the X10 has things other than the 11ad stuff... nice radios (QCA Wave 2), and the AL314 is very cool...
The 10Gbe SFP slot might be useful to some...
See, here's the problem: It's only good for
some users, namely those in the professional tech industry with enterprise-grade server setups. The Nighthawk x10 was supposed to be a consumer-grade home router, or at least that's the way it was marketed. Netgear also marketed their ReadyNAS 520 and 620 series towards "home users" (when you go to the "Home" splash page and go to "Network Storage", those options show up), but those NAS units don't even have SFP+ ports, just Copper (RJ-45) 10GbE ports. Perhaps the home router and NAS developing teams at Netgear were not communicating with each other when they developed these products, or they did it that way on purpose because the office politics between those teams are really godawful. Basically, if you want to take full advantage of the x10's SFP+ port at the full 10GbE speed, you will need the following:
-1 SFP+ active optical cable w/fiber optic modules on each end ($60.00 - $120.00, conservative estimates depending on length required for one's setup, Netgear charges about $75.00 plus tax and shipping for their 3m/10 ft cable off of Amazon);
-1 enterprise-grade networking switch with both RJ-45 10GbE and SFP+ 10GbE I/Os ($500.00+, assuming we're only talking about a 8 port switch);
-1 Cat6/6A Copper 10GbE cable ($5.00+ per cable off of Monoprice);
-Netgear ReadyNAS 526x or 626x - You know what? Let's go with the 626x, since it has a quad-core Xeon processor and 8 GB of ECC DDR4, as opposed to the 526x's dual-core processor and 4 GB of ECC DDR4 if you're really feeling the need for speed ($1800.00, diskless. With drives, add a couple of hundred/thousand to that price tag).
So, in the end, your $500 "home" router just turned into a $5000 amateur enterprise-grade server just so you could take advantage of one port's top speed.
Hey, here's a crazy idea, Netgear. How about ditching the SFP+ port on a wireless router marketed towards home and small-business clients, and replacing it with a Copper 10GbE port, since most people in home networking are more likely to have those kinds of cables lying around, anyways? Plus, since your high-end NAS options marketed towards home and small-business clients already have those types of ports and not SFP+ ports, you could get rid of several middlemen in my above-mentioned list, saving your clients hundreds/thousands of dollars. Or better yet, maybe for the Nighthawk x12, you can just upgrade all of the 1GbE ports to Copper 10GbE ports, and maybe the next-gen ReadyNAS' will support 2 x Copper 10GbE port aggregation with that router following suit with its port aggregation options. After all, for what you want me to pay for a 3m/10 ft SFP+ cable, I could buy 2 x 25 ft Cat6A Copper cables from Blue Jeans Cable that can operate at the exact same speed as that SFP+ cable. The upcoming iMac Pro, as well as other newer motherboards and chipsets, such as the X299, will include Copper 10GbE ports on them, so you might as well get with the times and upgrade.
