From the "Welcome to Network Setup" screen, shown in Figure 3, you will see that there are two different paths to choose from when setting up the box.

Figure 3: Initial Setup

The first path is for users that have an Intel Viiv certified computer. The Windows version I was using (XP Home) had no such certification, so I took the non-Viiv path. One of the first steps was to get networking configured, but when it came time to set up my wired connection, I only got errors indicating that I had no cable plugged in. This was a bit frustrating, since the box was plugged into a known-good Ethernet cable. But to move on, I opted instead for configuring the wireless connection.

I found later that my problem was that the Uplink button next to the Ethernet port was incorrectly set. Since auto MDI / MDI-X (also known as "auto-uplink") ports are becoming pretty much standard on consumer networking products these days, it's curious that Netgear didn't design the EVA700 with one. These Ethernet ports automatically sense the type of connection needed and cable used and adjust accordingly until they properly connect. Given the target market of the EVA700, it's odd that Netgear didn't include this feature.

Figure 4: Wireless Setup

For wireless security (Figure 4), the EVA700 supports both WEP encryption and WPA-PSK security, but not the latest WPA2-PSK wireless security standard. Setup was straightforward for the most part, but it was a real pain to enter my 26-character encryption key with a remote that used the cell phone style character entry. Each character that you enter will be displayed as a "*" so you should keep track of which characters you're on so you don't lose track and have to start over.