Netgear Nighthawk X8 R8500 AC5300 Router Brings Link Aggregation Mainstream
by Ganesh T S on December 31, 2015 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Networking
- NetGear
- Broadcom
- 802.11ac
- router
The Promise of Gigabit Wi-Fi
The Nighthawk X8 R8500 is marketed as an AC5300-class router. This naturally leads consumers to wonder whether it is really possible to get gigabit Wi-Fi (considering that an AC5300 router should theoretically support up to 2165 Mbps on each of the 5 GHz bands). In order to test out this aspect, we configured another R8500 in bridge mode (this is necessary to test 4x4 Wi-Fi bridging at the maximum possible link rate because 1024-QAM works only with other Broadcom devices, and the R8500 is the only Broadcom device that also has 4x4 capabilities).
Irrespective of where we placed the bridging router relative to the main R8500, we found that the link rate never reached 2165 Mbps, but topped out at 1733 Mbps. Eventually, we settled down on keeping the bridging router around 10 ft away, but, across a drywall (in order to simulate realistic conditions). The wired PCs connected to ports 3,4 and 5 of the main router were shifted to ports 1,2 and 3 of the bridging R8500. To our consternation, the results from running our folder download / upload test were downright abysmal.
While we did see occasional bursts of more than 800 Mbps during the testing, the majority of the time was spent in the 100 Mbps range. Apparently, we were not the only people to notice this issue, leading me to believe that there is still plenty of scope for performance improvements in the R8500.
It must be noted that the bridged R8500 connects only to one of the 5 GHz SSIDs. Could the second SSID help in driving up the throughput numbers? The R8500 in bridge mode was obviously not performing well. So, we shifted to using two Netgear Nighthawk R7000 routers in bridge mode, with each one connecting to one of the 5 GHz SSIDs. Ideally, we should also have had a third router in bridge mode to connect to the 2.4 GHz band, but we decided to test out with bridging on just the two 5 GHz SSIDs. We also cut down the number of clients from three to two (one to each bridging router).
The performance in this case was much better. We managed to sustain close to gigabit speeds over wireless (over two 5 GHz channels) for the multi-client upload and download cases. Note that each stream managed between 400 Mbps and 500 Mbps only despite a link rate of 1300 Mbps.
Concluding Remarks
We set out to check the effectiveness of link aggregation with the Netgear R8500 and Netgear ReadyNAS RN214, and we are pleased with the user-friendliness of the whole process. Netgear has managed to bring the concept of link aggregation to mainstream consumers with the Nighthawk X8 R8500 AC5300 router. The ReadyNAS RN214 is a nice complement to the router for this purpose. The whole setup process is pretty much seamless. The sole suggestion we would like to make here is that the ReadyNAS web UI could make the transmit has policy for 802.3ad LACP to be Layer 2 + 3 by default (instead of Layer 2 only).
On the gigabit Wi-Fi side, consumers are going to be a tad disappointed. Despite claims of up to 5.3 Gbps speeds, the router seems barely capable of 1 Gbps over Wi-Fi (out of a possible theoretical 4.3 Gbps) under real world conditions. Though we didn't set out to review the full capabilities of the Nighthawk X8 R8500, it is evident from our limited wireless testing that there is plenty of scope for performance improvements in the firmware.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
66 Comments
View All Comments
ganeshts - Thursday, December 31, 2015 - link
Yeah, 1024-QAM was not working irrespective of where I placed the bridging router. I believe Tim @ SmallNetBuilder was unable to make it work too. Admittedly, it requires almost ideal conditions to kick in, but, I think Netgear / Broadcom has plenty to fix in the firmware.melgross - Thursday, December 31, 2015 - link
I really hate to break into comments on something else here, but there's nowhere else to really express my frustration.I've been seeing, and reading, a lot of reviews here during December, and I'm still waiting for the review of the ipad Pro, which came out some time ago now, and was promised for December. Well, here we are, and it's the last day in December, and where is it? Quite frankly, I've seen reviews of more than a few trivial devices that few people will be interested in, going by the small number of comments on them. I don't ever remember a review taking so long to come out, particularly since the site has has a unit, and came out with some tested specs over a month ago!
I'd like to know what the problem is here, as every other site has had their reviews in over a month ago, including some good, in depth ones. What's the excuse for the hangup? People here, whether they want Apple's products, or don't want them, like to read the reviews, and comment.
Pissedoffyouth - Thursday, December 31, 2015 - link
What the hell are you talking about? They did an ipad pro review LAST MONTH:http://www.anandtech.com/show/9780/taking-notes-wi...
lagittaja - Thursday, December 31, 2015 - link
Ahem. That's NOT a review. It's a preview (says so in the title) with a couple of benchmarks..And if you'd even bother reading the preview, it specifically says in the end of pg2:
"Anyhow, we’ll be back later with a full review of the iPad Pro, including the pros and cons of Apple’s first large-format, productivity-oriented tablet, and a full breakdown of the A9X SoC. So until then stay tuned."
dsumanik - Thursday, December 31, 2015 - link
I disagree dave, the reviews used to be worth waiting for but now they are seriously biased and sales oriented. Honestly purch has turned this into whole site into a viral marketing platform. Recent lame reviews:-The ASRock Z170 Extreme7+ no testing of triple m.2 performance
-gigabyte-z170x-gaming-g1 : no quad SLI or thunderbolt tests
And surprise surprise we have issues with this board already:
http://forums.tweaktown.com/gigabyte/62038-ga-z170...
