Wootalyzer's Pricing Post! - The price of today's woot item is saved here for future reference
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NETGEAR N600 Wireless-N Dual Band Router
$34.99 + $5 Shipping
Condition: Refurbished

*DISCLAIMER* Wootalyzer! is in no way affiliated with Woot!, and this post may not always be here!

Checks out Amazon!

This is a great deal! I paid $80 very recently for this same router and it works great. Get this while you can!

Great deal for dual-band router!

Bummer, not supported by DD-WRT.

good god, what's with the blue orb?

Throws a Netgear N600 Youtube review into the mix.

This model has an awesome and/or annoying blue light at the top that turns itself on every time the unit resets. I think it can be set in the web UI to flash on activity, with each LED corresponding to one of its multiple antennas, but I wouldn't know for sure. What I do know for sure is, the plastic dome is the off switch — just push it briefly to douse the blaze.

This is exactly what i use at home! This an excellent router and I would definitely recommend picking up one!

Could anyone please tell me if this router will work on AT&T Broadband (formerly BellSouth)? I need a new router, but any type I have purchased refuses to work with my internet service. AT&T offers one for $100, which is exactly the one that is broken on my desk.

Thank you

well played woot.. 2 for tues, 2 bands (dual band).. that being said, i have extensive experience with netgear routers, and i have 1 word for you.. RUN

Huh, it's not supported by OpenWRT, either.

Ralman wrote:Bummer, not supported by DD-WRT.

For those of us who don't speak DD-WRT lingo.

I'm sure my experience was the exception and not the rule, but I bought one of these brand new awhile back to replace my Linksys WRT54G on my home network when it died and it worked flawlessly for all of 2 days after installation.

Amazon ranking:

5 star:
(75)
4 star:
(28)
3 star:
(7)
2 star:
(14)
1 star:
(41)

kind of bottom-heavy for my taste . . .

Holy crap...this is a great deal. I just bought one of these about two months ago for double this price. The USB port is kind of slow for use as a media NAS, but it's perfect for backup or centralized document storage. The GUI on the web interface is pretty clean and the ability to set up guest networks and web access to your home LAN is pretty nice too. I'm running two desktops, two laptops, two cell phones, an Xbox360, a Roku and some other wifi gadgets through it with great speed all around.

reduxion wrote:good god, what's with the blue orb?

It can be turned off, thank goodness.

My cable co gave me one of these for free, it was terrible. Would inexplicably slow to a crawl and require a reboot every other day or so. Got tired of that after about a week and went back to my trusty Buffalo WHR-HP-G54 that ran for months at a time without rebooting.

Have needed a router upgrade for a while. Current one has two huge antennas and lacks a glowing celestial sphere. Perfect timing!

Last NETGEAR router I had frequently quit working when on 24/7, some said overheating. Does this one have that problem?

Fountain3586 wrote:(12:02 AM, today) Fountain3586 says he checked it out at Amazon but in only 2 minutes? I don't think so.

I didn't say WHEN OR HOW LONG I checked it out DUDE. This is not the first time this has been on sale on the internet. I still cannot decide if I want it or not, as I live in a small home.

Signing out, A GIRL, A SHE, not a HE...

davemeigs5 wrote:Last NETGEAR router I had frequently quit working when on 24/7, some said overheating. Does this one have that problem?

Hopefully this helps you.

Note that its "superfast" Ethernet ports aren't - they're just standard T 10/100.

I bought one of these, also refurb. It worked great, and then it didn't, and it was out of warranty. Now it sits in the corner, as I use my old router.

nyisless13 wrote:My cable co gave me one of these for free, it was terrible. Would inexplicably slow to a crawl and require a reboot every other day or so. Got tired of that after about a week and went back to my trusty Buffalo WHR-HP-G54 that ran for months at a time without rebooting.

It could be worse. You could have Dial-up!. WOO! PUMPKINS!, ROFL.

skeranovic wrote:Could anyone please tell me if this router will work on AT&T Broadband (formerly BellSouth)? I need a new router, but any type I have purchased refuses to work with my internet service. AT&T offers one for $100, which is exactly the one that is broken on my desk.

Thank you

This seems odd to me. Just about any router should work with any broadband service. A broadband carrier would have to require quite the custom setup to make a router unusable.

skeranovic wrote:Could anyone please tell me if this router will work on AT&T Broadband (formerly BellSouth)? I need a new router, but any type I have purchased refuses to work with my internet service. AT&T offers one for $100, which is exactly the one that is broken on my desk.

Thank you

Continue to aggravate AT&T about the internet service. Eventually, a customer service rep/tech will send a new wireless modem to you at no cost (as long as your account has been in good standing). My issue stems from the buried line from my house to the junction box (BellSouth sub-contracted the job). I'll let AT&T continue to upgrade my wireless modems, but eventually they are going to have to run about 1000' of new line...but what do I know?????

Anybody know why I couldn't use this to physically extend my current Airport Extreme network? I've got a dead spot in a far corner of my house I'd like to extend coverage to by way of an Ethernet cable through the attic.

