Setting up Netgear N150 Wireless ADSL2+ DGN1000 with Airtel Broadband

Upadate as of July 26th  2012 : I hate this router so much that I recommend users to buy a DLink Router. That was my older one. The DGN1000 drops connection on all my devices, too often. I could not get my ipad configured on this yet. I have wasted too much time that i rather trash this router. Lots of cool stuff on this device, but only problem is, you cannot connect to the internet :-)  What a shame.  I am updating this blog as i can see many are visiting this blog post (447 views already) ..  Netgear hope you could buy me a dlink, pls.... The amount of time i wasted on this stupid device is more than the Rs 2000 spent. I can't waste another one hour on the phone

I had to get a new wireless router for my home to work with my Airtel broadband connection in Chennai. I bought a netgear N150 Wireless, ADSL2+ DGN1000 and set it up. The new one has modem + wireless router. It works.

It actually worked in the "wired" mode in 25 minutes. Yeah the installation tries to auto configure your modem settings by trying out all combinations. Hence the 10-15 minutes extra for installation.

The newer way of configuring wireless settings using a network key and rest automatically communicated by the wireless router is cool. I was not aware of that before. It looks like Netgear has learned to reduce their tech support calls by this and even by printing the ssid, pin, all sorts of secret keys on the outside of the router itself. This again makes sense as the router is in the house and that safety is good enough for this.

BTW you will need to know the username and password given by Airtel - which normally have your phone number in it too. You need that. If you don't call, Airtel and ask.


The initial experience was good because of the auto configuration keeping in mind that i did not have to know the various parameters of the ISP (Airtel) - dns, gateway, DHCP etc.


However there is a catch. The connection is not as smooth as how my previous one worked over a dlink wireless only router + Beetel  (Airtel) Modem. With the new one, the connection is breaking once in a while and first connectivity takes a bit too long - like 5 minutes after booting your PC.

One observation on the modem configuration side is the new one does not have the dns server and gateway servers set explicitly unlike the beetel modem provided by Airtel. Need to see if that could help.

Some don'ts :

• Do not change the default router IP that was set by the new modem installer  i.e 192.168.0.1  to the older one  192.168.1.1. The beetel prefer the " 192.168.1.1" series, but this one prefers the"0.1" network. It just does not work if this is changed
• To accesss the N150 admin page go to www.routerlogin.com in your browser and it takes you there ! Nice way of doing it.

Well its just the second day of usage and will keep you posted on this.

Update : Well if you use the N150 for its modem capabilities, it becomes annoying. Using the old Beetle device as a modem works much better. I guess I made a mistake in getting the Netgear with modem + Wireless. So now i have shifted to using the Beetle device given by Airtel and connect that to any of the LAN ports on the Netgear wireless router. Then access the wifi from your PC as usual. This works really well. No line breaks and works in less than a minute. I am happy this way. Your mileage may wary. I did not ask help from Airtel for the previous configuration troubleshooting. May do that later.

Upadate : If a device works the range supported will be very less. In my 1000sq ft house, i cannot get wifi access if i cross around 15 feet range - next room with door closed.