Netgear Nighthawk X10 AD7200 Smart WiFi Router (R9000)

[RogerSC]

Featuring 10 GBps SFP+ and 802.11ad means they can ask for a lot of money, as there are no real competitor to that kind of product for now. Definitely a very niche product IMHO.

It's just a REALLY weird mixture of business (SFP+) and home (Plex) features. I wonder what target market they are after with that product. I have a hard time imagining a specific niche targeted by this product.

Future proofing *smile*???

 

[thiggins]

Product announced.

 

[thiggins]

It's just a REALLY weird mixture of business (SFP+) and home (Plex) features. I wonder what target market they are after with that product. I have a hard time imagining a specific niche targeted by this product.

Not so weird if you look at the trend in storage features in consumer routers.

This past year has seen NAS makers continue their move upmarket to concentrate on rackmount enterprise level products. QNAP is leading the charge here with all their recent announcements focused on what I consider "big-iron" products.

So router makers are killing off (killed off?) the low-end NAS market and are starting to move up market also. Consider that the Annapurna processor in the X10 is the same as in Synology's DS2015xs.

While it also has to support wireless chores, there is enough CPU power there to power Plex and move bits fast enough to need aggregated Gigabit or 10GbE to keep up.

That said, jamming all this into one product at a $500 price point is a risk. The Wi-Fi market continues to move too quickly and all-in-one solutions like this will be outdated next year, if not in 6 months.

The surprise here for me is NETGEAR's support for 802.11ad. This tells me either they caved to pressure from Qualcomm or that they think 11ad will move to mainstream. The VR gaming use case was one that I hadn't thought of that could drive demand. But I'd see a better market in add-on 11ad boxes vs. $500 BHRs.

 

[sfx2000]

Featuring 10 GBps SFP+ and 802.11ad means they can ask for a lot of money, as there are no real competitor to that kind of product for now. Definitely a very niche product IMHO.

It's just a REALLY weird mixture of business (SFP+) and home (Plex) features. I wonder what target market they are after with that product. I have a hard time imagining a specific niche targeted by this product.

It is a bit of a mixed message...

While it's nice to see a 10G SFP port, it's of limited utility as it is attached to a gigabit switch fabric - I support one could use it as a trunk to another switch, or to a NAS, but 10G there is going to be a lot of additional cost...

Plex is nice until one realizes that it's not going to be transcoding at the server side...

 

[sfx2000]

Not so weird if you look at the trend in storage features in consumer routers.

This past year has seen NAS makers continue their move upmarket to concentrate on rackmount enterprise level products. QNAP is leading the charge here with all their recent announcements focused on what I consider "big-iron" products.

Wonder why they didn't drop an eSATA port, or USB3.1 at least... and it'll be interesting to see what they do there anyways - there's more than enough resources in this device to do something more than just USB drive sharing...

So router makers are killing off (killed off?) the low-end NAS market and are starting to move up market also. Consider that the Annapurna processor in the X10 is the same as in Synology's DS2015xs.

I don't think they've killed off the low end NAS market - but I agree that the NAS vendors are looking to expand the capabilities and range of their product lines...

Nice to see Annapurna in the consumer space - we've seen what can be done with a NAS oriented processor in other vendors where performance can be very good... (Marvell Armada series)

While it also has to support wireless chores, there is enough CPU power there to power Plex and move bits fast enough to need aggregated Gigabit or 10GbE to keep up.

That said, jamming all this into one product at a $500 price point is a risk. The Wi-Fi market continues to move too quickly and all-in-one solutions like this will be outdated next year, if not in 6 months.

The surprise here for me is NETGEAR's support for 802.11ad. This tells me either they caved to pressure from Qualcomm or that they think 11ad will move to mainstream. The VR gaming use case was one that I hadn't thought of that could drive demand. But I'd see a better market in add-on 11ad boxes vs. $500 BHRs.

That is a good point - the 11ad available bandwidth and VR gaming - and this might explain why we also see the SFP port, as it's basically the same thing... 11ad can put quite a bit of strain on existing 1Gb/2.5Gb switches.. it's something I had not considered at first glance..

 

[thiggins]

Plex is nice until one realizes that it's not going to be transcoding at the server side...

Actually NETGEAR says video transcoding (down coversion) will be handled for up to 1080p. Audio transcoding will also be done.

 

[sfx2000]

Actually NETGEAR says video transcoding (down coversion) will be handled for up to 1080p. Audio transcoding will also be done.

Cool - so h.264 should be fine - until one considers that HEVC is becoming much more common these days

 

[thiggins]

Wonder why they didn't drop an eSATA port, or USB3.1 at least... and it'll be interesting to see what they do there anyways - there's more than enough resources in this device to do something more than just USB drive sharing...

Probably because it was expensive enough.

I don't think they've killed off the low end NAS market - but I agree that the NAS vendors are looking to expand the capabilities and range of their product lines...

