TP-LINK Talon AD7200 Multi-Band Wi-Fi Router Reviewed

[thiggins]

TP-LINK's Talon AD7200 Multi-Band Wi-Fi Router is an AC2600 class MU-MIMO router with a side order of 60 GHz 802.11ad.

Read on SmallNetBuilder

 

[Haul]

Hi Tim,

In the 802.11ad tests, you first started by copying a large file from a network share somewhere to the Acer TMP446-M-77QP laptop. The laptop has a single 500GB 7200RPM hard disk. At 100 MBps, there is a good chance that you are maxing out the write speed of the hard disk.

The 1GB files also might be too small to get the transmissions controls and window scaling in Windows's TCP stack to kick in. Wouldn't raw UDP steams from MEMORY on one device to MEMORY on another device (not hard disks) be a much better measurement?

 

[thiggins]

Good point. The filecopy test was just a quick one and not the primary measurement. The Veriwave measurements were the primary test and they all pointed to a Gigabit limitation for any one connection.

 

[pete y testing]

just fyi for those wanting to know i believe tp link are working on an adapter to suit the AD7200

 

[RamGuy]

So in the end, the conclusion is 802.11ad/WiGig is pretty much useless in normal environments and scenarios? As you get bottle-necked by the internal switch, you basically got to have multiple 802.11ad/WiGig devices connected using wireless in order to bypass the 1Gbit switch bottle-neck. And then you need to take into consideration the limited range and the fact that 802.11ad/WiGig is using the 60GHz spectrum so it won't penetrate wall or anything at all so you pretty much need to have the clients and router all being in line-of-sight of each other?

I suppose this will have it's own niche and specialised scenarios where it will have it benefits. But for "normal" consumers or even prosumers I have a really hard time to find any situations where 802.11ad/WiGig will provide any meaningful benefits? With the requirement of line-of-sight to even work you could simply go with a regular old CAT6a Ethernet cable instead.

As you will most likely be bottle-necked by the LAN switch anyways, the 802.11ad/WiGig with it's limitations due to the need of being in line-of-sight won't actually offer any performance boost compared to 802.11ac to begin with. Rendering this whole router/product to feel kinda pointless? TP-Link needs to adopt a 10Gbit internal switch for this to make any sense.

 

[sm00thpapa]

Totally agree time to move to 10GB ethernet ports for all future routers.

 

[pege63]

Or at least 5GB

 

[thiggins]

You are not going to see 10GbE switches in consumer routers. It doesn't make sense from a price / performance and thermal load perspective. 2.5 / 5 Mbps makes much more sense.

There are two applications I can see where 11ad could gain traction. First is HD screen mirroring. Screen casting today can't cast video directly because of the double bandwidth requirement of receive and retransmit. So Chromecast, et al, use apps that use the primary device only for content selection, then directly stream from an internet source. That's good if there's an app for what you want to watch. But if you want to stream video from a website that doesn't have an app, you're SOL.

Because AD and WiFi can form simultaneous connections, you get only one bandwidth hit per radio and smooth video.

The other potential application is connection to VR headsets / goggles. But it's early there.

Either way, buying AD built into a router today isn't a smart move. Since connection is limited to 1 Gbps, an add-on 11ad box would make much more sense.