Netgear Nighthawk X8 (R8500) Wave 2 802.11ac Router Set to Ship

Broadcom’s XStream platform has enjoyed quite a bit of success in the Wi-Fi router market despite its high cost. The first generation XStream platform used a 3×3 configuration for each band, and lacked Wave 2 features such as MU-MIMO support or 160 MHz channels. At the 2015 CES, Broadcom updated their XStream product portfolio with the BCM4366, a 4×4 MU-MIMO capable radio that could work along with the BCM47094, a dual-core Cortex-A9-based network processor SoC. At the same time, D-Link also announced the DIR-895L AC5300 router based on that platform. Early last month, we also had Asus announcing the RT-AC5300U with the 4×4 tri-band XStream configuration. Unfortunately, none of these announcements came with a concrete ship date. Netgear was conspicuously silent about their plans with the new platform, even though they were the first vendor to come out with a product based on XStream Gen 1 – the Nighthawk X6 (R8000). Today, Netgear is announcing the Nighthawk X8 (R8500) based on the second generation XStream platform. Unlike the announcements from other vendors, the R8500 is available for purchase today.

As a recap, the tri-band Wave 2 XStream platform integrates two 4×4 5 GHz radios (at 2.1 Gbps each) and one 4×4 2.4 GHz radio (at 1 Gbps). The setup is capable of using 1024 QAM (Broadcom-proprietary NitroQAM, works only with clients having Broadcom Wi-Fi receiver chipsets) to boost performance. Most of the
Wi-Fi aspects have been covered in our D-Link and Asus router launch articles, and I won’t go into detail here. Instead, the focus of this piece will be on the differentiating aspects in the Nighthawk X8.

The most striking aspect of the R8500 when compared to the other XStream Gen 2 routers is the presence of only four external antennae instead of eight. Netgear has opted to go for four external and four internal ones. Physical appearances aside, the four external antennae are all active ones. This is the first time that we are actually seeing active antennae being deployed – the Wi-Fi amplifiers are moved from their usual location in the router’s motherboard to the top of the antennae. This reduces cross-talk on the board and also avoids signal loss in the transmission between the antennae and the board.

The other interesting feature is the availability of 6 LAN ports in addition to the WAN port (all GbE, obviously). Two of the 6 LAN ports come with 802.3addynamic link aggregation support in-built into the firmware. For select devices (such as certain ReadyNAS models), connecting both wired ports to ports on the device will automatically configure everything to take advantage of the teamed link. For example, it will be possible for two different wired clients or multiple Wi-Fi clients to stream out simultaneously from the NAS and get more than 1 Gbps of effective throughput from the NAS.

Note the industrial design with two waves on the top of the chassis – indicative of a Wave 2 device

Like all other XStream Gen 2 products and Quantenna-based products, the MU-MIMO capability is present in the hardware, but the firmware to enable them will be made available later on. Netgear indicated it would be before the end of the year, but we wouldn’t be surprised if it comes only after the Wi-Fi Alliance starts certifying MU-MIMO interoperability in 2016.

Other than the active antennae and link aggregation features, the R8500 comes with the standard value-adds that have been part of all the Nighthawk routers since the R7000 – beamforming, dynamic QoS (based on Broadcom’s iQoS engine in the Broadcom-based routers and the Qualcomm Atheros StreamBoost engine in the Quantenna-based routers), VPN and DLNA support. All the XStream Gen 1 features in the R8000 (such as ‘Smart Connect’ to steer clients to the appropriate band) are carried over to the R8500. The router also comes with ReadyCLOUD USB Access, which enables secure access to any USB drive connected to the router over the Internet. Netgear also supplies ReadySHARE Vault, a PC program for backing up content to any USB drive attached to the router. Consumers loath to accessing a web UI to monitor / configure / repair their networks can also use the Netgear Genie app for this purpose.

The Nighthawk X8 R8500 AC5300 router is available for purchase today at an MSRP of $400.