Now to be fair gigabyte is aware of the issues and will almost certainly fix them, but the point is if AT had simply tried plugging in a few different memory modules, they would have discovered the board has problems with XMP profiles.
But they didnt check. They didnt check basic memory compatibility. like wtf.
And they didn't test out quad SLI, even though its advertised in the article title. I am sorry to be so negative but im going to keep posting these comments in hopes AT cleans up their act, it's getting ridiculous.
The iPad pro review you are waiting for so desperately is going to come out overwhelmingly positive, and skip over the fact that the thing is too big, isn't able to increase productivity (except certain scanarios with graphic artists) and requires you to charge the 100 dollar pencil from the port in the bottom, making the device completely unusable, or storable while the pencil is charging.
If you want to know what an iPad pro is like, it's EXACTLY the same as an ipad2 with a bigger screen and an awesome, overpriced stylus that has no eraser and is a facepalm to charge.
Just getting photos into an editing app on iOS is such a PITA, and you wind up with mutiple copies in your camera roll and the app itself etc. Organizing is a nightmare, and the only way around it would be to use icloud photos, which you have to pay for.
By the time you get an image loaded and start mucking about with the stylus, buddy next to you on a 2012 mid level PC has imported, tagged, organized, retouched 500+ photos (using sync settings) in lightroom and is about to go have his lunch break, it’s rediculous. Ph and he backup up the catalog, in case a problem occured.
The fact, that even loading a camera raw file onto an ipad converts it to jpeg, is a fail right there.
The device is supposed to be for content creation and editing, but you cant even choose an export format or edit a master file directly.
Can anyone here point out a negative Apple review posted on this site ever???
Just one.
melgross - Thursday, December 31, 2015 - link
What a bunch of BS from you here. If you don't like a review, it's biased. Little minds think that way, particularly if it's a review of a company's products that you've decided you don't like, even if you know almost nothing useful about them.That opinion of yours just shows your own strong biases and negativity.
melgross - Thursday, December 31, 2015 - link
I should have also pointed out that s it's pretty obvious that you've never even used the device, as you don't seem to understand it, or how people use styluses.Possibly, you should go on a number of artist sites and see the reviews there. You won't see one bad one. No real user of a stylus cares about an eraser function on the back of a stylus, because it's more trouble reversing the stylus, twice, than tapping the eraser function in the software, where you will also likely want to modify it for the erasing you're doing at that time.
You also don't know anything about how you charge the Pencil. Apple includes an adapter that can plug into any Lightning cable to charge the device from any standard charger with a USB input. The ability to plug the Pencil into the iPad Pro for 15 seconds for 30 minutes is a convienience for when you're somewhere where there is no place to plug a recharger into. It's been praised as an ingenious solution.
Getting photos into the device isn't difficult, and can be done in a number of ways.
Admit it, you're just another person who dislikes Apple for some personally obnoxious reason.
dsumanik - Friday, January 1, 2016 - link
Dude I don't hate Apple, I own a 6s iPad 2 Mac mini, MacBook Air and 2 Thunderbolt displays. My rant is directly targeted at At's failure to do basic testing anymore and just read the script the sponsor sends them... I went on about Apple because buddy brought it up, and yeah I tried editing on the new iPad, brought some test images from d7200 to the local Mac store...fundamentally there's is no diff from iPad 2. Same software, larger screen, slightly faster. Like I said I can do 50 photos in Lightroom, catalogued, sorted and retouched and most importantly backed up... in the same amount of time to do maybe 5 on an iPad pro.Now let's talk exporting.... Could you imagine exporting say 200+ photos in various sizes/formats on an iPad? This as an extremely common thing for a photographer / web developer to do
it would take 8-12hrs on an iOS device. Lightroom, one click, walk away, and 5 minutes later done.
Point is Apple missed the target audience, it's supposed to be for professionals but it slows you down and doesn't offer any advantages except portability. And the pencil charging???? Jobs would have fired cook on the spot face palm central..same as the new battery case lol
NetMage - Saturday, January 2, 2016 - link
Now do the same thing with your PC in the middle of a forest, or in your living room. A bit slower to drive hours to do those 50 images?Just because it isn't for you, doesn't mean it isn't much better for others. Same with the battery case.
dsumanik - Sunday, January 3, 2016 - link
Did some digging netmage is a paid-for commenter hired by Apple PR.Honestly.... defending the apple battery case bud? At least TRY not to be obvious.