Netgear Nighthawk X10 AD7200 Smart WiFi Router (R9000)

[wfhmaster]

you understand thats the way it works , esp at distance , in my testing at 25 meter through a few walls i lose 50% 2.4 gig and 66 % of the 5 gig and that is all just because of physics



different wifi chipsets , fadter cppu more ram , the 87u is crud in comparison

Yes, but 3ft from the router I expected the 5G throughput to be higher than the 2.4, but it's not, it's about half or less. 5G should be faster if the signal is 100% right? Otherwise, yea, maybe I do have it wrong... or there is some other factor like the devices I'm using or something else..

Well, that doesn't matter much, in just less than 24hrs the 88U had it's first major failure. The WAN port just stopped working. Required a hard reset to fix. I'll test for a few more days but if it happens again it's going back next week and trying the X4S! I won't live with a router that's not designed to work for less than at least a week straight. I'm surprised given everyone's positive view.

 

[pete y testing]

5G should be faster if the signal is 100% right?

depends on your client adapter , what make and model is your wifi card

The WAN port just stopped working. Required a hard reset to fix.

i have had the 88u online for over a month solid so again i suggest you have external issues there

I won't live with a router that's not designed to work for less than at least a week straight.

and you shouldnt have to but you need to fault find just a little to fig out whats going on as blindly changing routers in a hope one fixes what ever else is going on is fools gold

 

[wfhmaster]

I tested with a Galaxy Note 5 and Galaxy Tab S2 for throughput with SpeedTest. A few feet from the router 2.4G would be about 60-70Mpbs and 5G was about 30Mbps. I have a 90Mbps line. As expected as the distance from the router increased the 5G got progressively worse than the 2.4G. It was still a lot better than the 87U though!

In the past several years I have yet to have a drop from my provider, it was definitely the router. First I tried resetting my modem and that did not resolve. Only after resetting the 88U did it work again. It just stopped routing to the WAN port or the port failed. It's the first time out of any of the routers I've tried that has happened, I'm pretty sure it was the 88U to fault, but we'll see if it happens again.

I wish the return programs were better, but sometimes you have limited time so extensive tshooting or returning for another can get you stuck with a lemon. I'd rather not take the chance and just return it. Now that I have a backup router I can take my time with choices. Looking forward to trying the X4S...

 

[sfx2000]

Has anybody actually seen a R9000 in the real world?

(there's a reason for asking, as Netgear has a couple of 4*4:4 QC-Atheros devices out in the market...) - I've got a PCAP caught in the wild, and good things inside it - my best guess would be that what I found is probably R7800..

The thing I was going to get to is that a friend sent me a PCAP, and it was odd... things stick out, and he hadn't seen anything like this (Netgear/QCA/4-stream/VHT in 2.4GHz) - so he thought maybe Orbi...

My best guess is that it was a R7800, or perhaps R9000 based on the characteristics on the Beacon frame...

What was cool perhaps - he caught an association handshake between the AP and a client station - and the result was that the AP turned off VHT for that client, based on the Probe Request going in (e.g. the client did not advertise VHT in the probe request)...

Examining traffic frames after the association - it was basic 802.11n for that AP-Client - which is pretty cool... QCA did a nice job there with this firmware...

Sidebar - looking at packet traces in wireless in the 802.11 - one can ID vendors/chipsets/clients, based on how they behave... 2.4GHz is really easy because of range - 5GHz is a bit tougher based on physics, and also the interface used for capture -- look at enough, and one gets a good feel for things, esp over time...

 

[thiggins]

Review posted.

 

[sfx2000]

Review posted.

Editorial Comment...

So NETGEAR's obviously out for bragging rights here (take that Linksys' WRT3200ACM, with your little girly-man Marvell ARMv7 dual-core!) TP-Link's Talon AD7200 also opted for a dual-core CPU in the form of Qualcomm's IPQ8064.

Both chips - the Marvell and the Alpine are ARMv7 - the Armada 385 is Cortex-A9, the AL514 is Cortex-A15... but perhaps just strike the comment.

Interesting to note that both have very strong storage performance in the 1GBe space - the AL514 is probably overkill for most folks for a home network BHR - and the SW here might not be taking full advantage of what the AL514 can offer...

FWIW - can we get a P/N on the "BTLE" device - I'm wondering if this is similar to another vendor's approach using a combo BT/WiFI chip as a sounder to check DFS space...

 

[Trip]

$450 street price? Bahahaha. Obviously there's a market for those who simply must have today's latest mini cell-tower erector set and 10Gb ports... but I'll stick with dedicated wired routers and distributed APs for the time being.

 

[Razor512]

There is no QOS at all? not even the qualcomm streamboost stuff from the R7800?

 

[thiggins]

There is no QOS at all? not even the qualcomm streamboost stuff from the R7800?

Only thing on the QoS tab is WMM disables, which should not be touched, i.e. left ENABLED.

 

[e38BimmerFN]

NG is working on adding QoS features. NG says there in testing currently.

I see they left the FAN in the production units as well.

 

[thiggins]

I see they left the FAN in the production units as well.

I neglected to mention the fan did not turn on at all during testing.

 

[e38BimmerFN]

I presume that only the fan turns on when a heat threshold is triggered. What that is, I don't know. Similar experience with Linksys's 1900AC Rev A I have.

I neglected to mention the fan did not turn on at all during testing.

 

[avtella]

Temps in my experience don't really start to hike up till you do things like PLEX streaming. I assume fans would turn on then.

 

[e38BimmerFN]

My friend says the fan comes on for short durations during streaming from video services. Hes got Plex enabled however hasn't signed up for trial period. Says that since weather turned cold that router runs a bit cooler. Rain or windy weather seems to degrade the wireless signal.

 

[pege63]

Just saw this Router in store today for 600USD, overprice. Its just a R7800 (800 + 1733) with AD that i pay 230USD for

 

[psychopomp1]

Just saw this Router in store today for 600USD, overprice. Its just a R7800 (800 + 1733) with AD that i pay 230USD for

I'm sure I read somewhere the R9000 also includes 1GB ram, 512mb flash memory, a 1.7 quadcore processor, plex streaming & amazon cloud storage. However if you're saying that's not the case, then i feel embarrassed having spent $350 on the R9000, when i could have bought the R7800 for $230. Oh hang on....

 

[avtella]

I mean if you don't need to use it like a NAS or use any CPU intensive packages/transcoding, then yeah its overkill, your R7800 should be just fine for basic DLNA streaming (it uses the same WiFi chipset for 2.4/5Ghz as the R9000), I use a seperate ReadyNAS 524X now with an actual x86 CPU so I gave away my R9000 to family. The R9000 gets sweltering hot when transcoding, so I stopped trying using it for that. For $600 you could get a powerful pfsense box and an R7800/AC88U as an accespoint.

 

[pete y testing]

The R9000 gets sweltering hot when transcoding

i actually didnt think it could or would transcode , sure it can do plex streaming but transcoding on the run is a different matter all together

 

[BlueFightingCat]

I would assume that this router would be great with dd-wrt for VPN purposes. I want to connect it as a client and if I have understood correctly VPN needs a powerful processor to handle the traffic.

 

[sm00thpapa]

I would assume that this router would be great with dd-wrt for VPN purposes. I want to connect it as a client and if I have understood correctly VPN needs a powerful processor to handle the traffic.

Not sure about that the WRT54GL supports VPN with only 16MB of RAM. I'm sure any router can support VPN if that could.