NETGEAR Debuts AC3200 Nighthawk

[RMerlin]

I'll say it again.

I'd rather see multiple 2.4Ghz bands in a router than multiple 5Ghz bands. Probably not practical for the average user but would fit my situation perfectly.

Bad idea. The 2.4 GHz band is already a disaster, we don't need people hogging the full 11 channels spectrum with their dual-radio router.

2.4 GHz needs to die, quite honestly.

 

[RMerlin]

The web? The answers are right here @ SNB!

Of course. Still amazes me when someone posts on the SNB forums asking about router range when the info is already there on the SNB website

 

[htismaqe]

Bad idea. The 2.4 GHz band is already a disaster, we don't need people hogging the full 11 channels spectrum with their dual-radio router.

2.4 GHz needs to die, quite honestly.

Like I said, not practical. But for those of us that don't have neighbors and thus nothing resembling RF contention, having an extra 2.4Ghz radio would allow me to eliminate 1 entire access point.

Having an extra 5Ghz radio is essentially useless because the range is too limited to be useful in my setup for more than a few devices.

 

[sm00thpapa]

I been saying 2.4 band needs to die for years. Same as why are we still supporting B and A devices.

 

[htismaqe]

I been saying 2.4 band needs to die for years. Same as why are we still supporting B and A devices.

Killing 2.4Ghz would definitely stimulate router/AP sales. I'd need twice as many APs as I have now to cover my house with 5Ghz.

In other words, F U.

 

[RMerlin]

Killing 2.4Ghz would definitely stimulate router/AP sales. I'd need twice as many APs as I have now to cover my house with 5Ghz.

In other words, F U.

LOL It's obvious that an alternative would be required. 2.4 GHz might be too wide for home use in densely populated areas, but 5 GHz is too short for many regular home owners. We'd need either a power output increase that would allow 5 GHz to get close to 2.4 GHz in terms of coverage (without matching or exceeding it), or some form of dynamic regulation where a radio output would never be stronger than is necessary for its weakest client to be usable. People with small apartment (like me) wouldn't be broadcasting loud enough for the tenant three floors above to be impacted.

(yes, I know one can manually reduce the power output, but who is actually doing so just out of respect for their close neighbours?)

Maybe this is where those ludicrous speeds that are starting to appear on the horizon are becoming interesting. Bridging/repeating a 10 Gbits link so you can provide a 2-3 Gbps coverage with a single repeater makes the use of repeaters less disturbing.

In the case of an AC3200 router (so we remain on topic), this is starting to open some interesting doors. I assume it would be possible (in theory) to use one of the 5 GHz radio for the bridge, leaving the other 5 GHz radio fully usable for clients. A pair of these puppies (at 300$ a piece) is kinda cost-prohibitive however.

 

[htismaqe]

In the case of an AC3200 router (so we remain on topic), this is starting to open some interesting doors. I assume it would be possible (in theory) to use one of the 5 GHz radio for the bridge, leaving the other 5 GHz radio fully usable for clients.

Now we're getting somewhere. If the 2nd 5Ghz radio could be used for a wireless bridge, 2 of these routers could theoretically supply complete coverage in both bands without the need for any cables.

 

[thiggins]

Discussion moved

Moved the adapter card discussion to here.

 

[sm00thpapa]

Killing 2.4Ghz would definitely stimulate router/AP sales. I'd need twice as many APs as I have now to cover my house with 5Ghz.

In other words, F U.

You're a big baller I see. How much property are you looking to cover?

 

[htismaqe]

You're a big baller I see. How much property are you looking to cover?

I'm covering about 2500 square feet, but it's a single floor ranch-style so it's long and spread out. With the high-powered AC1900 routers, 5Ghz covers about 3/4 of my total area from a central location, so I'd need a 5Ghz AP at each end of the house to get full coverage.

 

[azazel1024]

Bad idea. The 2.4 GHz band is already a disaster, we don't need people hogging the full 11 channels spectrum with their dual-radio router.

2.4 GHz needs to die, quite honestly.

Yes to the first, no to the second.

What we actually need is the FCC/Government shifting the high 2.4/2.5GHz band users (or the low 2.3/2.4GHz) and then freeing up some 2.4GHz spectrum. It doesn't even have to be much. Another 20-40MHz would make a HUGE difference.

Also a lot of us are far from congested areas, live with "large spreads" and 5GHz only would SUCK. Possibly suck worse than the situation a lot of people in congested areas have with 2.4GHz.

I know, I used to live with the former (14 Wifi networks near me, 3 that sometimes had STRONGER signal strength than my own Wifi network depending on where I stood in my house, each of those were on different slices, so there was no way to have a non-overlapping network). My 2.4GHz WLAN works MUCH better now that I don't have all of that congestion near me. However...if I had to live with 5GHz only in my house, I'd probably have to move from the 2APs I have inside right now to at least 3APs...and I'd probably have to move from 1 outdoor AP to possibly 2 outdoor APs (outdoor AP covers the entire backyard right now and one of my indoor APs covers the bit of my driveway, garage and front yard where I care/need reception, but I get no usable 5GHz from inside to out).

I am in Hitsimage range here with my house. I am on 1.01 acres with a ~2,500sq-ft rancher. My problem is I have a BIG 4ft thick and around 6ft wide masonry chimney on one side of my house that divides my second living room/my kids playroom and our TV watching room and garage off from the rest of the house. If I had a centrally located AP, it would provide modest coverage there, but nothing in the garage. Its also hard to have a centrally located AP as I can't really locate one in my kitchen (back center of my house) and my main living room isn't really condusive to having an AP just sitting on my wife's buffet.

