free ground to my location and a free return shipment label.I have 2 of these things, and 1 of them works perfectly. Fastlane, no dropped connections, never have to reboot it... the works. But so far, I've had 2 bad ones in a row, and a 66% failure rate is way too poor, IMHO, for a company such as Netgear. I don't know what's going on with them, but between the buggy software, the defective hardware, and the abysmal support, Netgear's quality hasn't just sunk to the basement - it's got itself a shovel, and it keeps on digging!

Bought this because one of my Vuezone cameras is just at the edge of our router signal and will not stay connected. The camera is on our front porch up on the ceiling. We also bought a Doorbot which was out of range when mounted outside to the right of the door. We will see if this solves my weak signal problem.All that aside, I had a bear of a time getting it set up. The setup instructions that come in the box do not match the setup instructions found online. The written instructions do not reflect the screens you will see on your computer in response to the written instructions. After three useless email exchanges with Netgear support they finally sent me a phone number for support, which resulted in success after 41 minutes on the phone.March 2015The camera works well. The Doorbot never did work, they sent a Ring as a replacement, it doesn't work either. I occasionally get an email that someone is at the door but I think I will abandon the Ring. Can't say they did not try to help, but no success.

Does this have a battery? It says so in the feature list... More details would be appreciated!