Netgear MR814v2

Further to my recent wailings about being responsible for family member’s PCs… I decided to deal with the internet connection sharing issue at the hardware level… So far the Netgear MR814v2 firewalled, DSL router, WIFI access point seems to rock…

The MR814v2 is a nice piece of kit. It’s a DSL router with configurable WAN MAC address; you can make it pretend its the PC you’ve always been connecting to your cable provider with and neatly sidestep any issues regarding re-registering your MAC address. It has a four port switch to connect your wired PCs and a built in 802.11b wireless access point. By default it firewalls your network from the WAN connection, but it allows port forwarding and a DMZ host if you need it. It can be a DHCP client on the WAN side, register the dynamic IP you get from your ISP with a dynamic DNS system if you want, run as a DHCP server for your LAN and do simple blocking and logging of web sites if you require. All of this in a neat little package with web based configuration (and you can lock it down nicely and configure it remotely if you want).

So, two of these and my family ICS problems go away forever… Fingers crossed…