Netgear C3700-100NAS N600 (8x4) WiFi DOCSIS 3.0 Cable Modem Router (C3700) Certified for Xfinity from Comcast, Spectrum, Cox, Spectrum & More

The 5ghz network on an as advertised 25mbps connection is getting 25mbps and above, It's like being hard-lined in. I've seen 28+ depending on time of day while the 2.4ghz network gets around 20mb on speed tests. Since most of our townhome neighbors operate on the 2.4 spectrum there's less band competition and potential interference to keep your speeds up. We live in a smaller home so I can't speak to the range, but if you're in an apartment it'll do just fine. It Certainly does well for streaming. I haven't had a chance to dig into the advanced system management to configure the guest network and so on.... So far I am very pleased with the ease of set up, security, speed, size of this unit (much smaller than the rental unit). Also the lights are a lot dimmer than the bright white one's on Comcast's rental unit, which helps since the router/modem is in a common area and can be distracting in lower light. Install guide, I was able to get internet in roughly 30 minutes. 1. Unplug the old unit before opening new unit. 2. Take a picture of MAC and Serial on the bottom of the NEW unit. Connect the CABLE and POWER. The tech will be resetting the modem. 3. Call your ISP, (Comcast, Charter, or whichever Regime controls your geographic area's internet) I haven't had much luck with online activations. 4. Say you want to activate a modem you purchased. 5. Provide tech with: Model brand and name "Netgear N600" MAC (from your photo or the bottom of the unit) Serial (if needed) 6. Wait for reset signals and lights to be all solid. 7. Plug Ethernet/cat5 cable into computer when tech says to browse to a website and the UP, DOWN, and GLOBE/Connected lights are solid. 8. Run a speed test to make sure you're getting what you pay for. 9. If you'd like to change the WiFi network name, in a browser type in the IP address on the bottom of the of the modem and INCLUDE the HTTP:// portion with the numbers 10. A week or a few days later run a speed test or two again to verify your ISP hasn't sent any modem configuration resets on your new unit. They have been known to "accidentally" get throttled to a lower speed by a new modem config sent down by the ISP. 11. Happy Browsing!

Replaced a few month old Arris surfboard modem/router. This was so easy to set up, it recognized my devices: phones, TV's, phone and didn't require inputting their individual MAC addresses to allow them to communicate past the router. The TV's in this respect was what the old unit couldn't do without a bunch of work, or never did. My wife's TV couldn't get to amazon videos on the old one, but this modem/router had it back in action without any configuration work on my end. Great. The Arris modem/router also was very challenging getting/keeping the wireless connection to my laptop. I eventually ran a hardwire as I was troubleshooting for about a month with my service provider and my own time/work. It should have been simple, put in the password and go. It wasn't. NOW, with the Netgear modem/router, it is that simple. Every device connected the first time. There's lots of happiness in the house with everyone's devices connected again. After all of my devices were up and running- I went into the setup for the modem/router setup, this is where you type in the IP address 192..... and configure the unit. The interface looked good and was organized so I could find what I was looking for. I was expecting that I could input the MAC addresses for all of my devices and what I found is that they were already discovered and on a list ! So I edited the list and renamed them what we would call them, helpful for me but not even necessary. All that I really needed to do, was call the provider, turn on the unit and everything was running like I wanted. I'm so confused about the experience between the two manufacturers being so completely different and that my in depth computer and network skills couldn't fix the problems on the old one, but the Netgear modem/router worked perfectly. Hands down, the Netgear unit works, doesn't have household hardwired, or wireless network issues and the setup was so simple. I would definitely buy more Netgear products when this needs replacement.

