NETGEAR R7500 Nighthawk X4 AC2350 Router

[azazel1024]

Here is what QCA had to say:

Hmmm interesting. I wonder if that means either the radios in this router are not actually QCA, or that there is something else going on resulting in the pronounced difference in RSSI between the two clients and only for this basestation.

I also wonder if they mean with 2.4GHz, or in general. Or just with their development. Others seem to at least be boasting for fairly large gains being possible (IIRC Quantenna say "10 decibles" with their EBF implementations for, I assume TxBF).

Again, this could be something totally different going on, but I'd consider my WDR3600 to be a very decent performer, and this 11ac AC1750 router blows it out of the water on 2.4GHz 40MHz with the same client (Intel 7260ac). I see from 15-60% higher Tx and Rx performance with it depending on location (generally with medium distance having the largest gains). Same example as above, at my kitchen table with 40ft, a floor and a couple of walls, plus it being VERY oblique through them I see around 4.5-5MB/sec with 2.4GHz 40MHz with my WDR3600, with the AC1750 its rocking north of 8MB/sec (a 60+% gain).

At long distance with another 15+ft and a 4ft masonry fireplace in the way, the WDR3600 was managing 2-2.5MB/sec, the AC1750 a pretty constant 3.5MB/sec (yeah, both are slow, but 3.5MB/sec is still a lot more usable). Very close in the WDR3600 was rocking 24MB/sec, the AC1750 is hitting 28MB/sec and even a little north (I think the highest peak I've seen has been 28.7MB/sec. The average transfer speed over 3 test transfers of a 900MB file were 27.6MB/sec), about a 16-17% difference.

I'll deffinitely grant something else could be going on (and it can't be character set encoding differences, they are both only doing 64QAM/150Mbps per 40MHz stream, not 256QAM/200Mbps per 40MHz stream for the AC1750).

 

[thiggins]

You can't infer anything about beamforming from your experiment other than swapping routers makes a difference.

To really say whether beamforming makes the difference, you would need to test at a lower signal level with a router that would let you enable and disable beamforming.

 

[azazel1024]

You can't infer anything about beamforming from your experiment other than swapping routers makes a difference.

To really say whether beamforming makes the difference, you would need to test at a lower signal level with a router that would let you enable and disable beamforming.

Very true. No toggle to play with it. It is advertised as beam forming, but of course that could simply be the 5GHz band (I assume the QCA 5GHz 11ac chipsets support EBF?)

 

[bobsilver]

Data Sheet links

Bob the dropbox links are invalid.

CC

Here are the links

R7500 Data Sheet https://www.dropbox.com/s/n4v9wum05b6natw/Nighthawk X4 R7500_Data_Sheet.pdf?dl=0

X Series Comparisons https://www.dropbox.com/s/4rhy41i5zq1oncf/X Series Comparisons.png?dl=0

Bob

 

[sfx2000]

Just looked at the Netgear US website...

Seems like they're moving straight to the R8000 as the next step up from the R7000...

I wonder how relevant this thread is to the US members here?

sfx

I stand corrected - saw the PR yesterday - sounds like this is perhaps a better solution than the R8000 perhaps (yeah, I have issues with the X-Stream thing that Broadcom is doing)...

 

[NETNewb]

Streamboost

In answer to your question thiggins, yes, I did leave it on and with Streamboost autoupdates turned on. Maybe not long enough though I'm not sure. I would use it for a few weeks at a time and check on it periodically and found that the Xbox traffic was still being classified as Bittorrent. Not a big deal as I found another router that works good. The R7000.
It has its own issues mind you, but in general it's pretty good.
The curious thing with the 7000 was that if I enable QOS my NAS speed would be cut way down. From 40mb per second down to 3 or so.

That's why I'm thinking about the 7500 to see if it would cure both problems. Here's hoping....

As a sidenote, a buddy of mind got the AC87u and it does a great job identifying traffic with the latest firmware update. Not sure what it does with that info as it's not my router and can't test it but it seemed to work nicely.

 

[drawz]

Quantenna won't be a big obstacle. Both myself and DD-WRT are supporting the RT-AC87 which also has the Quantenna SoC for the 5 GHz band. I wouldn't be surprised to see DD-WRT eventually also support this router, unless the Qualcomm side of things proves to be an obstacle.

Does Quantenna actually have open source drivers for their wireless cards? Something that can be used by OpenWrt? Or is this a pre-compiled binary driver?

I don't think Qualcomm should be an issue in general - they have some of the best open source wireless drivers for ath9k. Ath10k works reasonably well at this point too.

 

[drawz]

I played around with the DGL-5500 for months myself and it was a mess IMO. I also experienced the Streamboost detection issues you mentioned with that model. However, I switched to the Zyxel NBG6716, which also uses Qualcom-Atheros's Streamboost engine. The NBG6716 had zero of the Streamboost detection issues that the DGL-5500 had. Zyxel & Qualcomm-Atheros had much more frequent tweaks, enhancements and database updates to the NBG6716 than what d-Link did with their model.

