Netgear Nighthawk X10 AD7200 Smart WiFi Router (R9000)

[mediatrek]

As I do from time to time, I browse through FCC filings to see what is in the pipe. It looks like TP-LINK Talon AD7200 will have a rival model soon from Netgear. Most of the Netgear R9000 filing is confidential, but based on the label in the filing we know the model name, model#, it has 2 USB 3.0 ports, 6 LAN ports, and is multi-band with 2.4GHz, 5GHz & 60GHz radios.

The 60GHz radio is from Qualcomm, as is noted on the label filing (QCA9008).

 

[janthony6]

The Netgear iOS app updated today to include support for the R9000.

 

[mediatrek]

The Netgear iOS app updated today to include support for the R9000.

Yep. The Netgear Genie Android app was updated just over a week ago and lists the R9000 as a supported model.

 

[mediatrek]

Since my original posting, I have been looking all over the web for more information on the Netgear R9000. With the help of Google Translate, I found some over at the KoolShare.cn Forum.

Apparently the pre-production model had an active fan for cooling, but has been removed from the production model. The Wi-Fi radios will all be from Qualcomm, but the CPU is an A15 4-core 1.7GHz processor; the Annapurna Labs Alpine AL-514. The AL-514 has built-in support for two 10GbE ports. The R9000 supposedly has 1GB DDR3 RAM, 512MB NAND Flash, and updated versions of the active antennas that were first seen in the Netgear R8500.

The looooooong (year+) talked about (and needed) designed Netgear Genie OS will also supposedly make its debut with the R9000.

The real kicker mentioned on this forum is that the retail list price is said to be: $599.99!

 

[sfx2000]

At least they're practicing safe hex with those antenna condoms...

 

[Razor512]

I wish they would just go with 6, 10GbE ports. Once we get a few consumer routers moving completely to that standard, we will finally see the 10 gigabit Ethernet adapters drop in price possibly to the levels of the 1 gigabit adapters, and we can finally ditch that painfully slow connection (getting to be almost as obsolete as the floppy disk).

 

[avtella]

Pretty sure production one has cooling fans. The R7800 gets warm but not hot and with two more A15 cores I would imagine they would include active cooling.

 

[microchip]

@mediatrek

is NG releasing this model with the redesigned, modern Genie web interface?

 

[mediatrek]

Pretty sure production one has cooling fans. The R7800 gets warm but not hot and with two more A15 cores I would imagine they would include active cooling.

We will find out soon. Over on Netgear's Facebook page today they are teasing a product announcement on Wednesday, October 19th next week.

Also, the two threads over on the KoolShare.cn Forum that I used as a source for my last posting in this thread have been removed at the request of Netgear apparently.

Also, the R7800 technically has a quad-core processor (IPQ8065). Two cores are Krait CPU @1.7 GHz for control plane and applications, while there is another dual-core networking subsystem running at 800Mhz for accelerated packet processing.

If the R9000 does have the Annapurna Labs Alpine AL-514, and a $600 price tag, it better have active cooling!

 

[RMerlin]

One thing that just struck me, looking at these photos: 158 MB of flash is already used. What are they putting in the firmware that could use THAT much space? Some obvious choices could be Samba 4.x, possibly a full-blown web server for the backend (nginx/lighttpd?). But still, that's a LOT of flash usage for a router firmware.

 

[sfx2000]

One thing that just struck me, looking at these photos: 158 MB of flash is already used. What are they putting in the firmware that could use THAT much space? Some obvious choices could be Samba 4.x, possibly a full-blown web server for the backend (nginx/lighttpd?). But still, that's a LOT of flash usage for a router firmware.

Good catch - my best guess is the 11ad protocol stack and drivers, and perhaps additional BSP support for the Annapurna device...

I've been tinkering about with a proto-OpenSNB implementation on ARMv7, and it takes up much more than 160MB/Ram and 156MB/Flash at the moment... but that's a lightweight kernel (and full glibc) on armhf...

 

[pege63]

 

[microchip]

I like the design of it

 

[RMerlin]

Good catch - my best guess is the 11ad protocol stack and drivers, and perhaps additional BSP support for the Annapurna device...

I've been tinkering about with a proto-OpenSNB implementation on ARMv7, and it takes up much more than 160MB/Ram and 156MB/Flash at the moment... but that's a lightweight kernel (and full glibc) on armhf...

You're trying to fit a complete OS infrastructure in there however, with systemd and docker. Compared to typical router OSes, Asus is probably the fattest at 42 MB, and a few megs of this are just for a GIFanim used for a tutorial. Tomato/DD-WRT sit at around 7-8 MB for their most feature-rich builds.

150 MB is a lot for a router. Look at the size of a full-featured NAS firmware if you want to compare...

 

[sfx2000]

150 MB is a lot for a router. Look at the size of a full-featured NAS firmware if you want to compare...

It is - but RAM/NAND are cheap compared to the 11ad/11ac chipsets and the AL core chipset... but again, my best guess for the size of thing is the AL board support package, along with the extra weight brought with the 11ad stack... it's not just the 512MB of flash, but look at that 1GB of RAM being used... it's basically 2x of most of the current consumer high end...

 

[coolguymcgee]

View attachment 7458

If the R9000 does have the Annapurna Labs Alpine AL-514, and a $600 price tag, it better have active cooling!

It definitely will.

 

[coolguymcgee]

The real kicker mentioned on this forum is that the retail list price is said to be: $599.99!
View attachment 7432

View attachment 7433

B&H has it listed at $499.99:
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/prod..._nighthawk_x10_wireless_ad7200_multi_gig.html

It lists all the features too.

 

[RMerlin]

They mention Plex Media Server. That's the kind of feature that would explain the extra firmware size.

 

[sfx2000]

all things said - I don't find a $600 consumer Router/AP to be a good value solution...

 

[RMerlin]

all things said - I don't find a $600 consumer Router/AP to be a good value solution...

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.