Netgear Introduces ReadyNAS 3130 Rackmount NAS

Netgear is introducing a trio of products targeting SMBs and SMEs today. The primary product is a modular switch chassis, while the second one is a new WLAN controller. Finally, we have an update in the ReadyNAS rackmount lineup. We will cover them in the reverse order.

ReadyNAS 3130

The RN3130 is a rackmount unit running an Intel Rangeley SoC clocking in at 1.7 GHz (likely to be the Atom C2338, which is a 2C/2T model). There are four GbE ports, and the unit runs ReadyNAS 0S 6.2 with the btrfs filesystem.

Netgear claims speeds of 220 MBps +. They are targeting the virtualization market – It would be interesting to see if they have the breadth of features and performance numbers that Synology provides in this market area.

The 4-bay RN3130 will cost $1500 diskless, a steep premium over the RN314 (based on the Atom D2700, albeit with only two GbE ports). Synology’s DSxx15+ Rangeley lineup now comes with four network ports too and are priced well south of $1500 even for higher bay counts. Netgear is asking a hefty premium for the rackmount form-factor.

ProSAFE WC9500 WLAN Controller

Netgear already has the WC7520 and WC7600 WLAN controllers targeting small to mid-sized enterprises such as 10 – 150 and 50 – 200 room hotels / primary and secondary schools. The WC9500 is being introduced to complete this lineup. The target is mid to large-sized enterprises with high density of access points. Typical targets include 200 – 500 room hotels and schools / small universities. Each WLAN controller can support up to 300 access points, and three of them can be stacked (with one additional for redundancy). Netgear adopts a licensing model in increments of 10 access points. Supported APs include the WNAP 210/320, WN 370, WNDAP 350/360/660/620 and the WND930.

ProSAFE M6100 Chassis Series

Switches in the SMB / SME space are pretty mundane affairs. Usually, things that get talked about are the presence of 10G capabilities and/or associated pricing. Netgear is doing something different with the ProSAFE M6100 chassis series.

The M6100 is a 4U rackmount chassis with three open line-card slots in the front and a PSU bay with four power supply slots. We have a fan tray in the rear. This chassis (XCM8903) has to be ordered in conjumction with one or more I/O blades with different numbers of 1GBASE-T RJ-45, 1GBASE-X Fiber SFP, 10GBASE-T RJ-45 and 10GBASE-X Fiber SFP+ ports.

Accessories include daughter cards to add power-over-Ethernet (PoE) functionality, PSUs, fan trays and an additional 1U power shelf.

This type of modular devices allow the end user to evolve the network for the organization as the need arises. Netgear hopes to present this as a credible alternative to the HP 5400 router series by providing better features at a lower price point.

TP-LINK’s Networking Solutions at CES 2015

TP-LINK is one of the leading networking solutions vendor in the Asian market. They have been slowly trying to build up a presence in the US, but there has always been a bit of a delay between the launch in the North American market compared to the As…

Netgear R7500 Nighthawk X4 Integrates Quantenna 4×4 ac Radio and Qualcomm IPQ8064 SoC

The high-end 802.11ac router market has seen two introductions in the recent past. The first was the Netgear Nighthawk X6 which was based on the Broadcom 5G Wi-Fi XStream platform with two discrete 3×3 802.11ac radios. On the other side, we had Asus introduce the first Wave 2 router in the RT-AC87 using the same Broadcom SoC and 2.4 GHz radios as the Nighthawk X6, but choosing the Quantenna Wave 2 solution for the 5 GHz band. In the launch coverage of the RT-AC87, we had mentioned the online leaks of the Netgear Nighthawk X4 router. Today, Netgear is providing us the official details.

Gallery: Netgear R7500 Nighthawk X4

In terms of the configuration of the radios, the Netgear Nighthawk X4 and the Asus RT-AC87 are equivalent. Both of them belong to the AC2350 / AC2400 class, i.e, four 5 GHz (802.11ac) radios (4x 433 Mbps) and three 2.4 GHz (802.11n) radios (3x 200 Mbps) for a net aggregate of 2.333 Gbps. We have already touched upon all the advantages of the Quantenna Wave 2 solution over the current solutions from Broadcom and Qualcomm Atheros. In essence, the 4×4 update (quad-stream Wi-Fi) provides faster Wi-Fi throughput, enables more stable and jitter-free video streaming and provides more robust Wi-Fi connection for a larger number of devices.

There are two internal hardware aspects in which the Nighthawk X4 differs from the Asus RT-AC87:

• Platform SoC (Qualcomm Internet Processor IPQ8064 instead of the Broadcom BCM4709A)
• Interface between the 5 GHz radios and the platform SoC (PCIe instead of RGMII)

Due to the difference in the platform SoC, the external I/O is also different. While the Asus RT-AC87 had a USB 2.0 port and a USB 3.0 port, the Netgear R7500 Nighthawk X4 has two USB 3.0 ports and an eSATA port. The IPQ8064 SoC has two Krait cores running at 1.4 GHz (compared to the two Cortex-A9s running at 1 GHz in the BCM4709A).

While the IPQ8604 does have GMII interfaces, Netgear decided to use the PCIe ports to make sure that they were able to make full use of the radio’s capabilities to go beyond 1 Gbps in each direction. The radios also have offloading processors running at 500 MHz to enable the main SoC to devote CPU cycles for other functions (storage, VPN etc.)

Coming back to the R7500, Netgear touts dynamic QoS as one of the main features. The router has a list of devices / apps (which can be updated independent of the firmware) which enables allocation of bandwidth based on the application. The goal is to ensure that latency sensitive apps get the highest priority while also making sure that the lowest priority apps don’t get choked off. Netgear also claims to have put in special hooks for video streaming sites to prevent buffering while accessing adaptive bitrate sites (such as Netflix) at the same time as the non-adaptive ones (such as YouTube). Plans are also in-place to support the R7500 on myopenrouter.com.

Netgear plans to carry all three Nighthawk versions in the market for now, as they target different segments. The positioning and key points of the three members are reproduced in the slide below.

The R7500 Nighthawk X4 is priced at $280 which closely tracks the Asus RT-AC87 pricing. It will be an interesting tussle in the market between the two, as Asus will also bring the Broadcom XStream solution demonstrated at Computex to the market soon.