Netgear has recently released a firmware upgrade for its DG834GT router. I have that modem and one of the enhancements was to VOIP, which I’ve started using in the last week. Ideal.

Except I spent many frustrated hours yesterday wondering why the wireless connectivity on my daughers laptop wasn’t working. Then I tried my work laptop and that didn’t work either.

Both are on WEP security (insecure I know, but I also have a Nintendo DS on the network and that doesn’t use WPA). I found that switching to WPA temporarily worked (as did turning off encryption). Eventually I rolled back to the previous version of the routers firmware and it worked again.

Having read about other people having this issue on various Netgear forums, it would seem to be a problem impacting Super-G and G wireless – hence why the Nintendo DS continued to work even with the new firmware installed.

Meantime, Netgear continue to have the firmware download available on their site. I can only assume they don’t read their own forums, so I’ll be submitted a fault report to them. Hopefully they’ll then pull the link.