News NETGEAR Announces $200 AX Router, Finally Lets You Buy RAX120

[kc6108]

Netgear has traditionally used software to implement LACP LAG in the Nighthawk routers. I'm curious if Netgear used any hardware that natively supports LACP LAG in which to implement LACP LAG in any of these AX routers?

Perhaps that's way they put in a second quad-core processor in the RAX80 to handle LAN-WAN duties?

 

[L&LD]

I'm curious... what use is the WAN port when the LAN1/LAN2 ports are used for WAN aggregation? Are you able to use it as a LAN port? I'm curious how hardware acceleration is affected by all this?

I would guess that the WAN aggregation would be WAN+LAN1.

LAN Aggregation is LAN1+LAN2.

 

[kc6108]

I would guess that the WAN aggregation would be WAN+LAN1.

LAN Aggregation is LAN1+LAN2.

@avtella

Would you mind double-checking this in your RAX120?

 

[avtella]

Sure L&LD maybe right, I’ll check when I get home from work.

 

[RMerlin]

Did you ever notice a benefit from it?

The only MU-MIMO client I had was my previous Nexus 5X, and my wifi traffic is generally fairly light since I'm the only one using it, so there was no way to test/evaluate its performance impact for me.

I wonder what Huawei uses for the P30 wifi. Possibly an in-house design.

 

[RMerlin]

MU-MIMO will stick around because the marketing guys don't want to give up a buzzword. Benefit from MU-MIMO is still marginal in real world use.

Just give them new buzzwords to play with, and they will move on. Like the 3D TV craze, manufacturers have moved to 4K, and now 8K to wow the customers.

Now they can throw around "Wifi 6" and even "OFDMA" if they want new baits to put on their fishing lines.

 

[avtella]

The only MU-MIMO client I had was my previous Nexus 5X, and my wifi traffic is generally fairly light since I'm the only one using it, so there was no way to test/evaluate its performance impact for me.

I wonder what Huawei uses for the P30 wifi. Possibly an in-house design.

Pretty sure it uses the HiSilicon Hi1103 WiFi chip which possibly supports MU according to some sites though Huawei only explicitly mentions HT160 and nothing else. Guessing it’s an in house design.

 

[RMerlin]

Pretty sure it uses the HiSilicon Hi1103

That's what was reported by the system info app I tried last night.

which possibly supports MU according to some sites

If it does, then it's not enabled by them (see the missing M flag compared to the N5X):

160 MHz support is interesting, I will enable it on my router to try out (not that I need it, bottleneck is my ISP at this point).

 

[RMerlin]

Uh. The P30 does support 160 MHz channels indeed.

Interesting that it wasn't mentioned in their marketing push.

 

[avtella]

Yeah I got the info from here, their site advertising the Kirin 980 SoC, in the last section:
https://consumer.huawei.com/en/campaign/kirin980/

 

[kc6108]

Sure L&LD maybe right, I’ll check when I get home from work.

@avtella

Did you ever check on this?

 

[avtella]

I actually did not as I didn’t wanna touch the NAS at the moment. I appologize. I will do it hopefully soon.

According to NG for RAX 80 (should be same for the RAX 120), its WAN + LAN1 for WAN aggregation.
https://kb.netgear.com/000060393/Ho...-Cable-Modem-and-NETGEAR-Nighthawk-AX8-router

 

[avtella]

@avtella

Did you ever check on this?

It's WAN+LAN1 for WAN aggregation. Sorry for the delay, I finally got a chance to play with it as no one else is home at the moment.

 

[Killhippie]

My only view on this it looks much better than the AX12. Ive been using my beta unit, I would love to play with a retail unit but way to pricey for a draft router and I have no AX clients anyway and gains I believe are minimal at best with wifi 5 clients. Well I have not seen any really using my beta unit so far.

 

[Kdean7]

Does anyone know if the RAX120 supports providing DHCP over wireless provided from a Microsoft Server on the local LAN? I was recently informed by Asus that they do not support such functionality on any of their US or NA products. I am now in the market for a new solution though my timing seems to be bad with the new AX hardware coming out including the RAX200.

 

[thiggins]

You could set it to AP mode.

 

[Kdean7]

Would setting to AP mode disable all other features such as firewall and port forwarding as it would on the Asus? If so, that would not be an option. My ISP is my cable provided. They provide a single port cable modem (Arris TM1602) than I then have the AC-RT5300 connected to. From there I connect a D-Link DGS-1210-52MP Switch. the DHCP server is on a port through the D-Link switch. I use the Asus to control all ports and DMZ. I tried turning off wireless on the Asus and connecting an Open-mesh A40 for wireless however the A40 isn't giving the performance I need.

 

[thiggins]

Would setting to AP mode disable all other features such as firewall and port forwarding as it would on the Asus?

Yes it would. APs act as bridges to the wired network they connect to, so have no firewalls and therefore don't require port forwarding.