First, connections have been generally quite reliable.I have connected desktop computers and printers by both CAT5 and WiFi.I have also connected a variety of smartphones, tablets, laptops game consoles and my smart TV without difficulty.OS connections have included Windows versions from XP through Win 10, iOS, Android, OSX, Nintendo's Wii/Wii U OS and whatever drives my 50" Panasonic plasma TV.

The router is located in my basement office/man-cave and the 2.4 GHz connection still reaches nearly to the street.That means through the floor, a couple of interior walls and a brick exterior wall.The 5 GHz connection is, of course, more range restricted.While it will make it through the floor and walls within the house, it is damped enough that I generally get better throughput with the 2.4 GHz connection.I typically keep the 5 GHz reserved for equipment in the basement where I can take best advantage of the speed.

As far as throughput?Ok, it's "rated" at 300/300 Mbs, but the reality is those numbers are typical bogus for ANY router.It just gives you a benchmark to compare products.Don't expect anything close in the real world where physics intervenes unless you are in line of sight at just the right distance, temperature and humidity.Depending on current conditions, my wife's laptop, with a floor and a couple of walls in between will still pull 95-100 Mbs.Prevailing conditions can push her over 100 or as low as 54, but both are unusual.My desktop, when I use wireless instead of CAT5, it will pull 150 Mbs on the 5 GHz channel, minimum.On CAT5, it screams.

As I said, though, numbers don't mean so much in real world.It's actual performance is what matters.It has had HD video streaming on the TV, heavy internet browsing with frequent WiFi printing, multiple smartphones (one running YouTube) while I was on Facetime with my tablet recording a podcast on the desktop (which was also running YouTube for clips).And lately, I've had my son adding in running CoD on the Wii U's gamepad to the mix (i.e. while watch a streamed movie and using YouTube on his iPad for a level walkthrough), often on top of some of the above.I can't complain about the performance at all.

I will note that I do have to reboot it every several months, however I do know already that the problem is almost always the cable modem rather than the router.I have found, though, that I typically get better results when I reboot both together.Some IT guys do this regularly as routine maintenance, however, I only do it when I see a persistent performance compromise.As I said, though, it is almost always related to the cable modem and most typically after Charter has an outage or service interruption.The web-based control panel does seem a bit sluggish, but it does what perform acceptably for its intended use.That's not something you should have to get into very often, if at all.

I haven't had any experience with the Genie apps or the Readyshare software, though I'm in the process up doing a variety of home computing upgrades and will likely add these features over the next couple of weeks.If I do so, I will update this review.

Overall, I've been quite satisfied with this router and will strongly consider Netgear again.

I ordered this on June 29, 2016, received and installed it on July 1, and received the above response less than 12 hours later. I sent them my Amazon receipt but today received another e-mail saying that since they had not heard from me, they were closing the support ticket. Now, seriously, it was in new packaging and sold as new and it seems to me that any company ought to support what it sells. Given this experience, I would recommend almost any other company BESIDES Netgear.

As an aside, I managed to solve my connectivity issues on my own, no thanks to Netgear. They may make a decent product but their support is non-existent.

The stock NetGear firmware is flaky and slow. Signal power was very poor inside my house (brick and concrete, not drywall) not being able to connect two rooms away from its location. There's no way to set the router's time and date by hand, and it tries to use NTP (Network Time Protocol) in order to fetch time from remote servers. This would be okay, however it only tries to use the hardcoded Netgear's servers (that are usualy down or broken), and there's no way to pick alternate NTP servers. The access restriction, firewall, and VPN setup were also quite limited. Five firmware upgrades since I bought it didn't improve nor solve my issues.

Fortunately, this router is compatible with DD-WRT. After reading DD-WRT's on-line documentation, I was able to replace Netgear's firmware with DD-WRT in an easy to follow, ten minutes, two-stage process. It is now faster, properly in sync with global NTP servers, and there are waaaaaaaay more features you can control. In particular, I was able too boost transmission power: not only am I able to use it anywhere in my apartment, but I can get a good signal from the ground floor (I live on the 7th. floor) also.

It is a good piece of hardware with a lousy firmware. Plan to use DD-WRT if you want to enjoy it thoroughly. If you feel that installing DD-WRT is way over your abilities, and don't have a friend nearby able to help you, don't buy it.