Review New In The Charts: NETGEAR RAX120

[thiggins]

NETGEAR's RAX120 Nighthawk 12-Stream Dual-Band WiFi 6 Router has been tested and added to SmallNetBuilder's Wi-Fi Router Charts. The sole Qualcomm-based Nighthawk in NETGEAR's RAX family sports four-streams on 2.4 GHz and eight on 5 GHz. But its 2.4 GHz performance lags behind the less-expensive RAX80 and is just about even on 5 GHz, making it not a great value. Check the Wi-Fi Router Charts for more details.

 

[L&LD]

Another case of the spec's being better than the results.

Is this poorly written firmware or poorly executed hardware (or both)?

 

[psychopomp1]

@thiggins
Did you test using the RAX120 v1 or v2? I believe the latter uses a slightly newer QCA chipset, possibily supporting OFDMA U/L.

 

[thiggins]

This was v1. NETGEAR might send a v2 for retest. I don't think OFDMA is a factor in these results, since we're talking one STA per radio.

I should also note that the router could complete only 30 seconds of the wired routing test before it locked up and had to be rebooted. I tried this multiple times. NETGEAR has not been able to reproduce this yet.

 

[thiggins]

Another case of the spec's being better than the results.

Is this poorly written firmware or poorly executed hardware (or both)?

I can't say. My tests don't provide data that would allow me to tell.

 

[RMerlin]

I should also note that the router could complete only 30 seconds of the wired routing test before it locked up and had to be rebooted. I tried this multiple times. NETGEAR has not been able to reproduce this yet.

Unless you have a bad Ethernet cable that's causing electrical noise on the switch port (highly unlikely in your lab environment, pretty sure you did swap cables), I'd bet it's a hardware issue with your unit rather than a design flaw.

 

[thiggins]

Unless you have a bad Ethernet cable that's causing electrical noise on the switch port (highly unlikely in your lab environment, pretty sure you did swap cables), I'd bet it's a hardware issue with your unit rather than a design flaw.

What makes you say that?

 

[RMerlin]

What makes you say that?

If it was a general design flaw, crashing routers when doing something as basic as transferring data would most likely generate a lot of complains on online forums as it sounds like a very common scenario.

 

[thiggins]

If it was a general design flaw, crashing routers when doing something as basic as transferring data would most likely generate a lot of complains on online forums as it sounds like a very common scenario.

Perhaps. Keep in mind the test uses 100 simultaneous connections each up and down, running TCP/IP full blast while pinging. It's pretty strenuous.

But I hear you. I'm continuing to investigate. The RAX80 has no problem with the test, nor do all the ASUS routers I've tested.

 

[RMerlin]

Perhaps. Keep in mind the test uses 100 simultaneous connections each up and down, running TCP/IP full blast while pinging. It's pretty strenuous.

Gotcha. That's indeed a quite unusual scenario.

I assume the router has no SSH access for you to monitor things while testing?