Configuring a Netgear wireless router for OS X
You may be idly browsing here, or maybe this is on your regular route through this particular tube of the internet, either way this post is not for you. This post is for the poor soul who has just installed a Netgear wireless router (a WGR614UK in my case) and who is having trouble using it to connect to the internet. For that person I have the following advice, Don’t use WEP as your Security Option, use WPA-PSK.
When I connected my iBook to the network wirelessly everything looked fine. I was asked for the pass phrase and then allowed to connect. Sadly I couldn’t access the internet. After much fruitless searching online (using my old connection) I tried disabling the encryption to see what would happen. Success! Obviously I’m not going to run an unencrypted wireless network, there are enough of them around here as it is, so I decided to try the other option, Wi-Fi Protected Access Pre-Shared Key. A few seconds to turn it on and tell the iBook to use it and I was happily browsing online.
It’s a simple enough fix, however it may save you a bit of confusion and make it easier to set-up your Netgear, which is functioning wonderfully well.