I just received this today. If anything changes in the next weeks and months I will update the review. Info: I have Comcast Xfinity, I live in a 2,000sqft house that is tri-level and the modem/router is in the basement. Live in suburb of SLC (not too dense) The pictures are using the SpeedTest app on my iphone. They include my old router (which was 2.4ghz) , the new router at 2.4ghz, and at 5ghz Setup: I am very tech-savvy but decided to follow the instructions exactly as given in the pamphlet that comes in the box. In short it litterally took me 15 minutes from the time everything was plugged in to get it completely setup, I even renamed the different frequencies and added the Guest Network option. The instructions are extremely simple. I never had to call Comcast or talk with anyone on the phone at all. Just follow the instructions. You should know your Comast username/password or Account# though. Speed: As you can see by the pictures I posted the speed was boosted from my old router to the new one. And boosted a lot when I use the 5ghz option. It was 8Mbs faster than my previous router at 2.4ghz and the speed was more than doubled when I used the 5ghz frequency. I was previously using the modem and router given to me by Comcast. Range: This wont be any surprise but its a bit of a mixed bag. Obviously the 2.4ghz frequency can be reached anywhere in the house and the 5ghz frequency is spotty depending on the device. Using my iphone6 and my newer (2015) laptop I am able to connect to the 5ghz frequency anywhere in the house. However using my somewhat older laptop (2012) or my blu-ray player I am not able to connect to the 5ghz frequency in my bedroom (which is on the 3rd floor and the router is in the basement). VPN: After I purchased the router I was reading reviews that said you could not use VPN with this modem. This would be a huge problem for me so I immediately tested this after getting everything setup. I was pretty skeptical about VPN not working and it turns out I was correct. VPN works just fine from my experience, good news. Pros: I am quite please it is faster than my other modem and router, that is the biggest pro. Setup was ridiculously easy. The NetGear Network Genie is super easy to navigate, update and control your home network. I knew that I could use both 2.4ghz or 5ghz simultaneously but the addition of a guest network option was a very pleasant surprise. Now I can have people who are visiting connect to the guest network without having to give them my normal password. No more $10/month rental fee! Cons: So far the biggesst con that I have found (and I knew before I bought it) was that it only has 2 LAN line connections. I only need 2 but occasionally I will plug in a separate desktop when I am fixing someones computer and want to leave my desktop plugged in. I guess in this case I will need to unplug my printer while I use the 2nd LAN port. I would say the range of the 5ghz frequency, but that is not this particular routers fault. Other: I haven't used it yet but I'm quite excited to try plugging in an external hard drive to the USB port.

I was with CenturyLink DSL for over 10 years. 7MB down, 1.1 up. Very slow by todays standards, but still good enough to stream HD and do about anything online as real time gaming isn't something that we do at all. Comcast was running a $40 per month special for the first year for Comcast blast, which is up to 50mb down. Since this was less than half of what I was paying CLink (when you add in the home phone nobody ever uses) I figured I'd save a few hundred dollars in the first year and enjoy 7 TIMES the speed for a while. I did some research and the N600 came up as a good DOCSIS3.0 modem with wifi included. I like that it does both. Some people don't. I do. During install, the Comcast installer had a little trouble having the guy in the center find this modem to push the Comcast specific image to the device as it's so "new" to them, even though it says it's a supported Modem on their own site. Eventually it worked. I plugged in my laptop directly, hit Speedtest.net and was getting 54mb down, 12mb up. Wow. Anytime you get more speed than advertised is great. So then I set up the wireless. I was getting about 30MB over 2.4, which the installer said was about typical for that. And he left. Over the next few days, I found many dead spots for 2.4 in my house. This modem doesn't have any external antenna, which certainly can't help. I have it in my living room on my main floor. The main floor is great, but the upstairs and the basement are sketchy or non-existant. Just not much in the way of antenna. So, for fun, I set up the 5Ghz band. I'd never used anything in the 5G band and the only devices I have that see it are my ipads. I scanned the area and there was only 1 other person with the 5G band in my house, and that was a weak signal, compared to MANY 2.4 band signals. So I hopped on my 5ghz band with my ipad and hit Speedtest. 45mb, 48mb, 50mb down. I couldn't believe it. In the rooms in the basement where I didn't get any 2.4, I was still getting well over 40MB down on the 5ghz band. I was sold. I bought some USB dual bands and changed everything over, laptops and desktops, to 5ghz. The speed if phenomenal. In a room in the basement where my desktop down there couldn't get 2.4, I had run a LONG Cat6 cable. That desktop was getting 54mb down. I installed the USB dualband and jumped on 5ghz. I unplugged the Cat6 obviously. I was also getting 54MB down on the 5ghz. It was just as fast as being plugged in in a room where the 2.4 just wouldn't penetrate. If you doing 1-level living, then this should work great for you on the 2.4 band. It's incredibly fast. But if you have lots of interference from other wifi networks on 2.4, changing over to 5ghz with this router is even better. Faster through the air and farther reaching.

