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NETGEAR R8000 Nighthawk X6 Review

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thanks.Tim
you just saved me 300.00.I was just about to bite on that R8000
 
How are you measuring throughput?

Average file transfers using SMB/CIFS from windows explorer.

Performance range is 408-441Mbps according to the transfer graph. Averaged performance of 3 file transfers of a 3.61GB file is 69 seconds, with a high of 70 and a low of 67, which is an average performance of 418Mbps.

Something like robocopy might get another dozen or so Mbps out of it,
 
PC World review just out. Has more performance data than CNET review. But he didn't test mixed device scenario.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2456...view-the-best-router-for-a-crowded-house.html

I have no idea how he gets 400+ Mbps from a 2x2 AC adapter.....


On a R7000 with a 2 stream 802.11ac adapter, I was able to get pretty good speeds.

My testing process involved starting a benchmark with the adapter at 5 inches, I every few seconds I then move it back slightly over the course of a few minutes until the throughput reaches its peak (when very close, the throughput is horrible as the receiver overload is too much, but at a certain distance, the throughput peaks. After reaching that point, I then run a new benchmark for 2 minutes.

Screenshot: http://i.imgur.com/n3jHPgy.jpg



Downloads are a little slower, but also require more distance, Uploads peak at around 4-4.5 feet while downloads need close to 7 feet to peak. http://i.imgur.com/3Boczn6.jpg

With some of my older routers (lower powered, I can have the wifi adapter around 2-3 feet away and reach their full upload and download speed.
 
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Razor512,

What distance does it peak at? And have to tried to find a second or third peak?
 
I can't speak to the R7000, but with my combo I find that so long as you are at least 3ft away, things are dandy, with peak speeds from around 3ft to around 15ft LoS. After that they'll start dropping slowly. A little hard to do a test with more than 15ft LoS though as walls get in the way with the location of my router.

Since it is in my basement office, if you scoot so that the office wall is in the way (instead of straight out through the doorway (it is a 48" sliding door which is left open 99.9% of the time, except when guests are using the pull out daybed as a full bed)), you've got around 24ft of straight line distance and one interior 2x4" wall and speeds go from the average 418Mbps or so to down around 340-350Mbps, Same thing if you go to the bedroom above the basement office and you have a floor/ceiling and a bed in the way as well as maybe 12ft, roughly 340-350Mbps of performance. Rx performance doesn't drop off as much.

Roughly 370-390Mbps Rx same room down to around 280-320Mbps at those two locations. By comparison in both locations, I have 2.4GHz 40MHz performance of ~180Mbps both Tx and Rx (pretty well balanced between the two of them) and same room performance is around 208Mbps.

It seems to take a couple more interior partitions and another 10-15ft to really kill 5GHz performance where 2.4GHz is better and its one of those it is a rapid drop where you move just one more wall and a handful of feet away and you go from like high 100's (like 160-190Mbps) of performance and one more move causes speeds to plummet in to the double digits (like 20-40Mbps) and just a little more and the network disconnects. At those same points 2.4GHz is still going relatively strong. Heck, I can still see nice solid 50-70Mbps 2.4GHz 20MHz performance where 5GHz is down in the low double digits and where it drops off completely (even InSSIDer can't see it) I can still muster 20-24Mbps on 2.4GHz 20MHz.

I will say it is a nice change. My old WDR3600 performs very well, IMHO, with 200Mbps 5GHz 40MHz same room performance and 180Mbps 2.4GHz 40MHz performance same room, but you move a room over and it'll plumet on 5GHz from 200Mbps, to like 120Mbps, where as 2.4GHz performance barely twitched...like 160-170Mbps performance. Another room over and 5GHz is like 30-60Mbps and 2.4GHz is still strong at 120-140Mbps. yet a bit further and 5GHz would be single digit Mbps and 2.4GHz still running strong.

Difference between 11n and 11ac 5GHz range isn't all that much (I do see slightly greater 5GHz range, but it is slight, not like a whole extra rooms difference, like a few extra feet of distance, and signal strength when NOT at extreme 5GHz range is a lot stronger on 5GHz, I assume from beamforming), but in the same locations where I could get a 5GHz signal before, the speeds are MASSIVELY better with 11ac. It actually makes it a good alternative to 2.4GHz over most of my house, and if I replaced my other AP with an 11ac one that is on my first floor, 5GHz would likely be faster than 2.4GHz 40MHz over my entire house (other than maybe some odd really weak spot).

Where as with my WDR3600s, 5GHz was really only better same room, or in the case of the basement, the next room, if you still had LoS through the doorway (which is half my main basement area I'll grant).

