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Netgear Nighthawk X8 AC5300 Router With Active Antennas Tested (hothardware.com)
MojoKid writes: Netgear recently launched the Nighthawk X8 router, which is part of a new round of second-gen wireless AC devices dubbed "Wave 2", carrying the AC5300 moniker. Instead of using a 3x3 configuration with six antennae, this router offers a 4x4 configuration, with four internal antennae and four active external antennae, each with their own blue LEDs to signal their active state. The actual amplifiers are on the antennae themselves, rather than down on the main board, helping to boost the signal and minimize crosstalk and loss associated with modern PCB circuitry. Each 5GHz radio is able to broadcast at 2.1Gbps compared to 1.3Gbps on Gen 1 devices, and the bandwidth on the 2.4GHz channel is also increased from 600Mb/s on Gen 1 devices to 1GB/s. When you take both 5GHz channels at 2,100Mb/s and add it to the 1,000Mb/s on the 2.4GHz channel, you end up with a number around 5,300Mb/s, hence the branding. Performance-wise, the Nighthawk X8 is one of the fastest Wi-Fi routers on the market currently. However, its hefty price point might be hard to justify for most mainstream users. Enthusiasts and small office/home office users looking for ultimate range on a 5GHz channel with lots of clients connected will appreciate this routers throughput and power, however.
What's the thought process that results in that spelling?
all the better to "see" you with, my dear......NSA
I've got a cheaper dual band 802.11ac router in my house and I'm not very impressed with range on 5 ghz. In fact it only really works well in the same room. No other 5 ghz signals in the area except for a directional ubiquity device on the roof, which works great by the way. I know range in 5 ghz isn't great compared to 2.4 but are others having better luck in a home through walls? If this is supposed to be a viable option in congested 2.4 ghz environments, I wonder how people are using it. My brother had a similar experience with a dual band router also.
It only takes one idiot with one of these to interfere over all useable 2.4G and 5G bands at once so nobody gets a decent connection (i assume the kind of kiddie interested in this wont have obss active as that slows things down). But hey, its got big numbers, right? They should just ban these from the get go.
That article is a complete disaster. The author can't decide between using , and . as a decimal marker and completely forgets it at some point.
that doesnt seem right
I have had one of these for a month or so now. The range is fantastic (even with 5GHz) as is the throughput, though the Ethernet bonding feature isn't useful to me.
However, I, like many other X8 users complaining in Netgear's support forum, have an ongoing issue with the WiFi in that devices still show they're connected but no data flows. And if you have a device that tries to connect to the access point, the router rejects it. Rebooting the router fixes it for a while. Netgear support has been very responsive and they've given me beta firmware, but the problem persists. It's especially aggravating for my DVR which goes back to an "unconnected" state each time this happens, meaning I have to go through its configuration again.
Netgear is sending me a replacement router to see if that helps. I hope it does, as otherwise I love this thing. I was able to disconnect a repeater I had running on the other side of the house as I didn't need it anymore.
Given the choice recently when my older dsl modem died I got the D7000. The X8 is overkill. What I wanted more than better wireless was excellent vpn with failover which so far as I can tell no offtheshelf dsl modem currently has. Beefy cpu. More memory. Not wireless. The D7000 will do.
Let me know when I can get AC1000 for under 40 Euro, N300 are already at 10 Euro on Amazon lol.
There are so many errors in these numbers I don't know where to start. There is a mixing of bits and bytes. There also seems to be a seemingly random transition from the Giga- and Mega- prefix. Even the notation isn't consistent (Mb/s vs Mbps). Example: " Each 5GHz radio is able to broadcast at 2.1Gbps compared to 1.3Gbps on Gen 1 devices, and the bandwidth on the 2.4GHz channel is also increased from 600Mb/s on Gen 1 devices to 1GB/s. When you take both 5GHz channels at 2,100Gb/s and add it to the 1000Gb/s on the 2.4GHz channel" First we are using Gbps, fine. Now we are using Mb/s. Then we say the 2.4Ghz channel got 13x faster (600Mega-bits-per-second to 1-Giga-byte-per-second). Then we say the 2.4Ghz channel is 1000-Giga-bits-per second. Who knows.
Once again an always on device full of LEDs. The problem is that when I turn off the light in the evening, I want darkness, not darkness full of LED flashes. Sure you can cover the LEDs, but this time they are on the antennas and good luck finding something to cover light, which is invisible to the radio waves. The problem actually gets worse by the fact that it is blue LEDs. The brain is hardwired to wake up at sunrise and sleep after sunset. This is controlled by the eyes. Natural blue light is only present during the day, which mean blue light hitting the eyes triggers a release of "wake up" hormones (sorry, forgot the name). This mean blue LEDs can contribute to insomnia.
Having sleeping problems, I tend to avoid LEDs, or lights in general at nighttime. If I have some, I intentionally aim for red ones because they do not affect sleeping pattern like blue and red light will not spoil nightvision. A good nightvision is good for nighttime bathroom visits as avoiding turning on any lights containing blue lights is preferred if you want to sleep quickly again.
This mean despite being an engineer and usually looks deeply into technical specs, I have to ditch this one for non-engineering and non-financial reasons. Seems silly to discard a newly developed and improved antenna array due to something as technically insignificant as LEDs, but our stupid stoneage bodies would prefer it that way.
Naturally this doesn't matter if the placement is "unreachable" from people trying to sleep, but I'm not that lucky.
Fuck it, we're going to 12 antennas.
Are you REALLY going to get "Gig" speeds when you web browse, especially given all the javascript crapware? Your WiFi is the least of your problems.