Like many people, there comes a time in our lives when we take a long look at what we're spending our money on, and wondering how we can be smarter with our money. One of the not-so-obvious ways is examining your internet bill, and letting your eyes linger on that $10 modem lease fee. So, yeah, realizing that if I purchase the modem outright, I could save money before the end of my first year. After much research, I came across this baby. Setup was pretty easy with Comcast. I actually had to call the support for them to release my address for use, but since then I haven't had to bother with talking to another human being. I'm not going to get into the technical aspects of this product, just that I have at least 3 devices connected at any given time, and have never noticed a slow-down in my connection. I'm living in a 1300 sq ft apartment, and at the 5 GHz setting, I don't have a problem with connections. My smart tv and video game systems are hard connected to the router, and I haven't had any complaints there (other than I wish it had more ethernet ports). One small complaint I do have with this product, though, is that every time I turn off the usb hard drive that I have connected to router, I have to reset it in order for connected devices to recognize it. It may just be the hard drive that I'm using (a 1TB Western Digital), but I figured it was worth mentioning. Bottom line is that I actually feel like this is one product that I have a hard time NOT recommending to friends and family, trying to get them to see how easy it is to save the $10 per month, with this one-time investment.

UPDATE: After having this for 3 months, the same problems exist--doesn't last more than an hour at the internet speeds I pay for (15MB/sec) before the device drops to 0.5MB/sec download speed, which means you can't even watch a small youtube video without it freezing every 2 secs with so poor quality it looks like you connected your flip phone to dial-up AOL. You have to constantly unplug and reboot it--because that's the only thing that makes speeds go back to 15MB (which means it's not an issue with the cable company or anything else, but the crap router). But obviously every time you reboot, you get disconnected, so it's like you're back on AOL dial-up and your mom is picking up the phone every half hour. Especially terrible if you're in the middle of something, streaming video, or more importantly, connected remotely to a work computer system. TECH SUPPORT: Is terrible (see below). They did respond (see their post below), which I appreciated, but when I emailed them back, I made sure to request a "Level 2 / Supervisor" tech agent who actually knew what they were talking about. (Their first line of agents they put you in touch with are in some foreign location--wherever they are, they had no clue about the product--see below). The Level 2 guy actually had a clue and finally agreed to send a replacement product after like 3 phone calls he acknowledged it had faulty hardware---but they only agreed to send a replacement of the same model--but only after repeated calls and emails--and why would I want the same crappy product that's been giving me a headache for 3 months?! uh, you made the crap product and caused me the headache and prevented me from working from home for 3 months...refund? They even say "** NETGEAR, Inc. does not offer refunds and or upgrades under any circumstances." Uh, how about the circumstances where you falsely advertised a working product and sent me a defective one? And, to make it all worse, they expect you to respond immediately, or you get emails threatening that your tech support matter is "GOING TO CLOSE" in just a few days--as if the only thing you have to do in the world is sit at home next to your router all day and troubleshoot. Uhm, I have a job and barely have time to call tech support as it is---let alone the repeated times needed for them to "Determine" it's a faulty router (despite all the obvious evidence/signs)-- I don't always have time to respond within a few days----especially because I had to stay at work extra late into the night to be sure I had internet access--rather than going home to their crappy router & shaky connection. Further, when they offer you an "exchange" they make YOU send the product back first, meaning you're going to be without internet for another WEEK, while your product ships there, they process it, and finally ship you back a replacement. Sooo, your defective product has caused me a headache for months now, being without internet, and now you can't even have the decency to ship a replacement first and let me return the defective unit back in the same box?! They do offer options to ship you a replacement first but guess what---they're going to overcharge you another $17.00 to $30.00 depending on how soon you need it. Pretty poor customer service. ***So, rather than giving them extra money for their overpriced shipping and getting another non-working router from them, I'm planning on finding another router from a different company. I mean, my parents have a modem from Motorola and Linksys Router from like 4 years ago and it never has any of the snail speeds and dropped connections that this NETGEAR has...steer clear. ******ORIGINAL POST: Terrible. Requires reboots/unplugging it every 20 minutes, or download (i.e., internet) speeds come to halt at 0.5 MB/s or less. Reboot it and 5 minutes later speeds are back up to 16MB/s, but only for 20 minutes tops. Been troubleshooting and reading forums, calling tech support for weeks. Tech support is USELESS. Asked me 50 questions, and knew NOTHING about my product---was telling me to press buttons that didn't exist (both on the device and in the router configuration---kept having to go ask his supervisor or look in his manual. I am no tech expert (but know my way around a bit), and knew more than tech support did after only a couple weeks looking at the thing. This had 4 starts **** when I bought it, and so I figured it'd be great. STEER CLEAR!! Don't risk it, just go with another higher rated brand, and this one apparently doesn't cut it.

