Netgear R7000 Gaming Router?

[Synomenon]

Anyone try the Netgear R7000 gaming router yet? Saw it at Fry's Electronics yesterday for around $220.

It looks alot like the RT-AC66U by ASUS.

 

[Sky1111]

holy smokes - this is ghost - there is no reference to it Netgear's site, and HW wiki does not know what is inside except that it is build by Foxconn (and even that is a maybe)

http://www.techinfodepot.info/wiki/Netgear_R7000

if it is not too much trouble, can you kindly post box pictures or specs? Really curious about the specs and feature they offer...

 

[jemz0r]

http://wikidevi.com/wiki/Netgear_R7000

Seems to have FCC grant already, so is ready for product launch.

 

[Synomenon]

It has launched already. My local Fry's Electronics has pallets of them on the floor.

I won't be able to go back to the store until Tuesday next week though.

 

[NightOwl326]

What a weird release of a product. No information even on Netgear's own website. Must be a double secret product release....

 

[stevech]

Opinion alert: "Gaming" router is a ruse to charge more. QoS in the LAN/WAN is kind of silly given the ISP's access and the Internet are orders of magnitude more unruly in latency/delay which is all one can get from a LAN router that's gaming specific. Presuming most all consumer routers do port triggering, etc.

 

[krum]

Sweet, Newegg has it for 219.00
Looks nice, I will wait for some reviews..

 

[NightOwl326]

Netgear must not be too proud of it, not to even have it on their website. In addition it is "Freaking Ugly" and I hate the every six month wait for Netgear to release firmware updates for their products, and each update introduces new bugs, and then the support just goes away and your left with a buggy product. Asus along with Merlin constantly improving their firmware and supporting updates more often and longer for their products is a big plus. Oh and did I say it is FREAKING UGLY?

 

[Tsun]

I actually like the design, but "gaming" in it's description is big warning light for me.

 

[lexist2112]

Yep just like everyone else here I was surprised to see Netgear released this router. Just ahead of Linksys EA6900 which is now selling last week on their website.
When I was at Fry's last thurs saw this unit and instantly went online and not much was written about it. As many have already posted it's not even on their website. It appears there using the same Broadcom chipset as Linksys 6900. Although Netgear claims a 1ghz Duo core versus Linksys 6900 @ 800mhz Duo-core. I was intrigued and took the plunge and bought one.
I am currently using Dlink DGL 5500 and for the most part it has been a great router, except that the 5ghz wireless is a bit weak.

Here are my adventures with the R7000. I manually configured it to my network of course all the ip addresses where changed and connected it to my time warner router and no internet, just came on orange. So I went back in to make sure all my configurations correct...and it was all correct At that point I reset the router to default configurations and connected the router to the cable modem and my LAN PC and eventually the router detected an internet signal and wala i was online. At that point I RECONFIGURED the router to my network and all was well.

I setup QOS and Port forwarding rules for the xbox. Make sure you use ALL of the recommended XBOX ports or else it won't work over the 5ghz. Also set the preamble to short on both the 2.4 and 5ghz or else nothing works, unless of course your running legacy B wireless clients. I am using AES settings on both the 2.4/5 ghz as well, avoid using mixed mode as this will severely decrease range and performance.

Overall the wireless signal as advertised is definitely stronger and better major improvement. All my 5ghz clients easily connects to this router FULL strength including the XBOX with the external wireless (5GHZ).

The wired LAN PC's work well, but I noticed some slight load times on certain web pages, versus the DGL 5500 which was better. There was some stuttering on some video websites that I didn't have before and the same was seen over the wireless. Yes I ran a speed test and the MTU's were adjusted correctly in my case 1500.

Overall the wireless is GREAT, however on several websites the router kind of lags to load up the images or some video stuttering on certain websites. It's a mix bag for me and there was a alot of configuring to get the router to perform well. If I can figure out why certain websites are slow to load and solve the video stuttering, it could be a keeper.

