What’s New With Netgear Wndr4700 Media Storage Router

By Author: Ki Grinsing
Total Articles: 82
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Netgear always comes with new innovative products each year including wireless router products. I was thinking that its Wndr4500 is the last router shipped into the market with N900 technology. But Netgear in CES 2012 announced new WNDR4700 wireless N900 router which is coming soon earlier this year.
What’s new with this product?

Unlike previous generations of Netgear wireless routers which are having the same physical design, this WNDR4700 is designed differently, square design. The design is similar with Asus RT-N56U black diamond; it is not standing perpendicularly but with some degrees of angle.

Main features:
• Based on wireless N900 technology
• Fine-tuned antennas optimized for ultimate range designed for larger homes
• Integrated internal hard disk drive upgradable up to 2TB storage
• Gigabit ports and USB port with built-in DLNA Media server
• Time machine for Mac

The fastest wireless technology today is wireless N900 (with three spatial data streams) delivers double bandwidth up to 450Mbps theoretically each of 2.4GHz and 5GHz band concurrently. ...
... You may have various wireless clients including home theater devices (HDTV, XBOX, Blu-Ray), tablet computers (iPad 2, Samsung Galaxy), laptops and other smart phones which work either in 2.4GHz or 5GHz band. Different wireless clients can connect to your WNDR4700 N900 network regardless of what frequency band they work base on. They can connect and work simultaneously.

Gigabit Ethernet ports both LAN and WAN interfaces is a must have feature for high performance wireless routers for reliable wired connection to the router – blazing gigabit speed for streaming HD video, large files data transfer or connecting to gigabit-enable file server for fast file sharing. All brand new laptops and all-in-one computers today include Gigabit NIC adapter in addition of wireless N Wi-Fi adapter. With both ends of communication devices use the same Gigabit Ethernet technology, a maximum data rate throughput can be reached.

Like the preceding version WNDR4500 router, this WNDR4700 includes USB port with built-in DLNA media server for seamless connection to any DLNA compliant devices such as XBOX, HDTV or Blu-Ray player. Most previous Netgear wireless routers with USB port cannot be used to host a printer, the last two routers 4500 and 4700 support hosting printer and storage device for sharing across the network.

Besides disk storage attached to the USB port, what makes WNDR4700 different with the preceding routers is that it is integrated with the disk storage. So that’s why this router is called media storage router. Moreover, this router supports Ready-Share Cloud technology to let you access and share files on the integrated or attached USB hard drive anywhere all over the world via the internet.

What else that makes this router different? The time machine feature for Mac users makes this router different, a feature for automatic backup. Time machine is a backup utility for Mac OS that helps you to backup your files entirely at the first time and later you can forget the boring regular backup task, Time machines will take care of the backup process seamlessly and wirelessly. Should you delete or lost your file, you can always restore it.

Do you need this powerful router? Depends on what you need to support your wireless home environment. Why should you spend more money for powerful router if you just use it for sharing internet connectivity with couples of computers in small home?

Unlike WNDR4500 N900 or Linksys E4200v2 N900 routers, this WNDR4700 N900 includes internal storage upgradable up to 2TB. This router is ideal for home theater environment for smooth HD video streaming and fast responsive online gaming. By Ki Grinsing - MCSE and CCNA Engineer.