EDIT on 10/22/2014: After talking with tech support, I was advised to send in my C3700 router, at an extra cost to me, so I didn't, and was just going to go back to my old setup. However, a few days later I got an email from NetGear Tech support telling me to change my 5G wireless band channel to channel 153 from the Auto setting. The router used to be extremely hot, now after changing the 5G settings the router stays a normal, relatively ambient temperature - and, I don't know why, but this seems to have helped with the speed and stability of the WIRED internet connection. I can now stream video/data in multiple browser windows simultaneously and not have each page taking forever to load or getting timed out errors. Does not look/feel like I am being throttled now when doing a speed test. It was incredibly frustrating up to this point. However, it seems to be working better now after the 5G channel settings switch. Hope this helps. =============================================================== This is the slowest router I have ever used! Flat out internet speeds dropped by 50%. Web pages load ridiculously slow now, some don't load at all. Web streaming, FORGET ABOUT IT on Firefox...however, on Chrome this seems to work a little better...but still some pages don't load fully and just cycle trying to complete on a brand new, fresh Chrome install. I've always been a NetGear fan, and honestly this C3700 router is slower than my N300(WNR854T)from 8 years ago, which I've been using and finally decided to upgrade. This C3700 is horrible considering I bought it to double my speed and range. I live in an apt(about to buy a house and wanted the ext range eventually), if I go outside the front door by less than 3 feet it drops. 5G bandwidth doesn't go more than 15ft from source before dropping....even in the bedroom, one room over from the router itself, I won't get full bars and sometimes get switched over to my mobile network instead of staying on my local home network when using my smart phone...annoying. If you are thinking of buying this router so that you don't have to pay cable company rentals for a modem...SAVE YOURSELF THE HEADACHE! If you enjoying having your web traffic come to a crawl, then please buy this router...however, if you value fast internet speeds, web streaming, and bandwidth range...AVOID THIS ROUTER AT ALL COSTS! I CAN'T RETURN ANYMORE.....WASTE OF MONEY ALL AROUND! I've tried everything, clearing cache, temp internet files, etc. to the point of changing my internet browser completely...before I switched over to this C3700 I didn't have these issues, and I was good. I've been using this router/modem for 2.5 months now...everything has been slower than it was with the Brighthouse modem and my old NetGear router mentioned above. Thinking about paying the $4 a month again and going back to the cable company modem. I'm not sure if it's the modem firmware version (which I've read is the cause of numerous C3700 issues), or if it's BrightHouse themselves slowing down my connection because I stopped using their rental modem...I can't imagine a company going that low, but I wouldn't put it past them...either way. -Disappointed & Irritated.

Two weeks ago, I traded in my Xfinity rented cable modem for the NetGear N600 (C3700). I am now kicking myself for waiting so long to make the change. I was reluctant to change based on some bad reviews on nearly all the alternatives. I finally made my decision based on the percentage of good reviews on this model. I am not disappointed. First - the switch was easy. I was able to connect the cable modem as instructed and Xfinity immediately recognized and made the connection to the internet with just a few acknowledgements on my end. I then connected a MacBook, two iPhones, an iPad, two smart TVs, two AppleTVs, an epson printer and had no issues. I connected my laptop to the wired port, all the stationary devices to the 5GHz wireless network band, and all the mobile devices to the 2.4GHz wireless network band. Everything connects and communicates together and I am realizing the speeds expected from my internet provider. The reason I connected the wireless devices to the 2.3GHz band was to allow greater distance when the devices are taken outside. After all the setup was complete, I logged into the admin account, changed the admin password, and found all the screens associated with the router easy to use and understand. It was great to be able to see that the devices were all recognized and operating as setup through the various screens. I am very happy with this purchase! As a warning to others when reading reviews, make sure that the review is for the specific device you are investigating, not all reviews may be associated with the product you are researching (which is why I mention my product specifically). Hope this helps!