NETGEAR R6300 WiFi Router-802.11ac Dual Band Gigabit Reviewed

[thiggins]

Perhaps you should considering retesting this router. After a few firmware releases it shows much better performance (at least for N clients). I've compared it to Asus RT-AC66U and Dlink 868L alternatives which are not as good.

NETGEAR R6300 Wireless Retest

 

[klas]

Wow, that was quick. Thanks!

Is Dlink 868L test in the horizon?

 

[stevech]

the typical 2.4GHz path loss, in a residence, is on the order of 60-100dB. Start with +15dBm or so, subtract a path loss (distance and walls/floors), and the RSSI is at -80 or so. Unless you're in the same room with the WiFi access device. The client device probably doesn't have +15dBm, but that's just a few dB as compared to the free space + wall/floor loss.

The point is, I content, the throughput/speed at less than 30 or 40dB of path loss/attenuation is arguably irrelevant for most real-world path length and obstructions.

 

[thiggins]

Is Dlink 868L test in the horizon?

Wireless testing has been done. Need to get the results into the charts database and write it up.

 

[thiggins]

the typical 2.4GHz path loss, in a residence, is on the order of 60-100dB. Start with +15dBm or so, subtract a path loss (distance and walls/floors), and the RSSI is at -80 or so. Unless you're in the same room with the WiFi access device. The client device probably doesn't have +15dBm, but that's just a few dB as compared to the free space + wall/floor loss.

The point is, I content, the throughput/speed at less than 30 or 40dB of path loss/attenuation is arguably irrelevant for most real-world path length and obstructions.

Steve, is this comment directed to me about the test method?

 

[stevech]

Steve, is this comment directed to me about the test method?

No, I'm just saying that some people, reading reviews, won't know the relevance. The curves are somewhat deceptive to a lay person.

 

[klas]

I agree and for average user all this technical info is too much and what I discovered doesn't reflect real world experience. I used to buy routers based on reviews, but now I just have to test them all to see which one works best. So the rating for R6300 is very deceptive and if I didn't know better I would most likely just ignore it and get whatever is rated the highest, but, I've tried RT-AC66U and D-Link DIR-868L and they just didn't offer the best range/bandwidth/firmware reliability for me which is pretty much the most important thing in a router and everything else is just a bonus.

 

[Razor512]

Based on long term use, The r6300 has been extremely stable. The performance is great and remains consistent for months on end using the stock firmware.

One of the things that cant be provided by a benchmark, is long term reliability and performance. I am pretty much stuck with netgear because they have been the most reliable over time. The asus routers offer great performance and I have tried a few, and always ran into issues (though I have not tried their ac routers yet).

The main issues I have encountered are the need to reboot after a month or so, and when using tomato firmware (or dd-wrt), reliability went up but at the cost of a major performance hit, eg significant drops in WAN performance, and weird wifi behavior (eg performance remaining the same on channel 6, but all other channels having major drops in performance.

In addition to that, I have also experienced reduced range (probably due to reduced transmit power which I noticed from the wifi radio not getting as hot).

The current dd-wrt and tomato builds just don't seem to work well with the current wifi radios in terms of controlling transmit power, and range suffers because of it.

This has forced me to rely on 2 routers, my best router running the stock firmware, and a secondary router running tomato (for it's openVPN server)

PS N900 requires a minimum of 3 connections to reach it's full speed (test it with a network folder, have 3 clients copy files from you (if your HDD is slow, then use a RAM disk) (have not tested ac to find how much it needs)