Blazingly fast WiFi at home is becoming possible with new ac routers that emulate the speeds achieved by fast category 6 Ethernet cable installed in a dwelling.
Modem routers such as Netgear's D6300 and the R6300 router-only model seek to offer throughput of hundreds of megabits per second using WiFi radio connectivity known as the new draft 802.11ac WiFi standard. Ac is the latest standard for wireless networking.
We say draft because the final standard for ac is not set in stone. There is a small possibility that new routers and compatible ac USB dongles that you plug into your devices may not meet the standard when it is finalised, leaving consumers up-ended.
It's a remote possibility, or least remote enough not to stop manufacturers such as Netgear from releasing an 802.11ac router and modem router on to the consumer market.
Last week ExecTech took the plunge and installed Netgear's D6300ac modem/router at home, and bridged it wirelessly with an R6300ac router 10m away, with two walls between.
Being 205mm tall, 255mm wide yet only 77mm thick, and resembling a small display screen, the shiny black D6300 and R6300 look like a strange piece of art, but their appearance will blend in with other objects in the lounge room.
There are ports for cable and ADSL internet, 4 gigabit Ethernet LAN ports, 2 USB 2.0 ports and WiFi and WPS toggle switches on the side. The USB ports let you share USB printers, network storage and digital living network alliance content. The ports are recessed, which makes unfastening Ethernet cables a little tricky.
The WPS or WiFi protection allows a user to connect a compatible mobile device simply by pushing a button on the router and device and entering a PIN.
The device needs to be WPS-compatible.
To make it user friendly, Netgear has a utility called Netgear Genie that monitors the internet and wireless connection and attempts to troubleshoot problems, draws a map of attached devices and offers users access to parental controls that filter unwanted content.
Readyshare controls the access to printers, DLNA controls NAS box storage connected to the router. If you wish, you can access your NAS storage externally from the web.
Invoking Netgear live parental controls from the Genie takes you to Netgear's site where you download a control management utility. First you create an OpenDNS account for the controls to work. You choose between five levels of control - high, moderate, low, minimal or none - and the one setting works across your entire home network. Apart from filtering adult material, phishing attacks and supposed illegal activity, the highest security level also filters out social networking sites, video sharing sites and "general time wasters". Netgear seems to take on the job of deciding what fits these categories.
Another feature is "Guest network". Giving visitors access is as simple as printing out a QR-code and sticking it on the fridge door. A visitor can then scan the QR code to get on to the guest network. They can surf the net but can't access your home files.
If you have an A6200ac WiFi dongle, the Genie can give you a breakdown of channels being used by other WiFi routers nearby, so you can select a less populated channel to reduce interference and increase streaming speeds.
The D6300 offers two WiFi radios and therefore WiFi connections - a regular 2.4 gigahertz one that most existing devices can connect to and a faster 5.0GHz radio that appears invisible to incompatible devices. My old iPad 2 could see both connections but the iPhone 4S connects only to the 2.4GHz network. The Samsung Galaxy S3 could see both.
Each frequency has multiple spectral streams and the two frequencies work together to maximise streaming rates when using a compatible receiving device. We had an issue with parental controls disabling internet connectivity for 2.4Ghz WiFi. Netgear quickly acknowledged the bug and said a fix was in Beta and available on request. We disabled parental controls and internet connectivity was fine on both frequencies.
Before bridging the D6300 and R6300, I tested the upload and download speeds between two PCs within the home network connected by category 6 (very fast) cable Ethernet.
I installed Totusoft's LAN Speed Test, a small program that measures upload and download speeds by uploading a 100 megabyte file from one PC to another, then reading it back. With cables connected, the upload speed was just under 797 megabits per second, reading back was 336Mbps. This is our benchmark.
The moment of truth involved connecting one of these PCs by Ethernet to the bridged R6300 modem with the D6300 and R6300 communicating wirelessly. I achieved upload speeds of up to 212Mbps with nothing under 167Mbps after six tests. Reading back files consistently was around 125Mbps with a maximum of 130Mbps. These are not gigabit speeds but they are light years ahead of wireless speeds I've experienced through these two walls previously.
At the moment, bridging two ac modems is the only fair way to test D6300 and R6300 connectivity as there are hardly any PCs and notebooks with the draft ac standard properly built in.
If you can afford both a D6300 and R6300 you can set up a network of Ethernet-cabled devices near the modem/router and a separate hub of four devices connected by Ethernet to the bridged modem with enhanced WiFi also offered by the dual system.
