What's new

Netgear xr500 your experiences with this router.

  • SNBForums Code of Conduct

    SNBForums is a community for everyone, no matter what their level of experience.

    Please be tolerant and patient of others, especially newcomers. We are all here to share and learn!

    The rules are simple: Be patient, be nice, be helpful or be gone!

He wasn't part of their team, he wasn't a paid employee but a customer and part of the community over on the netduma forums. BTW netduma is screwing over the original R1 owners right now with the Duma OS licensing agreement with NG.
Well he was important enough for them to name the new operating system A7Legit Also as far as what’s happening with the R1 that’s conjecture on your part, pirating of software is not. I think this is now best left alone as a topic.
 
I am well aware of what is happening with the R1 as far as it being delayed. As to the true reason I do not know what that is, I don’t think it’s up to me or any of the other people on the Netduma forum to throw shade on the team without knowing the full story, as I said it’s all conjecture at this point. Anyway no matter what happens on that forum it does not condone what appears to be pirating of the teams software, until there is more clarification because I am not a lawyer and I don’t know the ins and outs of a licensing agreement, I think it’s best to leave this and move on.
 
Last edited:
I've had the XR500 since February and it has exceeded all my expectations. I've tested so many routers thru the years from Asus, Linksys, D-link and Netgear.
Last router was the Linksys WRT32X, although it was good it lacked a good software. When Netgear announced the XR500 and the use of Netduma it peaked my interest and when it arrived and when configured ontu my network ALL wired and wireless clients have been playing very nice with this router. . In the past I found Netgear's FW buggy and not stable, but the XR500 FW and SW compliments it's HW ....finally!!!!!!!
This one router got me interested in Netgears other products and I added the EX8000 Extender and it has complimented the whole home mesh network(having a dedicated 5ghz backhaul helps greatly) and giving me even more WiFi coverage and I've attached the Arlo Pro base station to it, and now I have 4 WiFi cams running in HD...absolutely phenomenal!!!
In addition, Ive attached a 1GB HDD to the back of the XR500 and all my content can be see across my network. Can't say the same for the 32X, couldn't get the HDD to be seen at all across the network....what a waste.
As of now, I've been waiting for a router of this caliber to be made and finally it has arrived....it's a keeper.
 
I've had the XR500 since February and it has exceeded all my expectations. I've tested so many routers thru the years from Asus, Linksys, D-link and Netgear.
Last router was the Linksys WRT32X, although it was good it lacked a good software. When Netgear announced the XR500 and the use of Netduma it peaked my interest and when it arrived and when configured ontu my network ALL wired and wireless clients have been playing very nice with this router. . In the past I found Netgear's FW buggy and not stable, but the XR500 FW and SW compliments it's HW ....finally!!!!!!!
This one router got me interested in Netgears other products and I added the EX8000 Extender and it has complimented the whole home mesh network(having a dedicated 5ghz backhaul helps greatly) and giving me even more WiFi coverage and I've attached the Arlo Pro base station to it, and now I have 4 WiFi cams running in HD...absolutely phenomenal!!!
In addition, Ive attached a 1GB HDD to the back of the XR500 and all my content can be see across my network. Can't say the same for the 32X, couldn't get the HDD to be seen at all across the network....what a waste.
As of now, I've been waiting for a router of this caliber to be made and finally it has arrived....it's a keeper.



The underlying firmware running the WiFi chipset and QCA8337 chip is the same as the R7800. The Duma stuff is added on to the stock Netgear stuff and same outdated packages so some of the same bugs are there. Once you click on “Netgear Settings” in the Duma section you are back to the same Netgear stuff. The main differences with the R7800 are the diff QoS implementation and monitoring features. It uses an old version of OpenWRT at its core. There also seems some differences with the antenna cause the XR500 to have a lower 5Ghz range/performance but greater 2.4 GHz range vs the R7800 according two to recent reviews I have seen.
 
