Unbeatable value....
I bought this router to replace my great Linksys BEFSR41 wired router in order to gain wireless network access with my laptop. At under $50 it represents unbeatable value. It worked straight out of the box and its performance is excellent.

It has 1 x 10Mb/s WAN port, 4 x 100Mb/s Ethernet wired ports, as well as 11Mb/s 802.b11 wireless access. It makes an excellent replacement for my Linksys since it provides much of its functionality with wireless access added. It can be configured using a browser and it has one of the best configuration interfaces I've seen. The following comments related to the latest version of the firmware: 4.09.

It has a configurable firewall that supports port forwarding and can be set to block specific ports to selected internal IP addresses. All blocking can be scheduled to operate only at specific times. It can also block specific websites, a feature I don't have any use for. It cannot, however, block specific MAC addresses, which is an important feature if you are using DHCP. Even if you are not, static IP address can be easily changed by users on the network. Therefore, in my opinion, MAC blocking is a must for a future version of the firmware.

On the wireless side it supports up to 128-bit encryption as well as MAC filtering. It does not however allow you to disable wireless operation. For me, this is another important omission in the current firmware. Being able to schedule wireless operation times would be a nice security enhancement. Why have it run all night when you are sleeping, or during the day when you are at work?

I am hopeful that in the future the firmware will evolve to provide more useful features and perhaps drop some of the less useful ones. If it were to gain all of the functionality of my Linksys I would be extremely happy. As a minumum I believe that it should allow MAC blocking and it should allow wireless operation to be disabled/scheduled. Since this is a relatively new model there's a good chance that this will happen, especially given Netgear's excellent past record in home networking devices.

problems with centrino notebooks
I purchased the MR814v2 router with the MA401 wireless card from Amazon after reading several glowing reviews. Installation was quick and easy, including wireless using the MA401 until I tried getting my Centrino notebook to connect wirelessly using the built-in Intel PROSet 802.11b. It won't stay connected for more than few a minutes so I contacted Netgear technical support. Replies were prompt but after several exchanges and suggestions, did not help fix my problem. I found out on the web that a lot of people with Centrino notebooks have the same problem. To fix the problem, you have to upgrade the MR814v2 firmware to version 5.01 ......, uncheck the "Use Windows for Wireless" in the wireless network properties (use the Intel PROSET program that comes with the centrino notebook), and make sure that the PROSet power management is set to manual. It appears to work well after that although I occasionally need to recycle the router every few weeks, which isn't such a big deal considering the problems I had prior to this adjustment. I hope this tip helps a lot of people who already purchased this router save time. I otherwise would not recommend this router as it is not WiFi certified (see Netgear website). I'm still disappointed that Netgear technical support was not aware of this solution and last I checked, the solution is not posted anywhere on the Netgear website.

Quick, easy, has all the basic's.
Apparently, there are several version of this router running around. I got the MR814NA (the NA being the difference), and was VERY pleased by what I found. I previously had a Netgear MR102 access point behind my Linux-based firewall. The 814 dramatically improved the range over the old gear. The 128-bit WEP was good.

The router instantly understood my ISP; by the time I tried to run the setup wizard, it was already done and ready to go. I have a laptop using the Netgear 401 card, a desktop also using the same card, and a Toshiba E740 PocketPC with WiFi. All worked flawlessly with the 814.

A few things I changed on the wireless: I told it not to broadcast my SSID (an improvement over the 102). I added 128-bit WEP. I haven't yet MAC-restricted it, although I'll probably do that pretty quickly.

The 814 will also automatically e-mail it's security log when full, and it will instantly e-mail you if someone tries to visit a site that you've forbidden in the firewall. It even has time-sensitive restrictions.

I have a large house; with my ME102, I couldn't get everywhere; with this device I can. I put it in my basement: while I want it to reach everywhere in my house, I don't want it to go beyond. You can't get see the signal from the street (unless you use a Pringle's-can antenna), so I feel pretty good about the balance of reach and security.

The web management interface is very clean and intuitive with few surprises. By profession, I'm a network engineer; for the SOHO market, this is an exceptional little device, especially when you can get it for around $40 (the price on Amazon at the time of writing). I've already recommended it to several friends, who have bought it and like it.