By Ki Grinsing

Overview

You probably never thought that Netgear releases the R6300 product which is completely different model with a common design of previous products designed with elongated vertical rectangles. This time the flagship class product wireless ac router which the shape is designed rectangular and the lengths of its sides are equal when viewed from the front. While the wide of the front side is not the same as the back side of the router, so that all four sides form a parallelogram which sides are not equal in length as shown in the picture of this product. At a glance it looks similar to Asus product Black Diamond series.

Netgear R6300 is based on the latest generations of Wi-Fi technology, the draft 802.11ac Wi-Fi standards.

What makes 802.11ac different?

The IEEE 802.11ac is the 5^th generation of wireless standard which provides throughput more than 1Gigabit per second in 5GHz band theoretically, up to 160MHz RF bandwidth and can be up to 8 MIMO spatial streams. The 3^rd generation of wireless 802.11g was introduced in 2002 delivering the maximum speed up to 54Mbps, and 10 years later the 5^th generation delivers the speed multiple times more than 20 times as fast as the 3^rd gen wireless technology.

Netgear R6300

Netgear R6300 is based on this 5^th generation of this wireless technology delivering the speeds up to 1,300Mbps in 5GHz band. If this were the real world of wireless speed, I can’t imagine that the wireless speed exceeds the speeds of wired gigabit speed. It reminds me in the 90’s when I used the 10Mbps coaxial cable as the backbone to link the two buildings in a plant environment. The speed was OK, probably the applications used at that time were not GUI-based applications like the applications we use today.

Click here for R6300 wireless ac router spec details or you may also like the other version of Netgear R6200 Vs Asus.

Features

• Gigabit wireless speed (450Mbps + 1300Mbps) – dual band with WiFi boost high-powered radio amplifiers for solid signal strength and longer distance coverage
• Gigabit wired interfaces both LAN and WAN ports for high speed wired connection direct to your computers with gigabit NIC adapters
• Compatible with next gen wireless devices and is backward compatible with 802.11n
• Two USB 2.0 ports with multi features including DLNA media server, Readyshare USB and printer
• It is now enhanced with the BeamForming antenna technology which is more robust and solid connection, connect ideally with best performance for up to heavy duty 12 user clients.

Embeded with 128Mb RAM and 128Mb Flash

Like the previous gen of WNDR4500 N900 router, this R6300 router is equipped with 128Mb RAM and 128Mb flash for better processing performance. Advanced Quality of Service (QoS) and IPv6 features are also supported; the standard features other high performance routers must have.

Network diagram

The below figure shows you a general networking diagram you can apply to your home network, connecting your disk storage and printer together to the router, high speed gigabit wired connection to your AIO computers, and streaming adapters to your HDTV.

Fig 2 Wireless network diagram using cable modem and wireless ac router

High speed clients

The question is which wireless clients can utilize this wireless speed up to 1300Mbps? Netgear shortly thereafter introduced A6200 dual band USB wireless adapter which is also based on this wireless ac technology. Certainly strongly support the performance of your client computers that come with A6200 so they can take advantage of wide bandwidth track of your wireless ac wifi network. This USB adapter is coming with adjustable antenna for best performance in speed and reliability.

The previous model of Netgear Centria WNDR4700 wireless storage router was just available in the market and the price is still expensive around $220 without the disk. For Netgear R6300 ac router you can order now in Amazon for about $200.

Buffalo Technology is also introducing the 5G Wifi router – WZR-D1800H. It has some features the same as R6300 does including gigabit ports, USB for storage and printer. Buffalo WZR-D1800H is coming with WLI-H4-D1300 5G wifi based multi-port wireless bridge to support your wireless gigabit network

Do you want to replace your aging router which is still good for gaming for example Netgear WNDR3700 or D-link Dgl4500 gamer lounge router? Of course, if you really need a high spec router for your large home and to support your multimedia network, you may have it a try.

By Ki Grinsing