Netgear Orbi - UNII4 extension and 160MHz channels

[sfx2000]

Just noticed this - normally here in the US you might find 160MHz channels down in the lower end with DFS...

My best guess is that this is a residential GW, as I don't think Netgear has publically launched anything with the UNII4 extensions - last I checked, Asus had three (GT-AX11000, XT8, and XT12, along with Syno on the RT6600ax and WRX560)

It's a new Orbi System from Netgear... see additional comments down-thread

 

[tgl]

FWIW, I've been running a couple of XT8s with an 80MHz backhaul channel in U-NII-4 (primary channel 169) for a few weeks now. I have nothing else that can reach those channels, and apparently neither do my neighbors, because the channel seems spotlessly clean. Continuous ping testing has shown no drops at all, and the largest ping return time I've seen was 45ms, which is enormously better than the results I was getting in the regular 5GHz channels.

I wonder whether U-NII-4 will stay this under-used. It's possible that most manufacturers will ignore it while stampeding towards the 6GHz band. (My fairly new Mac Mini, for example, can do 6E but not U-NII-4.)

 

[sfx2000]

I wonder whether U-NII-4 will stay this under-used. It's possible that most manufacturers will ignore it while stampeding towards the 6GHz band. (My fairly new Mac Mini, for example, can do 6E but not U-NII-4.)

Yeah - there's no client silicon out there that supports UNII-4 - in the example I captured, my guess is that this is a mesh backhaul - taking a closer look, it was a 2*2:2 radio on both...

 

[Fatawan]

You'll be seeing more use of UNII-4. See this PR from filter-maker Akoustis. These will be going into cable gateways here in the US

Akoustis Enables New Line of Wi-Fi 6E Gateway Products for Tier-1 US-Based Service Provider

ir.akoustis.com

 

[sfx2000]

I suppose nobody caught that the channel span is good, but the min/max channels are off as 160MHz assignment in UNII-4 is DFS free.. the visualized span in my screen shot shows that the lower limit is in DFS, and that's actually an illegal channel assignment for the rules here in the US.

Just confirmed with the developer that the visualization is off - min channel there should be 149, control channel 157, upper is 177...

Also, after doing some characterization - it's a 2 radio, 2-stream solution so 2404 Mbps is the upper limit on that backhaul.

And yes, it's an Orbi platform... the satellites are 5GHz in the lower UNII-1 band, and are also capable of 160MHz wide channels as 2-stream/2-radio solutions

In 2.4GHz - oddly enough on that system in 11 b/g/n (WiFi4) not the expected b/g/n/ax WiFi-6 - Netgear being conservative a bit?

 

[sfx2000]

FWIW, I've been running a couple of XT8s with an 80MHz backhaul channel in U-NII-4 (primary channel 169) for a few weeks now. I have nothing else that can reach those channels, and apparently neither do my neighbors, because the channel seems spotlessly clean. Continuous ping testing has shown no drops at all, and the largest ping return time I've seen was 45ms, which is enormously better than the results I was getting in the regular 5GHz channels.

Not sure if the XT8 can use 160MHz channels (depends on region maybe), but if one puts the control channel down in UNII-3 (149 thru 163), non-extended devices can still use that band, and backhaul still stays are 160 for node-to-node on the mesh side...

Correction - it does look like XT8 does 160MHz - so something to consider...

 

[tgl]

Correction - it does look like XT8 does 160MHz - so something to consider...

Yeah, but the entire point of that setup is to have a backhaul channel that doesn't overlap the client-facing channel.