In Brief

The Netgear WNR854T is the first of a new crop of draft-802.11n routers incorporating gigabit (1000Mbps) wired Ethernet switches, as opposed to the garden variety 10/100Mbps versions. Why do I need gigabit, you say? For two very good reasons: first, almost all business-class laptops and desktops these days ship with gigabit Ethernet ports, so if you don't have a gigabit switch, you are literally throwing away 900Mbps of wired bandwidth. Second, draft-n wireless is rated at 300Mbps (and up to 600Mbps in the future). So you need the faster wired speed to complement the wireless half of the network. You'll notice the difference when backing up your hard drive over your network, or performing tasks such as streaming wireless HD video and making VoIP phone calls.

Furthermore, the Netgear RangeMax Next Gigabit Edition topped our speed and range tests in comparison with other draft-n routers. Add in an easy setup wizard, excellent security features, and a sleek, Apple-like design, and you have a winner.

So what's the catch? Again, there are two very important caveats. First, the phrase "draft-n" is fair warning that this and other such routers may not be upgradeable to the final 802.11n standard expected to be ratified next year. So you may be saddled with a $150 doorstop. But the sheer number of such products, as well as rapid advances being made in interoperability and compatibility, makes this possibility less and less likely as time goes on. The other catch is that in order to benefit from the increased speed, you need to have matching adapters on all your network equipment -- gigabit Ethernet cards in your wired devices, and draft-n adapters in your wireless gadgets. These will run you about $100 each, another big investment.

If you want to start streaming wireless HD video around the house, or want to vastly increase the speed at which you can back up your computer to your gigabit network drive, the Netgear WNR854T can be money well spent. On the other hand, if you are reasonably happy with your current network speeds, both wired and wireless, by all means wait till the final 802.11n standard is ratified late next year before taking the plunge. By that time, equipment should be a lot cheaper, too.

In Depth

The first crop of "draft-n" wireless routers, which purport to conform to an initial version of the coming 802.11n Wi-Fi standard, got a bad rap for early problems ranging from serious performance and stability issues to a lack of interoperability with other draft-n routers in their high-speed modes. Not to mention a reputation for knocking out neighboring Wi-Fi networks with their wide-band signals, which stretch almost all the way across the Wi-Fi channel spectrum.

But manufacturers have made great strides in addressing these problems, and draft-n products have been very popular with consumers in spite of the discouraging reviews. The Netgear RangeMax Next line is a notable example. When we first tested the WNR834B router (a regular 10/100 Ethernet model) and matching adapter cards, they were not interoperable at 300Mbps with the WNR854T router and cards, which use a different wireless chipset. Netgear uses Broadcom Intensi-fi draft-n chips in RangeMax Next products ending in "B," and Marvel TopDog chips in RangeMax Next products ending in "T." Unless you were a Wi-Fi expert, you could have easily ended up with products that didn't work properly together. Now the landscape has changed, and Netgear's Broadcom-based adapters will work fine with its TopDog-based routers, and vice versa, thanks to firmware updates. Other vendors' draft-n products may or may not interoperate at draft-n speeds. Using a product with the same chipset is the best guarantee of maximum performance.

With a Wi-Fi certified standard, all this wouldn't matter, and you could use any vendor's products, with any chipset, and be assured of interoperability. It's only because of the "draft" nature of the standard that chipsets and vendors matters. Early next year, Intel is also expected to enter the draft-n fray with its built-in laptop chips, at which point you can be sure that all the router vendors will be scrambling to make sure their routers interoperate.

We tested the Netgear using matching adapter cards, the RangeMax Next Notebook Adapter WN511T and the RangeMax Next USB 2.0 Adapter WN121T. The USB version is one of the very first draft-n USB adapters, plugging a huge hole in the high-speed Wi-Fi landscape. These adapters are Windows-only, neither adapter has Mac drivers, but we expect Apple to make the move to draft-n early next year. The router itself is Mac-friendly, with a Web-based installation wizard that automatically configures your Internet connection. There's also a separate Windows-based installation program.

Performance was excellent with both adapters, although we did a shade better with the USB version, probably because we could position it for best reception. We achieved almost 100Mbps on our throughput tests at close range, the best we've seen from any draft-n router. Range was also the best of any draft-n router we've tested, although somewhat less than the Linksys SRX400 router, which uses an earlier MIMO technology that is not draft-n compatible. We got whole house coverage, with acceptable performance (about 15Mbps) even in the farthest reaches. The adapter cards also pulled in an amazing number of neighboring Wi-Fi signals -- double the number shown by the built-in Centrino chip in our laptop, which bodes well for hotspot performance.

While most buyers will be fixated on the draft-802.11n wireless and gigabit switch performance in making a purchase decision, the WNR854T is also an excellent router. It has all the firewall and routing capabilities you'd expect from a top Netgear product, including an SPI NAT firewall, MAC address filtering, DMZ, port forwarding, and virtual server support. And it supports the latest WPA and WPA2 encryption standards. The Web setup utility also has excellent context-sensitive help. The one disappointment was a lack of Radius authentication support, which means it's mostly aimed a homes and small offices. Assuming you upgrade your adapter cards to draft-n, you'll get best performance using the "801.11n-only" wireless setting, which excludes 802.11b/g devices:

We really like the look of the router, which takes a page from Apple's design playbook. However, it has a couple of functional deficiencies. There's no wall-mount option (which is where you'll get best reception) and the upright case with internal antenna makes positioning difficult. The cords tug at the very light case. The back of the router has the usual four-port switch, and the front has a nice array of easy to read indicator lights.

If you're ready to invest in draft-n, the Netgear WNR854T is our pick. It's the fastest draft-n router we've tested so far, and has very good range and software. The matching WN802T RangeMax Next Access Point offers the same performance without the routing capabilities, if you already have a wired gigabit router or need a range extender.