Link aggregation was disabled on the bridged R8500, but the ReadyNAS RN214 continued to remain connected via LACP on the primary R8500. The three wired clients used in the first experiment were connected to the bridged R8500's LAN ports numbered 1,2 and 3. In the second experiment, we configured another R8500 in bridge mode to connect to the first 5 GHz SSID on the main R8500. The performance difference between the Realtek and Intel NICs is not a big factor in the benchmarks today. Two of the PCs had an integrated RealTek Semiconductor RTL8168/8111 PCI-E Gigabit Ethernet NIC while one had a Intel Ethernet Connection I218-V Gigabit Ethernet NIC.
#NETGEAR ROUTER R8500 PRO#
On the clients side, we have three PCs running Windows 8.1 Pro connected to ports 3, 4 and 5 of the same R8500. The NAS is configured with a RAID-5 volume using 4x 4TB Seagate NAS HDDs. Our test setup consists of the Netgear ReadyNAS RN214 connected to the link aggregation ports of a R8500 and configured with a bonded link as described in the previous subsection. In any case, this is a moot point since the R8500 supports only two ports for link aggregation. For example, a client with bonded ports can't get multi-link throughput from a server with bonded ports for any given transfer (unless one is using SMB multi-channel, for example).
#NETGEAR ROUTER R8500 PC#
It is important to remember that a single PC or a single transfer stream will not benefit from 802.3ad LACP. In the second experiment, we will check if the benefits of link aggregation translate to practical gigabit Wi-Fi. In the initial configuration, we will take a look at a pure wired setup. This review will start off with a description of a realistic test setup to bring out the benefits of link aggregation. The NAS is also accessible via the LACP ports irrespective of the hash type chosen. Note that choosing Layer 2 will still keep the UI status on both the NAS and the router side happy.
The fact that the setup will utilize 802.3ad LACP is drilled down quite a bit, but the changing of the hash type to Layer 2 + 3 needs to be done explicitly (it is Layer 2 by default). While that is true on the router side, the NAS side has a few issues. Ideally, the configuration should be a couple of clicks at the most in the web UI. They have separate guides for ReadyNAS, QNAP and Synology units on their website. Netgear assumes that most of the consumers would be connecting a NAS unit to the LACP ports. Hence, Netgear has chosen to keep things simple by making 802.3ad Dynamic Link Aggregation (LACP) as the only available teaming mode. Multiple modes tend to create confusion for the average user. These include round-robin, active backup, balance-xor, fault tolerance, adaptive load balancing etc. There are different ways to aggregate two network ports together.
#NETGEAR ROUTER R8500 FULL#
Since each wired port is limited to 1 Gbps, it becomes impossible for any one client to actually make full use of the wireless capabilities. Link aggregation is made necessary in these flagship products because of the presence of multiple SSIDs capable of gigabit throughput. We covered the full details in our launch piece, and will not delve much into the details here. This implies the presence of two 5 GHz SSIDs (4x Mbps with Broadcom's 1024 QAM extensions to get 2165 Mbps on each SSID) and one 2.4 GHz SSID (4x4 for 800 Mbps, with Broadcom's 1024-QAM again bringing it to 1000 Mbps).
The Netgear Nighthawk X8 R8500 was launched in October 2015. In the marketing material, they also pointed out that it was simple enough for the average user to utilize when combined with a Netgear ReadyNAS unit. One of the interesting features was the availability of 802.3ad LACP in the official firmware. Netgear recently introduced its AC5300-class router, the Nighthawk X8 R8500. Power users have tried to use prosumer and business switches to take advantage of multiple ports on devices and obtain multi-gigabit throughput. On the other hand, 802.11ac enables router manufacturers to market multi-gigabit Wi-Fi. The average consumer equipment's wired ports have been stuck at 1 Gbps for quite some time.