Netgear WNR3500L vs WNDR3700 ?

Hi,

I'm buying a router soon, and the Netgear WNR3500L and the WNDR3700 are the two primary candidates (the other one would be the Linksys/Cisco E3200, but I've seen more positive reviews about these two).

I'm a bit surprised about the difference in price... the 3500L is 70$ :

Newegg.com - NETGEAR WNR3500L-100NAS 802.11b/g/n RangeMax Wireless-N Gigabit router up to 300Mbps/ DD-WRT Open Source support/ USB x1

and the 3700 is almost twice as expensive :

Newegg.com - NETGEAR WNDR3700-100NAS 802.11a/b/g/n Rangemax 2.4/5GHz Simultaneous N600 Dual Band Wireless Gigabit Router/ USB port

What is the main reason for the price difference? I don't understand the technical specs that much.

I do plan to have a few computers working at the same time (4-5), and have gaming (so low latency) and HD video streaming (so high bandwidth) running at the same time.

Considering these needs, which should I go for? I don't mind spending the bucks as long as I understand what I'm getting for them.

Suggestions?
Thanks!

 

The difference is WNR-3500L is a single band router (2.4GHz) and has slower CPU (480MHz Broadcom) while WNDR3700 has faster CPU (680MHz Atheros) and is a simultaneous dual band router (2.4GHz + 5GHz at the same time)

Also WNDR3700 has better wireless range (on 2.4GHz band obviously)

Judging by number of computers and HD Video + gaming you would benefit from WNDR3700. If not the better performance than possibility of spreading the load across two bands (2.4GHz is overcrowded as it is but has better range)

So in your situation WNDR3700 seems to be a safer choice.

 

I didn't play with my dualband long before it went off to college, but since the 5GHz band seemed to provide top n-throughput *at close range* and is supposedly less susceptible to interference, I reserved that band for n-only clients and setup the 2.4GHz band for mixed-mode clients. My rationale was that this would afford close-range n clients the best quality of service on the dedicated 5GHz band. And they can still connect on the 2.4GHz mixed-mode band at greater distances, although not required in the college apartment setting. I assumed that the mixed-mode throughput would be throttled by the slowest client to connect... b or g. Perhaps this is dualband usage setup worth considering.

GK

 

Thanks for the help guys (or gals).

The local forums say that our local ISPs have weird protocols (some combinatino of PPPoE and L2TP) and are recommending the D-Link DIR-655 :

Newegg.com - D-Link DIR-655 802.11b/g/n Xtreme N Gigabit Wireless Broadband Router up to 300Mbps/ USB port x1/ Intelligent QoS Technology for Gaming

How does that one match up against them? I see that its 2.4 GHz only, which is kind of a bummer. Anything else I should be worried about?

(Tho I don't see any advantage of that over the 3500L, which is cheaper)

 

D-Link DIR-655 is a notoriously bad router.
I find it funny that every once in a while threads pop up- some with questions about this router others with complaints.
Somehow these people don't mix

Here's a link to D-Link support forum with 3400 threads on DIR-655- all superlatives no doubt.

 

Yea, I saw that it wasn't very well liked. I'm not sure if it has more complaints because it sucks or because it has more customers (in newegg, it has about 4 times as many reviews as the netgear routers, with a similar ranking average).

Another router that seems to be compliant with my local ISP is the
Products - AirStation™ Nfiniti™ Wireless-N High Power Router & Access Point WZR-HP-G300NH | Buffalo Technology

I couldn't find any real hate for this one, so I might end up going with it...

 

I used to recommend that one too but apparently these routers have very high hardware failure rate. Wireless or the router itself stops working after few months.
I've heard that before but I ignored that as there were only few such cases (could be normal failure rate). Now it looks like it happens way more often than it should and Buffalo seems to be aware of this- must be defective by design.

So I wouldn't recommend that one either.

 

One thing to note:

I got WNDR3700v2. I thought 5 GHz band would be maybe more useful as my old mouse (Logitech G7) had a lot of interference with my previous router (WRT54GL) @ 2.4 GHz. I don't have any interference right now with a different mouse but I thought it might be useful to have 5 GHz band open for that . All I can say I tested both bands at home and I get about 9-10MB/s transfer on 2.4 GHz and about 15 MB/s on 5 GHz band. Those are steady transfer rates when I'm copying large (~1GB) files.

 

OK, so I'm going with the 3700. I'm currently on a business trip and cant test out the router, but the model is labeled 01R4, which is probably a v2. I've seen a few people saying its weaker than the v1 but I guess since its been a while since those threads happened I'm guessing the v1 is rare enough to give up on finding one.

I have until wednesday to return it before I fly back home, but I think I'll keep it. Does anyone think I'm making a big mistake?

 

No you're not. While not as good as v1 in some aspects it's still a very good router and still a lot better than most routers on the market.

 

I am sure u will be good with this router. I have the wnr2000 v3 i believe and i get a good signal a block away, and I live in NYC and everyone has wifi and this is only a wireless N 2.4ghz got this about a month ago and love it over my old belkin 54g.