BTW there was a F/W update thru the router this past Fri. Save my config file and downloaded it thru the router it installed and restored all my configurations...nice. Strangely like everyone has noticed, Netgear has not released any info about this router on their website.

 

[PrivateJoker]

Overall the wireless is GREAT, however on several websites the router kind of lags to load up the images or some video stuttering on certain websites. It's a mix bag for me and there was a alot of configuring to get the router to perform well. If I can figure out why certain websites are slow to load and solve the video stuttering, it could be a keeper.

Have you tried disabling the QOS?

Comparing a couple websites over different days via wifi is a lot of variables. You would almost want to swap the routers out back and forth immediately to rule out things like DNS cache/server load, local cache that may or may not be expired, differing amount of spurious WLAN or LAN activity.

Extensions like "page load time" for Chrome is a nice little menubar indication to help give you a hard # to compare and the developer views in most browsers will also give you an extremely detailed look at the page elements, where they are coming from, and how long they are taking to load.




I could also swear that I've read a post on here in the last month of a problem someone was having with JPG files appearing/not fully loading and for the life of me I can't find it right now trying to search for it.

 

[lexist2112]

Have you tried disabling the QOS?

Comparing a couple websites over different days via wifi is a lot of variables. You would almost want to swap the routers out back and forth immediately to rule out things like DNS cache/server load, local cache that may or may not be expired, differing amount of spurious WLAN or LAN activity.

Extensions like "page load time" for Chrome is a nice little menubar indication to help give you a hard # to compare and the developer views in most browsers will also give you an extremely detailed look at the page elements, where they are coming from, and how long they are taking to load.





I could also swear that I've read a post on here in the last month of a problem someone was having with JPG files appearing/not fully loading and for the life of me I can't find it right now trying to search for it.

Private Joker thanks for the reply. Yea i let the R7000 run for 3days after I had it configured and updated to the new FW. Did all the tweaking I could and did not think to disable QoS. Will try that and thanks for the Chrome suggestion to see the real load time figures. I reattached the Dlink DGL 5500 today and definitely can tell the web pages respond quicker and pull up smoother.

Much like the DGL 5500, Netgear has an Auto bandwidth estimator(ABE) for the up or down speeds, which I have turned off on the Netgear, this interfered the speed just link the Dlink's.

I will try to disable Qos and see if that helps. I hope that it does.

On a side note I really like how the DGL5500 prioritizes the bandwidth for each connected device and prioritizes that data stream and gives video stream , voip the highest demand , then web pages and email. All done automatically and can be seen real time within the router's config page

 

[PrivateJoker]

@lexist2112 - sounds good, look forward to your updates on this router and it's rather stealthy appearance.

I googled "netgear r7000" when this thread started and saw it had been listed and then pulled back (ie google cache mentioning it brings to a page that doesn't) on amazon & newegg, but it's back at Newegg now. It was really weird b/c there was also a cached result for a f/w update and that page too vanished, but tonight the same search reveals a couple pages on Netgear that don't really have any content on the page except for a directory of files. Maybe last minute hiccups in supply or something, and they slowed down its distribution? Weird. Regardless of its mysterious origins, look forward to hearing about its performance and UX.

 

[lexist2112]

Well I disabled Qos for the upload and download as well as WMM over the wireless on 2.4 and 5ghz bandwidth. I searched on the Apple site and apparently users were having problems connecting their iPad 2 and 3 to their Netgear routers and they disabled WMM and QoS and was able to reach their max up and down speed.

After I disabled Qos and WMM everything is nice and smooth on those particular websites and it is REALLY nice!!!!

I will let the router sit over nite and test the rest of the week.

 

[Sky1111]

wow!
regarding internet issues - I assume that you powered down the modem and router for a bit, and then powered modem first, and then the router?

I wonder if this router will have a third party firmware support - something like Padavan or Merlin (for ASUS routers) - that alone make a huge difference.

