Tuesday 15 January 2008

The Netgear Rangemax routers and the PS3

I have a Netgear Rangemax router, a DG834PN to be more percise, its been working great since i bought it up until i got my PS3. Ever since then, when the PS3 is on or on standby, I can clearly notice that browsing the internet becomes incredibly slow on my other laptops. I have all these devices connected through wireless and never before have i had a problem of this nature.

Looking around on the net i found mention about PS3s being incompatible with RangeMax due to some N protocol they use, so i thought the best test was to borrow another router to check this. I used a router supplied by BT for Business Broadband customers, a 2wire, set it up exactly as I had the netgear and gave it a go. It worked perfectly all the time, being able to have my PS3 on and browse the internet at decent speeds (*).

Yesterday I thought i'd go back to my Netgear and see if I could get it to work. I connected it back up, went to wireless settings and checked the "Mode" option which gives you : b and g modes, g only or Auto (108 mbps). I changed the setting to g and tried the whole thing. Its now working perfectly fine, I will give it a couple more days of testing but its clear that the mode used for 108 mbps is somehow incompatible with the PS3's wireless functionality.

(*) Note: This was particularly noticeable whilst attempting to play World of Warcraft since I could see the Lag bar going read while the PS3 was on. Switching the PS3 off from the back switch would return things to normal.


Right, call me a liar, tried it yesterday and its causing the same issues. I had to go back to the 2wire router. Furthermore searches on the internet show lots of people complaining about the same issue. Nothing on the Netgear website but, then again, no surprise tehre.

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