Netgear R8. 50. 0 Nighthawk X8 AC5. Smart Wi. Fi Router review. The Netgear R8. 50. Nighthawk X8 AC5. AU$6. 99. That's a hell of a lot for a router, especially since we live in a world where you can get a decent one for less than $2. The longer answer is maybe in the future, depending on who you are and what your needs are. The X8 is the first- ever router to support the AC5. This means it has a top speed of 2,1. Mbps. The problem is that clients, such as laptops or tablets, that support X8's top speed, simply don't exist yet. To be sure, the X8 does indeed work with all existing Wi- Fi clients, but only at a speed much lower than what it's actually capable of. For now, though it is fast, with excellent signal stability, it isn't consistently faster than other high- end routers, such as the Asus RT- AC3. Also, the X8's range, though great, didn't stand out either compared with routers that cost much less. However, this is the first router with six Gigabit LAN ports (as opposed to the four found in most routers), two of which that can combine into a single extremely fast wired connection. So, if you have a high- end NAS server that has multiple LAN ports, such as the Synology DS1. X8 will bring the server's data rate to a totally new level, making local file data sharing, media streaming and backups happen much faster. This added benefit to your home network alone could make the router worth the investment for some, but most others should steer clear of the X8, as it's simply not worth its price given that there are plenty of other highly capable routers available for much less. It mostly delivers fast Wi-Fi performance and has. NETGEAR, Inc. 350 East Plumeria Drive San Jose, CA 95134 USA August 2014 Trademarks NETGEAR, the NETGEAR logo, and Connect with Innovation are trademarks. Accelerate Your WiFi. Optimize your online gaming and streaming with NETGEAR Nighthawk, with speeds up to 1900 Mbps and a 1 GHz dual core processor.
Extend Your Existing WiFi. Extreme range for streaming with NETGEAR Nighthawk WiFi Range Extender, with speeds up to 1900 Mbps and a 1 GHz dual core processor. Though huge with plenty of spaces on the back, the R8. USB ports are placed on its right side. As such, the Netgear R8. In a way, it's like the combination of the R8. R7. 50. 0 (quad- stream) routers from Netgear. Netgear says that the R8. MU- MIMO) though this feature is not available at launch and will be activated via a firmware upgrade in the future. What exactly is tri- band? Each band is a Wi- Fi broadcaster or access point. If a dual- band router has one band that runs at 5. GHz and another that runs at 2. GHz, a tri- band router (the R8. GHz band. In other words, a tri- band router is like a dual- band router with an extra 5. GHz access point attached to it. Note that 5. GHz bands are typically faster than 2. GHz bands, the range on 5. GHz bands is usually shorter. OK, so tri- band means faster speed, right? That depends. Having more bands in the same box doesn't necessarily increase the connection speed of an individual Wi- Fi connection because a client can only connect to a router one band at a time. However, a router with multiple bands does allow more clients to connect to the router without adversely affecting the speeds of the others. Since there are multiple Wi- Fi tiers, the router can group lower- tier 5. GHz clients to one band and the higher- tier clients to another. So, lower- end products like an old phone or tablet would connect to one 5. GHz band, while your brand new laptop would connect the other 5. GHz band. That said, having a tri- band router with two 5. GHz bands is only helpful when there are many active 5. Ghz clients (a dozen or more) in the network. The router can then spread out the connections among the 5. Ghz clients, diminishing bandwidth issues. However, if you have a small amount of concurrent active clients, a tri- band router makes no difference compared to a dual- band router. And quad- stream, what's that? The number of streams also determines the grades (or tiers) of Wi- Fi performance. There are currently four tiers including single- stream (1x. As a quad- stream router, the Netgear R8. Wi- Fi speed up to 2,1. Mbps on each of its two 5. GHz bands. On the 2. GHz band, its theoretical top speed is 1,0. Mbps. So my 5. GHz clients can connect to the router at 2,1. Mbps, right? Right now there are no quad- stream clients (laptops, phones, etc.) on the market. In fact, to conserve power, most mobile clients support either single- or dual- stream. The fastest clients for now are three- stream, which have a top on- paper speed of 1,3. Mbps. The actual speed you'll experience between these clients and the R8. As mentioned above, there are four different Wi- Fi speed tiers and without MU- MIMO, a router would treat each device connected to it equally with no regard for which tier the device fell under. In this case a router could waste its transmission power on a device that didn't need that much power in the first place, potentially wasting your router's bandwidth. With MU- MIMO, multiple simultaneous transmissions of different Wi- Fi tiers are sent to multiple devices at the same time, enabling them to connect at the speed each client needs. In other words, having a MU- MIMO Wi- Fi network is like having multiple wireless routers of different Wi- Fi tiers. Each of these . Instead it's a squarish shape with four antennas on the back. Also on the back are six Gigabit LAN ports (most routers only have four) in addition to the Gigabit WAN (or Internet) port. The two extra LAN ports can work together in a aggregation mode to create a 2. Gbps connection to a wired client. It has a wavy texture on top in an effort to resemble a piece of art. Overall, though, coming in black, the X8 is a quite mundane- looking networking device. The router is designed to stay flat on a surface but it's also wall- mountable. The R8. 50. 0 comes with six Gigabit LAN ports, two of which can aggregate to create a super- fast wired connection to a single client. Though Wi- Fi is getting more and more popular, for the best possible connection (both in terms of speed and connection quality) nothing can beat a Gigabit wired connection. So what's port aggregation anyway? Support for port aggregation allows you to combine two Gigabit network ports into a single connection. Generally, this feature is often available in enterprise switches and routers and the R8. To take advantage of port aggregation, the client, likely a server, also needs to have two LAN ports as well as the support for port aggregation. Most high- end NAS servers have this feature. When testing a Synology DS1. R8. 50. 0s worked out very well, consistently increasing the server's sustained data throughput significantly. In fact, I find this feature the best the R8. NAS server at home that supports port aggregation. How about the active antennas, what's the deal with them? In the case of the R8. This design help them deliver better signal quality and eliminate the possible noise created by the router's circuit board and other parts. You can turn these light (as well as the router's other LED indicator lights) off via a button on the front, however. The active antennas didn't translate into longer range than other routers, however, and they are not detachable. This means you can't replace them with third- party high- gain antennas and if you break them, you'll need a new router entirely. Does the router have a USB port?
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