Remember, no client devices can talk on two wireless networks at the same time. So, "adding" the bandwidth together for the 3 wireless networks is pointless. And, wireless is half-duplex (aside from MU-MIMO, which is pretty cool tech advancement in 802.11ac), so actual performance is less than half of the listed bandwidth (especially when considering protocol overhead, security, etc). Still blazing fast though.
Let me know when you can actually get even 20% of the advertised speed over a real link. I'll even give you sitting on the couch 15 feet from the router.
How can you just add the throughput of 3 different channels? How many *client* devices will use more than one channel at a time in combination and actually achieve that advertised speed?
the actual model number is R8500 and "AC5300" is just marketing shitting on the desk. a side note: netgear actually seems to be open source friendly now as they are using version of dd-wrt and openwrt for their routers.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Starting with the line "When you take both 5GHz channels at 2,100Gb/s " everything should be in Mb/s instead of Gb/s.
"He took a duck in the face at 250 knots." -- William Gibson, Pattern Recognition
Like as in Waldo?
Extremely negative reviews of one Netgear product on Amazon ...
NETGEAR ProSAFE FVS318G 8-Port Gigabit VPN Firewall (FVS318G-200NAS)
Customer Reviews: Average 2 stars of 5
Worked for Two Weeks, Then Nothing But Trouble
Locks up after 5 mins
both hardware and production support are horrible. I bought 2 and have to return both
Fast FW-Router when it works....
Bad firmware out of the box
Slow, solid and slow
Very ridiculous and disappointed.
Flakey administration; otherwise a good firewall for the price
Dont buy this - nothing but problems
brand new unit, updated firmware, Very Flaky.
Do not waste your time and money!
Quote: "Ive purchased 20 devices and many of them lock up within 5 minutes. Ive updated to the latest firmware and the issue continues. I am returning all of them. Do not buy this device."
fails consistently, less than consumer grade
Locks up twice a day
Dead on arrival
(Retrieved 12/27/2015.)
I sent those and a lot more negative reviews to Netgear Sales, Netgear Investor Relations, and the Netgear Media Inquiries email addresses. There was no reply.
11% negative reviews: NETGEAR Nighthawk X8
... My time is being used to beta test their product. They obviously know something is not right with the unit as my Actiontec GL1000 router works perfectly as does my Nighthawk R7000. The Nighthawk R8500 will lock up with no access to the internet or internal setup. All lights remain on but the unit becomes unresponsive and a power cycle is required to restore access."
Quote: "The LVL 1 support team at Netgear took my information and had me try 2 beta firmwares that did not resolve the issue. They asked for all the devices connected to the router and screenshots with the config file. All the information was supplied and escalated to a higher LVL support group.
I've had the same problem with Netgear FVS336G routers, random lockups. The problem: Configuration is more complicated than the manual suggests.
I'm curious how the GigE ports are arranged...a common configuration is for the system-on-chip (processor, RAM, etc all in one package) to only have one or two GigE ports, and either have one LAN and one WAN (with the LAN ports broken out via an onboard switch) or only one port connected to an onboard switch with VLAN tagging to separate the WAN and LAN ports. If there aren't enough real interfaces off the SoC, link aggregation is going to be useless when routing between the wired and wireless networks (wireless interfaces are probably PCIe).
http://grammarist.com/usage/an... - see it's a thing, in electronics.
And how does it compare to my preferred EnGenius?
Those mentioned don't look like professional stuff; rather like top products for the advanced home user, sorry to say.
Correct me if I'm wrong.
This is a geek forum - why aren't you all running dedicated devices (firewall/switch/APs)?
Anyone who buys Netgear's junk deserves the pain they will inevitably receive. I've had the displeasure of using Netgear's home and "pro" stuff over the years and it's all been absolute junk.
Flaky VPN firewalls, switches that fall over during heavy usage - or don't participate in spanning tree properly, wireless devices that need to be reset constantly to work...yadda, yadda...
I don't expect home users on a budget to run Cisco/Meraki/Rukus and the like, but take a look at Ubiquiti. Their stuff is cheap and worlds better than the consumer junk you can get at Best Buy and Walmart.
I asked the Ubiquiti folks at CES this year if a SOHO Wifi/Router device is coming - and they winked and said - "we can not confirm or deny that at this time".
So my guess is we'll see a SOHO device sometime this year.
'antennas' is a thing. Not what the Slashdot editor wrote here.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
What about "appreciate this routers throughput and power"?
I considered the X8, but after having used various Netgear stuff in the past with issues, I decided to try another brand for a change: Asus. While my relationship with Asus is also a love/hate one, I had never used their routers before, so I thought it time to give them a chance.
I replaced a 300N Wi-Fi network powered by a Netgear and a 500mbps Powerline network also 'powered' by Netgear with an Asus RT-AC5300 router as main unit, and an RT-AC88U as 'bridge' unit in my home office (Wi-Fi --> 8 port ethernet).
The main difference between the two units is that the AC5300 can power two 5ghz networks and has 4 ethernet ports, while the AC88U only has one 5ghz network and has 8 ethernet ports. Otherwise, they're identical to eachother, and to the X8. 2100mbps per 5ghz AC, and 1000mbps on 2.4ghz N. One of the 5ghz networks on the AC5300 is used exclusively to connect the AC88U in bridge mode, which works rather well.
From the two far corners of my apartment, approximately 50 feet apart, with the main router in a third corner, the network manages over 300mbps actual throughput on AC, and 70mbps actual throughput on N. This up from a previous maximum of about 30mbps.
300mbps is more than enough for my needs. For the first time ever, Wi-Fi has done something other than disappoint me. One for the books!
If they had replied, maybe this wouldn't be discussed on Slashdot.
That is only half of the battle. When will the higher speed portable devices come out?