Now if I had 2.4GHz interference that might not be the case, but I have near virgin airwaves through the benefit of edge-of-rural living.
 
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Razor512,

What distance does it peak at? And have to tried to find a second or third peak?

I have not tried to find a second peak ( the room I am testing this in, is pretty small. For the distance, it seems to depend on the wifi adapter. For my intel 7260, I can get decent uploads at around 4 feet, and decent downloads at around 7 feet, but with my netgear A6100, I can max out its upload and download at around 3 feet, though it is not a fair comparison since it tops out at a little over 200mbit/s for upload and download (USB 2 bottleneck? )

For my cheaper rosewill dual band 802.11n (300mbit). I need around 7-8 feet to reach its top speed consistently, and for my HP touchpad tablet, 2 feet = a little over dialup speeds,1 foot = dropped connection, 4 feet= 10-15mbit/s and 10 feet = around 50-60mbit/s with the R7000

Overall, it is trial and error with different adapters and I pretty much just do it the lazy way, I start a transfer and then I keep increasing the distance until the speeds reach a peak and then start going back down slightly, then split the difference and move it back to around the range where it was working fastest.

These distances will be different other routers.

These are all on 5GHz, I do not use 2.4 GHz that much (only for the smartphone, old laptop, and cheap china tablet, though I cannot get consistent 2.4GHz throughput at any range. At similar distances, speeds to peak, but based on the max recorded speeds, but the averages get lower as I move away past around 3 feet. (there are around 160 other access points in range on the 2.4GHz band)
 
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Wireless results posted

Results for R8000, RT-AC87U and retest of all AC1900 class routers with the new V8 test process have been posted in the Charts. Part 2 of the reviews are in process.

WARNING: The V8 test process produces lower results than the V7 process. This is due to larger chamber and the averaging effect of rotating the router during testing.

So please compare only products tested with the new V8 process.
 
Results for R8000, RT-AC87U and retest of all AC1900 class routers with the new V8 test process have been posted in the Charts. Part 2 of the reviews are in process.

WARNING: The V8 test process produces lower results than the V7 process. This is due to larger chamber and the averaging effect of rotating the router during testing.

So please compare only products tested with the new V8 process.

I assume this is a typo for the R8000?

#1 for Max simultaneous connections [34 connections]
 
So my question is, was this router tested for an extended period of time compared to the R7000? Because let me tell you after reading the R7000 review I bought one and was very unhappy with some of the issues the unit had firmware wise that only became apparent after a couple weeks of use. Things like 5Ghz dying, losing routing between wireless and wired etc.
 
So my question is, was this router tested for an extended period of time compared to the R7000? Because let me tell you after reading the R7000 review I bought one and was very unhappy with some of the issues the unit had firmware wise that only became apparent after a couple weeks of use. Things like 5Ghz dying, losing routing between wireless and wired etc.

Flash DDWRT (Kong version) and your issues at extended uptime disappear.
 
Flash DDWRT (Kong version) and your issues at extended uptime disappear.

Firmware: DD-WRT v24-sp2 (04/16/14) kongac
Time: 21:18:55 up 5 days, 23:27, load average: 0.16, 0.12, 0.07

Been on it since about 4 weeks after I bought the R7000 and I realized it was more important to my marriage that my wife be able to print. I was just trying to make a point that so many reviews of anything are based on short term use and that may give you good results spec wise but usability is measured over time.
 
So my question is, was this router tested for an extended period of time compared to the R7000? Because let me tell you after reading the R7000 review I bought one and was very unhappy with some of the issues the unit had firmware wise that only became apparent after a couple weeks of use. Things like 5Ghz dying, losing routing between wireless and wired etc.
All reviews are based on short term use.
 
Yeah, that would be pretty time-consuming and difficult to do.

If ever there was a poster child for it though it would be this crop of AC1900 routers, which all seem to have strange intermittent issues.
 
Yeah, that would be pretty time-consuming and difficult to do.

If ever there was a poster child for it though it would be this crop of AC1900 routers, which all seem to have strange intermittent issues.

I'll give you an amen on that. Each AC1900 all seem to have their own issues and they are most non trivial. I mean Netgear is trying to pass off the R7000 making physical noise internally as normal and nothing to worry about. I understand we are paying less than enterprise class prices but f*s functional and reliable would be good things to have both of. It doesn't do me any good if it can do 800Mbps if it will drop offline or randomly drop half the clients.

This is the downside of buying bleeding edge tech, if all you have to go by is a review then you only see the short term good, not the people who have lived with it for months. Thankfully DD-wrt was an option.
 

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