Very interesting. Thanks for the info.

 

[RMerlin]

Does Quantenna actually have open source drivers for their wireless cards? Something that can be used by OpenWrt? Or is this a pre-compiled binary driver?

I don't think Qualcomm should be an issue in general - they have some of the best open source wireless drivers for ath9k. Ath10k works reasonably well at this point too.

I can only speak for Asus and the RT-AC87 since this is the only Quantenna-based device I ever played with. Asus currently only provides an image file that contains the filesystem used to boot and run the Quantenna environment. There's no source code available at this point for that filesystem. I don't know if it's because Quantenna doesn't provide it, or because Asus doesn't - to be honest, I never asked because I just don't care about it.

They do provide the full source code of the client-side library however, which is used to communicate over RPC with the QTN environment. So if someone isn't a purist about GPL licencing (unlike OpenWRT which insists on 100% open sourced code), then it's not a problem supporting it regardeless of your environment. You just need to port the client library, which is used to talk with the blackbox that serves as the QTN machine.

 

[azazel1024]

Does Quantenna actually have open source drivers for their wireless cards? Something that can be used by OpenWrt? Or is this a pre-compiled binary driver?

I don't think Qualcomm should be an issue in general - they have some of the best open source wireless drivers for ath9k. Ath10k works reasonably well at this point too.

I won't lie, it is one of the reasons why I like QCA and mildly by extension TP-Link (at least as near as I can tell, all of their routers over the last few years are exclusively QCA products, but I could of course be mistaken).

 

[Shikami]

It is available at Newegg

 

[cc666]

Purchased

It is available at Newegg

Just purchased from New Egg, will report when I set it up.

Currently have the RT ac87R in operation.

CC

 

[sm00thpapa]

Can't wait for the review.

 

[house]

Can't wait for the review.

currently in progress goo.gl1, goo_gallery

 

[drawz]

I can only speak for Asus and the RT-AC87 since this is the only Quantenna-based device I ever played with. Asus currently only provides an image file that contains the filesystem used to boot and run the Quantenna environment. There's no source code available at this point for that filesystem. I don't know if it's because Quantenna doesn't provide it, or because Asus doesn't - to be honest, I never asked because I just don't care about it.

They do provide the full source code of the client-side library however, which is used to communicate over RPC with the QTN environment. So if someone isn't a purist about GPL licencing (unlike OpenWRT which insists on 100% open sourced code), then it's not a problem supporting it regardeless of your environment. You just need to port the client library, which is used to talk with the blackbox that serves as the QTN machine.

Thanks that's very helpful and a great explanation. So it sounds like you'd be able to get any kernel version up and running, meaning you hopefully won't get stuck the way broadcom is? IMO fq_codel support is pretty much essential today and you need a recent kernel for that (>3.5). Given that Streamboost is built-in, it is probably QCA-based firmware for the most part with Netgear customizations. QCA uses OpenWrt as their base. Of course, their versions include their own proprietary drivers as needed.

 

[RMerlin]

Thanks that's very helpful and a great explanation. So it sounds like you'd be able to get any kernel version up and running, meaning you hopefully won't get stuck the way broadcom is?

Not exactly. You still have the 2.4 GHz environment where the main firmware + routing will sit. That one will still be limited to the Kernel supported by the manufacturer of the SoC running in this environment (in this case, Qualcomm).

You would need to have a complete solution inside the QTN environment to be able to run any kernel you wanted for the environment that handles routing. So far, QTN only provides the 5 GHz environment.

 

[TonyH]

LOL! I'm a test kind of person. I test and return. But I do keep my Asus routers. I bought the Netgear R6050 a few days ago and returned it with in 12 hours. What a hunk of junk it was. I'm just waiting on reviews of all the AC2400 and AC3200 routers.

Not to pile on, but if you're a "test" guy, why are you waiting for reviews? Why wouldn't you buy, test, and then see if your results match the reviews?

Hmm,
Maybe he is a PnP tester? Little going off topic, I am an advanced amateur brass player. It is always easier to make good sound with expensive brand name instrument. Real good player makes good sound and tone regardless what he is given to play. I am not real good player yet, LOL! But I am trying always.

 

[TonyH]

if it was here in Miami I would buy it......

Hi,
Will be a good boat anchor....

 

[philmiami]

Hi,
Will be a good boat anchor....

If it's on Craiglist I could get him to give it up cheaper....
but I would never buy one in retail
b
e
c
a
u
s
e

yes, I need a new boat anchor......

 

[NETNewb]

RT-AC87U vs R7500

I just bought a 87u this weekend and so far it's been awesome.
One hiccup though, we have two Xbox's, one 360 and an X1.
I noticed that the UPNP doesn't work all that great yet and it will give me a moderate NAT, even when using Merlin's build.

My question is this, is this a hardware thing, or something that will be fixed in future firmwares?
The reason I'm asking here is that I'm deciding if I should go get a R7500 instead.

What are your thoughts?

Thank you,