AC3200 Routers By July?

[thiggins]

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wireless/wireless-news/32429-ac3200-routers-by-july

There is also this thread on the ASUS RT-AC3200.

 

[RMerlin]

Has anyone announced a target release date for these products? I get the feeling that these are still months away.

 

[thiggins]

Has anyone announced a target release date for these products? I get the feeling that these are still months away.

No release dates that I am aware of. I could find no reference to dates in any of the RT-AC3200 articles I have found.

 

[RMerlin]

No release dates that I am aware of. I could find no reference to dates in any of the RT-AC3200 articles I have found.

Ok. My gut feeling (and also based on some inner knowledge) is that we will post likely see this autumn fill up shelves with AC2300 products. Give 3-6 months to the market to buy these, after which manufacturers will probably fill up shelves with AC3200 products.

At the rate manufacturers are pushing new flagship routers to the market, I wonder if we will finally see a change in overall pricing. 2 years after its release, the RT-AC66U still sells for 200$ CAD on average, with next to zero change in its price (tho that was a bit offset by the fact our dollar lost some value over the last year). Only the RT-N66U sitting underneath it has seen a 25% price drop after close to 30 months on the market.

It's getting awfully crowded in the 200-300$ price range.

 

[thiggins]

Ok. My gut feeling (and also based on some inner knowledge) is that we will post likely see this autumn fill up shelves with AC2300 products. Give 3-6 months to the market to buy these, after which manufacturers will probably fill up shelves with AC3200 products.

I disagree. I think we'll see AC3200 routers first, then AC2300.

If AC3200 comes out early summer as I'm guessing they will, that means AC2300 will be CES2015 introductions.

As Demerjian's analysis points out, Broadcom's XStream is a repackaging of technology they have in hand. The Quantenna and QCA 4x4 chipsets are newer and I think the birthing hasn't been easy.

Broadcom lead in the Wave 1 AC round. But they have not announced a 4x4 AC chipset and the BCM4360 is getting pretty long in the tooth.

 

[ikecomp]

Not sure how I feel about this. I get the since this is more of money grab (not that most aren't since it is a product afterall) than a logical evolution in AC routers. Could be wrong though. At the very least I would be interested to see what real-world benefits are produced if any.

 

[RMerlin]

I disagree. I think we'll see AC3200 routers first, then AC2300.

In that case that seems an odd strategy, at least from Asus. The AC2300 devices will be a tough sell when the AC3200 ones will already be on the market, unless those were priced significantly lower - kinda like the RT-AC56 vs RT-AC68 which showed a 75$ CAD price difference, except in this case they released the low-end model before the high-end one. I always had the impression their 4x4 QTN device was going to be sold at flagship pricing.

 

[thiggins]

In that case that seems an odd strategy, at least from Asus. The AC2300 devices will be a tough sell when the AC3200 ones will already be on the market, unless those were priced significantly lower - kinda like the RT-AC56 vs RT-AC68 which showed a 75$ CAD price difference, except in this case they released the low-end model before the high-end one. I always had the impression their 4x4 QTN device was going to be sold at flagship pricing.

Maybe not as tough a sell as you think. The 4x4's will support MU-MIMO.

It will be an interesting pricing problem, though.

 

[mediatrek]

Netgear Nighthawk X6

FYI- FCC filing posted today (06/02/2014) for the "Netgear Nighthawk X6 AC3200 Smart WiFi Router" model: R8000. FCCID: PY314200264. Internal images, and the user manual are under a 180 day confidentiality treatment

Also, I have not seen anything in FCC filings, but a few days ago on Netgear's FTP server they did post a directory and WW firmware (no US firmware) for a model R7500: ftp://downloads.netgear.com/r7500/ww/

 

[sfx2000]

It's getting awfully crowded in the 200-300$ price range.

Similar thoughts here...

AC3200 - these things are probably going to be fairly spendy - looking at some of the high level specs (Broadcom's 5 cores @ 2.9Ghz!!!) - the chip count alone will drive the costs up - if you look at where Linksys/Asus are right now with their current high-end offerings, they're not making a lot of money on them...

But vendors/OEM's are going to put them on the shelves, and folks will buy them - it's the circle of tech, eh?

sfx

 

[sm00thpapa]

No rush to get this router. I may think about picking it up in 2 to 3 years.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

[sm00thpapa]

Router prices going up and peoples pay checks staying the same.