Asus RT-AC5300U 802.11ac Router – 4×4 MU-MIMO with Broadcom XStream

Asus announced the RT-AC5300U 802.11ac router using Broadcom’s tri-band Wi-Fi chipset at IFA 2015 today. This is meant to be a flagship router with AC5300 speeds (1000 Mbps on the 2.4 GHz band and 2167 Mbps on each of the 5 GHz bands for a total of 5333 Mbps theoretical bandwidth). The router uses Broadcom’s latest Wi-Fi chipset along with the XStream platform concept.

As a recap, Broadcom’s XStream involves combining two discrete 802.11ac radios in a single board, thereby allowing for two different channels to be simultaneously active in the 5 GHz band. Essentially, this concept combines two Wi-Fi routers in one. Initially introduced in a six stream configuration using Broadcom’s second generation 802.11ac chipset, it was even demonstrated by Asus at Computex 2014. At CES earlier this year, Broadcom updated their 802.11ac portfolio with some new products sporting Wave 2 features. D-Link also simultaneously announced their ULTRA series using Broadcom’s chipsets. The DIR-895L AC5300 was the flagship that combined the Broadcom 4×4 MU-MIMO solution with the XStream concept. The Asus RT-AC5300U being announced today uses the same platform (BCM4709, a 1 GHz dual-core Cortex-A9 based processor combined with three BCM4366 radios) and has similar features.

Broadcom’s proprietary NitroQAM / TurboQAM technology helps in low-latency and high bandwidth requirement scenarios (as long as the client side also has Broadcom silicon). The router sports eight external dual-band detachable antennae. Internally, there iis 128 MB of flash and 256 MB of DDR3 RAM. The other features are standard – 1x WAN and 4x LAN Gigabit ports, 1x USB 3.0 and 1x USB 2.0 port.

The router will be available for purchase sometime in Q4 2015. There is no information on the pricing yet.

Netgear Launches XS728T 28-port 10-Gigabit Smart Managed Switch

In early 2013, Netgear launched the XS708E (8x 10GBASE-T with 1x shared 10G SFP+) unmanaged switch, the XS712T (12x 10GBASE-T with 2x shared 10G SFP+) smart managed switch and the XSM7224 (24x 10GBASE-T with 4x 10G SFP+) fully managed switch. Netgear is announcing the XS728T today, adding a new member to the smart managed switch family. The XS728T comes with 24x 10GBASE-T ports and 4x dedicated 10G SFP+ ports.

Netgear claims that the ProSafe XS728T is the industry’s first 28-port 10-Gigabit Smart Managed Switch. It falls in the same category as the XS712T with respect to the management capabilities. We have been having a good experience using the XS712T in our 10G-capable NAS testbed. It is not a fully managed switch, but does manage to be cost-effective in the process.

Compared to the XS712T, the XS728T brings support static IPv6 routing. Netgear advertises L2+/Layer 3 Lite features in the XS-T series making them suitable for core switches in SMB environments. The datasheet provides information about the L2+ / L3 Lite features.

The performance aspects of the XS712T and the XS728T are summarized in the table below.

The datasheet provides detailed technical specifications. One of the aspects that caught my eye was the acoustic levels. While the XS712T was rated at 49.7 dBA (We use it in our testbed, and the noise is pretty much what makes the usage of the unit difficult during evaluation in a home lab setting), the XS728T comes in at 41.6 dBA. I was also curious about the core platform. Netgear indicated that the XS728T uses Marvell silicon inside. These are fabricated in a smaller process node (we believe it is the Alaska transceivers and some combination of Prestera DX packet processors fabricated in 28nm). These operate a bit cooler, reducing the thermal load. The number of fans in the XS728T has also been doubled to four (compared to two in the XS712T). Taken together, these changes have enabled Netgear to run the fans slower and generate less noise.

The XS728T has a MSRP of $4624. However, as is usual with enterprise equipment, final pricing for end customers may vary from one reseller to another.