Last edited:
The underlying firmware running the WiFi chipset and QCA8337 chip is the same as the R7800. The Duma stuff is added on to the stock Netgear stuff and same outdated packages so some of the same bugs are there. Once you click on “Netgear Settings” in the Duma section you are back to the same Netgear stuff. The main differences with the R7800 are the diff QoS implementation and monitoring features. It uses an old version of OpenWRT at its core. There also seems some differences with the antenna cause the XR500 to have a lower 5Ghz range/performance but greater 2.4 GHz range vs the R7800 according two to recent reviews I have seen.
I wish you would stop saying you get back to the same stuff, you don't, its all been changed slightly and with no fly out menus, aslo you have added what Voxel has said abot old packages but you neglect every time to talk about what's new. Both are great routers but one had a very different QoS more granular control and many gaming features like a Geo Filter, and a cloud list of games that's updated and a DPI engine that recognises gaming traffic so you diont even have to have QoS on all the time if you dont need it. Along with R-Apps (router apps) with more to be added, and the R7800 does not have these features because its not for the gaming market even though its called a gaming router, but as a router for set and forget with great range and speed its one of the very best, along with Voxels firmware.

They are not the same really two very different routers with similar hardware and as to 5Ghz difference its negligible for most people, and that may change with driver updates, who knows. The XR500 is a good router for those that need its features, it deserves recognition for that, and it feels like maybe you didn't utilise those features while testing, which is fine as you may not be a avid online gamer for all I know, but as a gamer myself its made a huge difference to pings, by blocking gamers outside my geo filter region for lower pings, blacklisting servers that are to far away etc and reducing bufferbloat. Both are great routers, but both are for different markets really and the XR500 is getting good reviews amongst the gaming fraternity for its feature set. :)
 
Last edited:
When R7800 first tured up was as a GAME router with a NIP version.
That one was the same router as a "ordinary" R7800 just with a NIP logo thats it, and cost more and have the same FW in it.
 
I did test those functions infact I helped troubleshoot the the bufferbloat on game detection feature. I also did mention that the “Cloud List” helps some games but it’s been hit or miss even in test period ie some Unreal Engine based ones etc that weren’t able to get working like Red Orchestra 2 (WW2 realistic FPS). Basically what I am saying is it depends on what games you play.

Granted some may find it useful. There’s quite a few gamers if not most that don’t have $300 routers and have just as good QoS setups and play just as well, that’s why I try to steer away potential buyers to more practical buys. The R8500 for example with its last Broadcom Dynamic QoS update and setting device priorities can reach similar latencies. That was the benchmark I used when I worked with Netgear to fix the initial bufferbloat issue that was fixed.

The R7800 was even sold as a “gamer” oriented unit with even a gaming team branded one sold in Sweden I believe. My main gripe is instead of properly maintaining current product lines and updating packages they’re doing things like rehashing old hardware and firmware and putting software addins/overlays and reselling. For a few months SMB was broken (fixed) on the move to ver 4.0 on the R9000/R7800 and now on multiple routers the VPN certificate expiry issue, and a few others that their lvl2 has worked with me on that are still not fixed. I certainly do like the hardware quality but they have really lost software quality control.
 
Last edited:
I did test those functions infact I helped troubleshoot the the bufferbloat on game detection feature. I also did mention that the “Cloud List” helps some games but it’s been hit or miss even in test period ie some Unreal Engine based ones etc that weren’t able to get working like Red Orchestra 2. Basically what I am saying is it depends on what games you play.

Granted some may find it useful. There’s quite a few gamers if not most that don’t have $300 routers and have just as good QoS setups and play just as well, that’s why I try to steer away potential buyers to more practical buys.

The R7800 was even sold as a “gamer” oriented unit with even a gaming team branded one sold in Sweden I believe. My main gripe is instead of properly maintaining current product lines and updating packages they’re doing things like rehashing old hardware and firmware and putting software addins/overlays and reselling. For a few months SMB was broken (fixed) on the move to ver 4.0 on the R9000/R7800 and now only multiple routers the VPN certificate expiry issue, and a few others that their lvl2 has worked with me on that are still not fixed. I certainly do like the hardware quality but they have really lost software quality control.
This seems to be happening a lot more these days a. Across the board in a lot of electronic goods, TVs other branded routers speakers there seems to be a stagnation at the moment and just a rehash of hardware with different designs, at least the XR500 works well as a gaming unit. It would be nice to see some genuine innovation in hardware but I think we are probably looking till later this year or next year it’s got to the point where people are asking themselves why do I need something new which is understandable as stagnation seems to be 2018’s moniker. Looking at TVs released this year they are exactly the same as last year, looking at phones not much is changing there is no genuine innovation just a rehash of features that sometimes have no real world use, it’s just adding bloat in many cases.
 