So with the AP sitting in my TV watching room/playroom/second living room...it works great for coverage in that room (where we spend a lot of time in the evenings and some during the day time) and good coverage in the garage and okay coverage on the back deck and drive way...but the bedrooms on the otherside of the house and the basement have crap coverage. So I have the router in my basement office on the opposite side of the house, which provides very good coverage for the basement and good to fine coverage in the bedrooms over it.

I then have an outdoor AP to cover my backyard, because neither indoor AP really cover the backyard, even on 2.4GHz. At best I have deck coverage that is okay...but with the outdoor AP I have excellent coverage on the deck and very good to good coverage over the rest of my backyard.

5GHz on my playroom router basically just covers the playroom, half bath there and sort of/kind of the garage and living room/kitchen. It has effectively zero coverage to the bedrooms or bathroom on the other side of the house and no coverage in the front. The basement router can do 5GHz for the whole basement, but the storage room (which is 1/4 of the basement, and includes my server rack) is at best mediocre coverage on 5GHz...and the coverage upstairs is good in my bedroom right over the router, but it is poor at best in the other two bedrooms and bath room.

Really what I'd like to see is workable DFS added to free up some more 5GHz channels for use as well as being able to add 3.6GHz, which IIRC is 40MHz of spectrum (which, I'll grant isn't amazeballs...but you know what, spectrum is spectrum and it would mean a pair of 20MHz channels or a bonded 20+20MHz channel with better penetration than 5GHz, but not quite as good as 2.4GHz).

I am very skeptical of the benefit of 802.11ah with 900MHz. I really think the only good uses for it are going to be IoT as well as a standardized method of implementing 900MHz bridges (which would be VERY welcome). 900MHz just penetrates too well for a lot of use cases as well as being very frequency constrained (IIRC it is only something like 26MHz or something like that that is usable in the US in 1, 2, 4, 8, or 20MHz wide channels).

 

[boxst]

I had the original nighthawk and swapped it for an Asus RT-AC68U. The main problem for me was VPN as it only used OpenVPN which wasn't much use for simple connections.

The wireless range was also not quite as good as the Asus.

 

[sm00thpapa]

I'm covering about 2500 square feet, but it's a single floor ranch-style so it's long and spread out. With the high-powered AC1900 routers, 5Ghz covers about 3/4 of my total area from a central location, so I'd need a 5Ghz AP at each end of the house to get full coverage.

Understandable. I have a 2600 square foot 2 story home. So my one router in the center of my home on the bottom floor covers it upstairs and around the perimeter. Worst room upstairs even gets a -60 dbm connection which is still very good.

 

[htismaqe]

Understandable. I have a 2600 square foot 2 story home. So my one router in the center of my home on the bottom floor covers it upstairs and around the perimeter. Worst room upstairs even gets a -60 dbm connection which is still very good.

I wish we were two story. It's hard to cover this house because it's so long.

 

[Razor512]

It would be interesting to see a router that can bond channels 1-11 in order to create a single super fast connection. It would also be interesting to see how awesomely things will work is it catches on in a city/ urban environment

 

[sm00thpapa]

All this talk by Netgear about extended range and amplifiers. I can't wait for the review. I really want a strong wifi router for my 2 story home.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

[thiggins]

All this talk by Netgear about extended range and amplifiers. I can't wait for the review. I really want a strong wifi router for my 2 story home.

Every top-end router has external amplifiers and "extended range". You should know better than to pay attention to marketing hype.

 

[roldogg]

Regarding the 2.4Ghz band, a lot of the wireless accessories, like mice and keyboards, are using a 2.4Ghz band for connection now. Wouldn't that hurt the performance of the 2.4Ghz network signal if the computer that the wireless mouse and keyboard was connected to used a 2.4Ghz wireless signal for network access? I know there are many apps to scan for network signs around you on different channels, but is there any software and/or app that would scan the 2.4Ghz band and include all devices that could interfere with your performance, like wireless mouse, keyboard, cordless phone, network signals, etc so you can see the entire picture of anything that might interfere with the performance of your 2.4Ghz wireless network signal?

 

[azazel1024]

Regarding the 2.4Ghz band, a lot of the wireless accessories, like mice and keyboards, are using a 2.4Ghz band for connection now. Wouldn't that hurt the performance of the 2.4Ghz network signal if the computer that the wireless mouse and keyboard was connected to used a 2.4Ghz wireless signal for network access? I know there are many apps to scan for network signs around you on different channels, but is there any software and/or app that would scan the 2.4Ghz band and include all devices that could interfere with your performance, like wireless mouse, keyboard, cordless phone, network signals, etc so you can see the entire picture of anything that might interfere with the performance of your 2.4Ghz wireless network signal?

Actually wireless spectrum analyzers, yes. Things like InSSIDer, no. They'll generally only look for things using 802.11_. Interestingly, my Xbox One uses wifi direct for its controllers on 5GHz, which apparently is using something like 802.11a, as InSSIDer does show an unknown AP using 11a and WEP on 5GHz from it.

It does not show my wireless mouse, which is using 2.4GHz between it and the dongle. I see zero impact on my wifi through put when using the mouse no matter the channel I have my AP's set on. I mean...it is possible there is some impact, but if there is any, it is sub 5% impact.

If I was doing something like Bluetooth file transfer, that might have a legit impact on 2.4GHz performance though. I suspect the polling rate on my mouse is too low to cause meaningful contention on 2.4GHz for my wifi. I have not tried running wireshark to actually analyze if there is any increase in packet resends.

 

[RogerSC]

Every top-end router has external amplifiers and "extended range". You should know better than to pay attention to marketing hype.

Hey, they get us every time by using the same meaningless hype. That's why at least some of us wait for your reviews *smile*.