I've been using the DG834GT since mid-december and am absolutely delighted with it. Using Netgear fw, and CLI (non GUI) tweaking. However, I've noticed one curiousity that maybe of vague interest. Don't anybody give this high priority as it's not a problem, just an observation...
Let's say I connect at 2pm on a dry Tuesday. I've CLI tweaked the snr to 50, which results in an initial SNR of target -3dB. My target's 15, so I connect at 12. It then rests at about 12dB until evening then, over the following 24 hours, the SNR dips overnight and then recovers during the ealry hours of daylight. No surprises there, I know.
But here's the thing... although the SNR recovers again in daylight, it only gets back to about 10dB or so. Thereafter each day follows the same general routine, dropping from 10dB down (to whatever, it's irrelevant to my point) at night, then back to 10dB when times are good, but it never seems to get back to the 12dB that it reported for the first hour or two after connecting. It's very much as if the DG834GT's measurement of actual SNR grows slightly more pessimistic over the first 24 hours or so, before settling down to a more consistent story.
The process does seem to be repeatable. I've just this moment done a manual reconnect at the same time of day as a few days ago. It had been resporting reporting a bit over 10dB before I did so. I reconnected at a similar speed, but a it reported an SNR improvement of about 2dB. It's still saying 12, but I'm confident that by this time tomorrow it'll be reporting 10dB again, and the next day, and the next...
I considered the possibility that biswapping might not be happening, but I've discounted that by taking screen snapshots of the stats a few hours apart and they do change. Still I wonder whether, despite the fact that bit-swapping does take place, could it be slightly sub-optimal?
Anyway, as I said, it's a great router and I don't want anybody to take this as any kind of criticism of it.