 

[Razor512]

That sucks, still no 10 gigabit ethernet.1 gigabit is really far too old and obsolete. (we are pretty late into 2014 now)

Why cant they at least add 1 10 gigabit ethernet port for a home server to handle multiple clients, e.g., if you add a 10 gigabit ethernet adapter to your NAS, then multiple 1 gigabit clients can saturate their connections (especially if the NAS has really fast storage)

Or better yet, 4, 10 gigabit ethernet ports for the LAN and a single (or 2), 1 gigabit port(s) for the WAN.

Overall, It is a shame that they are still not making the move to a modern wired networking standard.

Will consumer routers be plagued with outdated wired networking for yet another year?

 

[sm00thpapa]

True razor they are only upgrading the wireless and not the wired part of the routers.

Sent from my LG-D800 using Tapatalk

 

[Scooterit]

Are the 6 antenna's a marketing gimmick ?

 

[Razor512]

I think it is 3 per radio, and the 2.4GHz radio will just share 1 of the bank of 3 antennas,

I just wonder how they will move beyond 3 streams for 802.11ac. The FCC completely crippled the 5GHz band to not have enough available non crippled channels. The router makers will have to design their routers properly and make them use the 5GHz band in an uncompromising way, and in the serial output during the bootup, include a message telling the FCC to take a long walk off of a short pier, and stop ruining wifi for everyone.

 

[RMerlin]

That sucks, still no 10 gigabit ethernet.1 gigabit is really far too old and obsolete. (we are pretty late into 2014 now)

I have yet to meet a single device or NIC in the field that supports 10 Gbits. A lot of SMB networks aren't even upgraded to gigabit speed yet.

So no, GbE is far from obsolete. Just because something faster exists doesn't mean it's cost-effective for the masses at this point, nor would it make any sense to deploy.

Why cant they at least add 1 10 gigabit ethernet port for a home server to handle multiple clients, e.g., if you add a 10 gigabit ethernet adapter to your NAS, then multiple 1 gigabit clients can saturate their connections (especially if the NAS has really fast storage)

There would be little point. Your HDD-based RAID will typically cap at around 100-120 MB/s anyway, so there is no way multiple clients would ever saturate more than one connection at a time when using GbE.

Also, having an Ethernet PHY that allows 10 GbE links isn't all that's needed. You would also need an internal bus capable of moving data at those speeds between your PHY and whichever device contains the data. Current devices can't even fully handle a 5 Gbps USB 3.0 interface, so you certainly wouldn't have the bus bandwidth to handle 10 Gbps.

Will consumer routers be plagued with outdated wired networking for yet another year?

Ethernet isn't the networking solution of choice for the majority of homes, as people are migrating to wireless. Desktops are being replaced by laptops, tablets and smartphones. And an increasing number of laptops are starting to ship without Ethernet interfaces at all. Wireless is the future when it comes to home networks. It's all people need to visit Facebook, or stream video.

 

[Razor512]

The issue with 10 gigabit ethernet is that it needs to start at some point. Add 10 gigabit ethernet on the routers now and very shortly, you will see motherboards with built in 10 gigabit ethernet flood the consumer market, along with add-on ethernet adapters. (similar to the addition of 802.11ac on many routers)

A switch can have a high enough internal bandwidth to allow for multiple gigabit ports to all access resources from a a 10 gigabit ethernet port, this is regularly done of many enterprise switches where you may have 48 gigabit ethernet ports, and then an additional 4, 10 gigabit ethernet ports for expansion to other switches or 10 gigabit ethernet devices.

They can do the same on home routers. 4, 10 gigabit ethernet ports, and an additional 1 or 2 10 gigabit ethernet ports for the user to connect their home server to. Or just do the right thing and make it standard for consumer routers to have 8 10 gigabit ethernet ports, and within a few months, you will have virtually all mid range and up consumer motherboards including 10 gigabit ethernet.

 

[sm00thpapa]

AC2600 coming out and only AC1200 adapters on the market. What a mess. And I know Asus is the only one with a AC1900 adapter for desk top PC's so please don't come back with that story.

 

[wifibeefcake]

MU-MIMO.. it will take time.

What's the point of buying an MU-MIMO capable router if there are no clients with MU-MIMO capabilities to connect to? Future proofing? Wouldn't is make more sense to wait for the MU-MIMO bandwagon to get a full head of steam with at least a few smart phones and a laptop or two (or other common client) to support it before dishing out $$? By the time MU-MIMO may be useful with an ecosystem that can actually tout the benefits, the new MU-MIMO capable routers on the market will be cheaper and better....
I'd make the same case for those that bought into the hype and upgraded to 11ac routers in 2012.. what a waste of money. They could have waiting a year or two and bought routers with upgraded processing power and with better performance.