Last edited:
Honestly if you didn’t keep pestering them we wouldn’t even have Streamboost updates on the R7800. So kudos to you for that.
 
Honestly if you didn’t keep pestering them we wouldn’t even have Streamboost updates on the R7800. So kudos to you for that.
If you had not shown level 2 the blank screen issue on the R7800 that might never get fixed as it makes the QoS on that router a mess at this time for some configurations where the router is finding what feels like orphaned pages of its GUI and throwing up a blank page when altering priority, type and name of device, Kudos all round.
 
Microcenter has the XR500 on sale for $219.99:

NetGear Nighthawk Pro XR500 AC2600 Dual-Band Gigabit Wireless Router

http://www.microcenter.com/product/...R500_AC2600_Dual-Band_Gigabit_Wireless_Router

I could have gone to Microcenter or had my local Best Buy price match it but I could not justify buying it since I have a R7800 that I'm really happy with.

I would be giving up my eSATA Network drive and besides QOS there really is no benefit for me. I really like the DumaOS user interface but that's not worth the upgrade.

If the XR500 firmware was 100% non-Netgear, I probably would have bought it just to get away from Netgear firmware since Netgear firmware support is so horrendous.

Thank goodness we have Voxel's firmware for the R7800.
 
Ive been looking at this Netgear XR500. I'm thinking about purchasing one. Does anyone here know if this will get the new Duma Os with the Anti-jitter/Anti Spike feature? I was wondering if there only going to keep that feature for the R1 users.. Any one here know? Thanks!
 
Ive been looking at this Netgear XR500. I'm thinking about purchasing one. Does anyone here know if this will get the new Duma Os with the Anti-jitter/Anti Spike feature? I was wondering if there only going to keep that feature for the R1 users.. Any one here know? Thanks!
Best to ask at the Netduma site which supports the XR500 too, or the Netgear XR500 forum. I would try the Netduma forum personally. http://forum.netduma.com/
 
Im thinking of this or the R9000...

So this hardware wise is identical to the R7800 ?

Hows the range and speed of this ? assume its same ?

Thanks
 
Im thinking of this or the R9000...

So this hardware wise is identical to the R7800 ?

Hows the range and speed of this ? assume its same ?

Thanks
XR500 has more flash also aerials are different but its very similar apart from that. My old R7800 had lost some of its range over the years so the XR500 was better but in all honesty the R7800 probably has better 5Ghz throughput but coverage seems the same. at least more stable but as I said my R7800 was ageing as it was one of the first units. Both would be fine but it depends on what you want your router for.

The XR500 is less set and forget and very gamer orientated, more so that any other Netgear router. As to the R9000 do you need 802.11ad or a plex media server? If you want a good router with good all round coverage the R7800 is great, if you want the gaming features like geo filtering and a predefined list of games and profiles and the ability to add ports yourself, along with regular updates over the air for the Geo filter cloud and the ability to block or whitelist game servers and other gamers along with a very granular QoS that's all designed to work up to 1GB speeds (more likely 800-900Mbps ish) the XR500 is what you would want. Ultimately only you can decide, don't be struck by big numbers on boxes but decide on your own usage patterns. :)
 
R9000 from hardware point of view is much better vs R7800 and XR500. But cost is unreasonable high.

R9000: 4 cores, AL514 (Cortex A15), 1GB RAM, also crypto device is available. Plus AD band as a bonus. R7800/XR500 is IPQ8065 (Krait), 2 cores, 512MB RAM. But again: unreasonable high cost of R9000.

Voxel.
 

Sign Up For SNBForums Daily Digest

Get an update of what's new every day delivered to your mailbox. Sign up here!
Top