Anyone have experience with the Netgear DGN3500 or Linksys WAG320N?

Question

I need to replace my aging ADSL modem/router, and am considering the Netgear DGN3500 or Linksys WAG320N, as they both appear to have all the features I require (802.11n, ADSL2, Gigabit ethanet). I recently purchased a Belkin Share which also had all these features, but I had to return it as it didn't support Bonjour, meaning my iMac and Macbook Pro were not playing nicely on my LAN.

Does anyone here have experience with the above modem/routers, and can tell me whether they will work well in a LAN consisting of OSX and Windows based machines? I also have a variety of wireless devices (iPod Touch 2nd Gen, iPhone 4, PS3, PSP) that will need to integrate into the network.

Answer 1

I purchased the Netgear DGN3500, and so far so good. While its setup software only runs on Windows, its browser based interface has a setup wizard that does simplify configuration somewhat.

On the LAN side of things, everything appears to be working as expected, with no special config required. I am able to successfully resolve IP addresses via machine name, and AFP appears to be working. Other Bonjour driven features such as printer sharing and shared iTunes libraries also work. These are all things the Belkin Share wouldn't do (which is ironic, considering it DID come bundled with Mac software).

Network performance is excellent, and is a definite improvement over the 10/100 LAN connection of my old modem/router.

In summary, this appears to be the Mac friendly modem/router I was looking for.

Answer 2

I had a Linksys very similar to that one and many other modem/routers (in fact a few days ago I had to get a new one and found a DLink) and never had any problem with Bonjour “not working” or being unsupported. What do you mean by “didn’t support Bonjour”? Bonjour is a local protocol and unless you have different subnets within the same place and have a bridge/router in-between them, Bonjour is just like any other protocol inside your internal network.

I’m sure that either the Netgear or the Linksys are going to do the job fine. We have Window XP, Windows 7, OS X and Linux in our network.

If you expand your question to indicate what is your Bonjour’s problem maybe we can help.

Answer 3

I can confirm that the Belkin Share, Surf and Play routers do not support the Bonjour service, I have an email from Belkin support to that effect. The impression I got was that there was a hidden firewall that was suppressing the Bonjour multicasts between computers.