Netgear Quality - Gone?
I hate to sound like a Netgear basher but I stopped buying Netgear equipment at work. As a matter of fact, I banned my staff from purchasing the company’s products. Harsh, right? Well, consider this: 5 Netgears dead within 12 months. Not a single 3Com or Cisco didn’t died on me. Before you blame power or the administrator here’s all the information:
Hardware:
4 Netgear WN802T dead
1 Netgear router dead (I don’t remember the model, but it was a recent one)
Installation sites:
3 x Work (WAP)
1 x Home (WAP)
1 x Customer site (router)
I think I have one more Netgear WN802T around in the building but I’m pretty sure I’ll find it soon when my users complain that wireless isn’t working. It’s going to die for sure. I mean with such a bad quality record I can’t believe that Netgear equipment is worth investing in. I try and keep my firmware up-to-date (those who know me know how true this statement is!) so the problem was not old hardware. With 3 different locations you can rule out power problems (30 mile distance between sites).
Damn flickering light 
I just remembered: my Gigabit Netgear switch died at home not that long ago. Sure, it got replaced but I expect my equipment to work. Is that too much?
Tags: 12 months, 3com, bad quality, basher, cisco, firmware, gigabit, matter of fact, netgear, old hardware, quality record
I have to agree with this post. The quality of the Netgear product keeps going down year after year. Netgear may have had some good engineers few years back where they were producing quality products specifically the SMB products, but now it is all trash. Just repackaging the Chinese kits and selling them.
I couldn’t disagree with this more. Over the last 6 years we have almost exclusively used Netgear switches on our 200+ companies we service. Not ONE has ever died.
While I also say Cisco is rock solid, I feel 3COM is horrible. We have had multiple problems with these units.
As far as rock solid and price, Netgear is the way to go. If you have more money, HP or Cisco is a fine choice. But I would stay away from 3COM.
After rereading this article, you are comparing Cisco equipment with bargain basement soho Netgear equipment. You should be comparing it to at least the ProSafe equipment from Netgear. That is all we use. You get what you pay for.
Netgear ProSafe = good
Fortinet = good
HP ProCurve = good
Cisco = good but too expensive
Anything SOHO product at Best Buy/Circuit City = bad
3COM = bad
200+ companies serviced with Netgears only? I find that a bit hard to believe unless these are all small, family-owned businesses. I have yet to see Netgear win over enterprise installations like 3Com / Cisco / HP have.