The CPU on R7000 is sweet - and interestingly it is locked at CPU's nominal clock - 1000MHz (as per Broadcom specs), while ASUS and Linksys downclocked it to 800MHz. Does your router gets (very) warm? Or maybe it has a little fan?

 

[krum]

WOW, Don't know what is going on, Newegg pulled it off there web site,


Chris

 

[PrivateJoker]

WOW, Don't know what is going on, Newegg pulled it off there web site,


Chris

It's gotta be either some weird supply/distribution issue or I wonder if it might have maybe had a certification/compliance issue with FCC? Not saying it's rouge hardware, maybe just didn't submit right paperwork on time or something along those lines, and they had to freeze selling them further until it gets processed?

If @lexist2112 could take a picture and share of the bottom of his router it would be interesting to see what markings it has and if it's possible to google them and check on its FCC registration.

 

[lexist2112]

wow!
regarding internet issues - I assume that you powered down the modem and router for a bit, and then powered modem first, and then the router?

I wonder if this router will have a third party firmware support - something like Padavan or Merlin (for ASUS routers) - that alone make a huge difference.

The CPU on R7000 is sweet - and interestingly it is locked at CPU's nominal clock - 1000MHz (as per Broadcom specs), while ASUS and Linksys downclocked it to 800MHz. Does your router gets (very) warm? Or maybe it has a little fan?

Nope the router does not get hot at all, in fact it is luke warm at best. Yes i believe there are small fans moving air, you literally have to put your head next to it to notice the slight whirling.

As I mentioned in previous post, last Thursday I was at Fry's looking over the router stock to see if they had the Linksys EA6900 and I literally glanced over the R7000 the first time and didn't even notice it. It wasn't until a second glance I saw the packaging and was surprised to see this on the shelf. No online advertising nothing, I looked on their website and nothing was there. No reviews either....unreal Netgear released this router under the radar. What got me to buy it was that it was clocked at 1ghz vs the 800 mhz for the linksys.

The router config page was straight forward, what I like it doesn't time out and you have time to peruse your configuration before saving and restarting.
Now that I have turned off Qos and WMM the router functions better. Will be testing it further this week...will see if it is a keeper. So far it looks like it

 

[lexist2112]

It's gotta be either some weird supply/distribution issue or I wonder if it might have maybe had a certification/compliance issue with FCC? Not saying it's rouge hardware, maybe just didn't submit right paperwork on time or something along those lines, and they had to freeze selling them further until it gets processed?

If @lexist2112 could take a picture and share of the bottom of his router it would be interesting to see what markings it has and if it's possible to google them and check on its FCC registration.

Will try to get a pic of the bottom of the unit. Would be interesting to see if this has the proper FCC licensing and Netgear might have let this one of the bag too quick!!!!!

 

[Sky1111]

Nope the router does not get hot at all, in fact it is luke warm at best. Yes i believe there are small fans moving air, you literally have to put your head next to it to notice the slight whirling.

As I mentioned in previous post, last Thursday I was at Fry's looking over the router stock to see if they had the Linksys EA6900 and I literally glanced over the R7000 the first time and didn't even notice it. It wasn't until a second glance I saw the packaging and was surprised to see this on the shelf. No online advertising nothing, I looked on their website and nothing was there. No reviews either....unreal Netgear released this router under the radar. What got me to buy it was that it was clocked at 1ghz vs the 800 mhz for the linksys.

The router config page was straight forward, what I like it doesn't time out and you have time to peruse your configuration before saving and restarting.
Now that I have turned off Qos and WMM the router functions better. Will be testing it further this week...will see if it is a keeper. So far it looks like it

That confirms my conspiracy theory that ASUS downlclocked the CPU to keep the thermals in check with passive cooling... I wonder what is the memory clock?
Now we need to convince Netgear to release GPL so guys like Merlin and Padavan can really unlock the beast