I just went through this after a bunch of research on routers -- there are a few different Netgear routers branded as "N600":

This is the WNDR3400 model, which is the lesser of the line. The more burly of the bunch are the WNDR3700v2 and the WNDR3800. They're all marked as N600, which makes me snarly at marketing people (well, the non-Woot varieties, anyway.) The "600" is referring to the dual 300Mbit radios, which each of the N600's have. Tricky, eh?

This router is pretty decent for this price, but the rockin' beast for price/performance is the WNDR3700v2, which I've put OpenWRT firmware in just last week. It's really slick. (FYI, I couldn't get DD-WRT to work right on it, but OpenWRT worked out of the gate.)

Anyway, just some FYI'in' for those who are doing more research.

ThunderThighs wrote:Eh, everyone's a he when we spot. We can't tell the difference. Kinda like all ships are she's.

Ms Thunderthighs

Sorry, didn't get the memo. Must have gotten lost in cyberspace.

sykotek wrote:I'm sure my experience was the exception and not the rule, but I bought one of these brand new awhile back to replace my Linksys WRT54G on my home network when it died and it worked flawlessly for all of 2 days after installation.

Trust me...it wasn't the exception. I have lots of experience w/ retail networking devices. And it's sooo true....anything that comes from netgear that isn't in a metal box is crap. Ask yourself why you find refurbished/brown box netgear items EVERYWHERE. Why are they plentiful and always in stock w/ several models available?

What about the suckers that paid retail full price new? They are the guinea pigs for Netgear.


Their USB Wifi dongles are the worst! If used for more than surfing, you could nearly fry an egg on them!

It's been years since I have seen a moderately used plastic Netgear item last more than 6-12 mos.


With that said, if this WOOT was GIGABIT, I would buy this in a heartbeat w/ a SquareTrade Warranty and burn this sucker up for 6mos and warranty it for another and not look back....

I've been running a refurb WNDR3300 with DDWRT for years -- 24/7 Bittorrent traffic, through a wired connection. Absolutely rock solid. Wireless range is pretty weak, but otherwise works well. So I'll bet this WNDR3400 -- which looks identical -- performs similarly. However, it's only 10/100. You might want to consider a Gigabit router.

Oh -- and a note on the light-up-button. In DD-WRT, the lights are off by default, and the button can be used to turn the radios on and off -- good, since my uni dorm technically doesn't allow you to broadcast a wifi signal. That option is under the "Services" tab in the browser control panel.

Edit: Disregard, it's not DD-WRT compatible. Guess I should read more before I post. If you're fine with 100mbps, maybe you should keep your eyes peeled for a refurb WNDR3300 -- I bought mine for $30 shipped from Newegg a few years ago...

irishfool77 wrote:This is a great deal! I paid $80 very recently for this same router and it works great. Get this while you can!

Agreed. I bought one new about 6 months ago and it has worked great. This was a great upgrade off of my older G Access Point. I haven't tried using the NAS or any of the other "fancy" features. I purchased it purely because it was dual-radio N capable Router or AP. I wanted the 5.8GHz radio since everyone and their brother, sister, and cousins all have wifi with the radios running at 100% power killing my speeds.

reduxion wrote:good god, what's with the blue orb?

Just push the blue button to turn the LEDs off. Took me a few weeks before I found that one. I actually had a roll of electrical tape in my hand getting ready to cover it up. If you are in need of a night light, this device is for you. The blue globe lights up the room very nicely.

skeranovic wrote:Could anyone please tell me if this router will work on AT&T Broadband (formerly BellSouth)? I need a new router, but any type I have purchased refuses to work with my internet service. AT&T offers one for $100, which is exactly the one that is broken on my desk.

I can't think of any reason it wouldn't work. Just remember you will still need your modem and then this router. Some of the broadband providers are still using PPPoE or some other type of static configuration which you may need to manually configure your router to support. When in doubt, call ATT support and have them walk you through the basic configuration settings.

Does anyone own this and connect to a VPN? My current router drops any VPN connection after ~5 minutes and I would love to stop having to swap my router every time I work from home.

This is by far the WORSE dual band out there. Drops signals all the time and anytime i flipped on a new device, it would knock out all of my existing devices so they cannot connect to it.
You are then forced to hard boot it to fix this issue.

You can turn off the flashing UFO lights by tapping on the dome where the lights are clustered. The lights are supposed to show you that signals are running to each of the internal antennas. Sometimes, i find these light mesmerizing so i leave them on.

Many times, the signals are received as a G source and not N. It is super slow and you cannot even run a YouTube 480P video in its entirety without loading delays.

I wound up replacing it with a Belkin N+ that fixed all of my issues. Belkin is the bomb! Anyone want a Netgear brick to adorn their desk?

reduxion wrote:good god, what's with the blue orb?

Thats the UFO levitator engine.

WootKosol wrote:I wound up replacing it with a Belkin N+ that fixed all of my issues. Belkin is the bomb! Anyone want a Netgear brick to adorn their desk?

I'm currently using a Belkin N+ and while it's very good, it cannot handle VPN traffic, which is why I'm considering the Woot!

How well does this play with others? I currently have a lynksys 6100n dual band with a satellite router (lynksys wrt510g) that I have to connect via G. I'd like to switch that out so I can hook the computer on the far end up with N-speed. ( I'd keep the G-router hooked up via Ethernet for backwards compatibility with my old devices--either that or set one of the antennas on the new router to G)