Agreed. But they have put a big dent in interest in making new single-drive NASes. WD is really the only company doing this.

It's also a sign of disinterest in consumer NAS when I don't hear from their PR guys. Haven't heard a peep from Synology since April and QNAP is only occasionally in touch.

11ad can put quite a bit of strain on existing 1Gb/2.5Gb switches..

I think the SFP+ is there mainly to support storage. It's a nod to their ReadyNAS brethren. Will be interesting to see if the 11ad radio has the same 1Gbps bandwidth limitation I found in the TP-LINK Talon.

 

[sfx2000]

I think the SFP+ is there mainly to support storage. It's a nod to their ReadyNAS brethren. Will be interesting to see if the 11ad radio has the same 1Gbps bandwidth limitation I found in the TP-LINK Talon.

that might be why Netgear went with the AL - the IPQ in the Talon might be the limiting factor (bandwidth, not compute)...

The SFP might be telegraphing a future consumer/prosumer switch...

 

[house]

some pictures of r9000 : https://goo.gl/OIqLVH

 

[pete y testing]

I think the SFP+

just a question regarding this ? will it make the wan to lan throughput any faster , as thats what i would expect users would think it would do , i expect not as the uplink needs to be the same as well and even the 1000Mbps isp plans still have giga ethernet ports

pete

opps even i misread what the 10gig port was , i assumed it was for wan but its a single dedicated lan port that i assume is there to connect other devices that are also 10gig

does that mean that all 6 gia ethernet ports would be able to max out there own 117Mb/s without effecting others ?

 

[coolguymcgee]

just a question regarding this ? will it make the wan to lan throughput any faster , as thats what i would expect users would think it would do , i expect not as the uplink needs to be the same as well and even the 1000Mbps isp plans still have giga ethernet ports

pete

opps even i misread what the 10gig port was , i assumed it was for wan but its a single dedicated lan port that i assume is there to connect other devices that are also 10gig

does that mean that all 6 gia ethernet ports would be able to max out there own 117Mb/s without effecting others ?

There was talk of enabling the use of SFP+ for WAN in the firmware, but in the firmware that will ship with the router does not have that capability.

 

[pete y testing]

so can anyone explain why i would want to spend so much on what is a 1733M 5 gig and 800M 2.4 gig wireless router , i dont have anything AD and prob wont for quite some time , sure its got link aggregation and all up 8 ports

but where is the real world advantage to any domestic user over say the linksys ea9500 and or asus rt-ac88u or netgears own r8500 which are all 2156M 4 x 4

so the r9000 is actually slower that the current routers wifi wise as far as end users are concerned !!!

 

[RealBeast]

Some interesting stuff, but IMO one SFP+ port adds no value. I already use three SFP+ dual port cards on my two storage servers and main machine without a router for bulk transfers within 5 meters. I would really like to start seeing some 10GBASE-T, like two or three ports. Now I would find that useful.

 

[hggomes]

We should ask if they still use openssl versions on their software with 10 years old (or more) on this model, they still on R7XXX and R8XXX models, maybe all this new HW features are the only

 

[coolguymcgee]

We should ask if they still use openssl versions on their software with 10 years old (or more) on this model, they still on R7XX and R8XX models.

Looks like they're using 0.9.8p :\

 

[hggomes]

They are the ones saying it's not something to be worried about but on the same phrase they also state that they care very serious about security on their products which is kinda of a contradiction.

https://community.netgear.com/t5/Ge...-critical-vulnerabilities-within/td-p/1085599


Like I thought, thank you for the confirmation, OpenSSL 0.9.8p is from 16 NOV 10, so almost 6 years old now.

 

[L&LD]

They are the ones saying it's not something to be worried about but on the same phrase they also state that they care very serious about security on their products which is kinda of a contradiction.

https://community.netgear.com/t5/Ge...-critical-vulnerabilities-within/td-p/1085599


Like I thought, thank you for the confirmation, OpenSSL 0.9.8p is from 16 NOV 10, so almost 6 years old now.

It is things like this that make me wonder how they can sell any routers, still.

Like buying a security system from the back of a van from a guy you met at the bar twenty minutes ago.

 

[microchip]

It is things like this that make me wonder how they can sell any routers, still.

Like buying a security system from the back of a van from a guy you met at the bar twenty minutes ago.

Because 98% of people don't give a F about underlying security issues? They change a few settings and password and are good to go. Updating firmware is also not high on their list

 

[L&LD]

Because 98% of people don't give a F about underlying security issues? They change a few settings and password and are good to go. Updating firmware is also not high on their list

That's not entirely true. Most of them would 'expect' the security options between manufacturers to be equal.

Many/most of my customers are openly surprised when I properly setup a new or existing router for them. They truly believed the marketing on the box that said 'connect to the internet in three simple steps'.