Best Wifi 6 Wireless AX6000 Routers

Have you already upgraded your aging wireless g/n router with wifi ac (5^th generation of wifi technology) router lately? If you haven’t done it yet then you’re lucky since it is now coming new wifi 6 (6^th generation of wifi technology) with boosting wifi speeds up to 6,000Mbps dual band. See also best home mesh wifi systems.

Netgear, Asus and TP-link have come into the market with this wifi 6 technology when others are still competing with their wireless ac products.

What this wifi 6 does

Wifi 6 technology is the next generation of 6^th G wireless technology with blazing wifi speeds of up to 4.8Gbps @5GHz band and blazing speeds of up to 1.2Gbps @2.4Ghz band, or as known as ax6000 since the total bandwidth speed is up to 6,000Mbps concurrently.

Wifi Comparison

To have a brief knowledge what this wifi 6 is compared with the previous wifi technology take a look at the following wifi 6 chart.

See that wifi 6 provides faster speed, increase network capacity, more devices to connect, ideal for homes with more than 20 devices on the network. With wifi 6 you can simultaneously play online game, stream video, and other heavy duty networking tasks efficiently.

 What are` those products that adopt this wifi 6 technology? The following products are few models with ax6000 based routers you may consider to upgrade your aging wireless g/n or wireless ac router.

Netgear RAX80

Netgear introduces this wifi 6 product namely Nighthawk ax8 (Netgear RAX80) with really awesome design, flat with two left and right wings like stealth air fighter. Powered by high performance 1.8GHz quad core processor, this wifi 6 router provides you decent performance.

Netgear RAX80 / Nighthawk AX8 wifi 6 router

Highlights

• Awesome design wifi 6 router (802.11ax)
• Dual band high speed up to 1.2Gbps @2.4GHz band and up to 4.8Gbps @5Ghz band
• MU-MIMO with uplink and downlink OFDMA (orthogonal frequency-division multiple access)
• Supports 160MHz channel
• High performance 4pcs pre-optimized internal antennas
• More interfaces: 1x Gigabit WAN, 5x Gigabit LANs with Gigabit Ethernet port aggregation
• 2x USB 3.0 port
• Powered by Quad core 1.8Ghz processor
• Can handle up to 20 devices without wifi drops, no buffering, no stuttering
• Can create a single SSID which can handle both 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz clients seamlessly

This wifi 6 Netgear RAX80 is a good product when connect to similar matching ax clients for optimum data throughput. This product is still pricey around $390 (April, 2019 in Amazon).

Asus RT-AX88U

Another model of wifi 6 router you may also consider is the one introduced by Asus – RT-AX88U ax6000 router. it’s almost similar product as Netgear RAX80 except couple of features. The design is almost the same as previous Asus RT-AC89U wireless ac2900 gaming router.

Asus -RT-AX88U wifi 6 router

It comes with external antennas instead of internal like Nighthawk. The good thing is that this product (Asus RT-AX88U) comes with lifetime free commercial grade network security – the Asus AiProtection powered by Trend Micro with regular security signature updated.

Asus RT-AX88U also comes with built-in wtfast to secure shortest possible path between your gaming and the game server to minimize ping and lag.

By KG

Best Whole Home Mesh Wifi Routers

With the emerging of mesh wifi system products, folks are busy switching and upgrading their aging wireless routers to using this trend – the mesh wifi system or mesh whole home wifi system. All the networking vendors introduce their flagship products, some are successful in the market become best mesh wifi system and some are not.

Why mesh wifi system

Mesh wifi system or whole home wifi system is easy to setup and deploy within small to large homes. Typically it comes in two or three packs for most home size. One unit connects to the modem to act as the mesh wifi router, the other units work as its satellite something like the wireless range extender. Mesh wifi system replaces the wireless router and the range extender..

With wireless extender, the router talks to the extender head to head while in mesh wifi system each unit talks one to another in a mesh connection so data can find the best route from node to node to destination point efficiently. Communication between nodes typically uses wifi backhaul either using dedicated radio band @5GHz band or shared radio band with connected clients. And today with latest mesh wifi 6e system; generally the dedicated backhaul uses 6ghz radio band or share with other compliant 6ghz band devices.

One network name

One of most important features with mesh wifi system is that it creates a single wifi / network name (aka one SSID name) so you can move with your mobile device roaming from one room to the other rooms seamlessly. With wifi range extender when you roam from one network name to wifi range extender you need switching from one SSID to another SSID name.

Mesh wifi system is also applied to wireless access point such as Unifi uap- Flex HD mesh wifi access point.

Now which one is best whole home wifi system (many people call it a mesh wifi system) suitable to meet your home need?

Best mesh wifi system

Not all vendors are successful with their mesh wifi system products they offer either two or three band models. Some of them cannot compete with the others. Now, here are top 3 best mesh wifi system products with either dual or three band you can find in the market. again, when it comes to which one is best you need to assess your home requirement, so choose the one that is best to suit your home.

1. Amazon eero 6

The first generation of eero whole home wifi system is claimed to be the first mesh wifi system in the market, it was a startup project that becomes very popular and got the best rated in the market at the first time released.

At the end of 2019, eero was acquired by Amazon and modified to work with Amazon Alexa and becomes compliant with Amazon smart home environment. Then the body is modified so that it looks more elegant and stylist than the original model which is only a flat square box with smooth curved edges.

And today, with the emerging of wifi 6 technology products, amazon released its eero 6 series including the standard eero 6, eero pro 6 series and the latest one is eero 6e pro.

For small to medium home, amazon eero 6 is suitable and adequate.

Highlights

1.          Simultaneous dual band with 2x2 MU-MIMO technology with ax1800 mesh wifi 6 whole home system
2. ·         Typically sold in three pack to form whole home wifi system covering up to 5,000 sq ft replacing your wireless router and extenders
3. ·         Comes with two auto sensing Gigabit Ethernet ports (WAN / LAN ports), you can start from one unit Amazon eero and add more to cover larger area
4. ·         Automatic firmware update, no hassle of downloading and manually updating the firmware
5. ·        You upgrade to subscribe for eero Secure service gives you essential tools like threat scans, content warnings, and ad-blocking and the eero Secure + add top-rated security apps — Encrypt.me, 1Password, and Malwarebytes.
6. ·         Works with Alexa, Amazon WiFi simple setup, Bluetooth LE 5.0 for smart home connectivity
7. ·         Powered by 1.2 GHz quad-core processor, 512 MB RAM, 4 GB flash storage

Under Amazon umbrella, Amazon eero is now tagged with cheaper price (around $249.99) than the original eero when it was first launched in the market. See also the pro version of amazoneero pro 6 mesh wifi.

2. Orbi Rbk962

Most available mesh wifi routers today come with either dual or three radio bands, and with the three radio band models one of the radio bands @5ghz is used as dedicated backhaul in general. even though few models use dynamic backhaul to let the system uses the best wifi for backhaul link between the nodes.

What I would like to discuss here is the Orbirbke963, the first quad radio band mesh wifi 6e system with total aggregated bandwidth up to 11,000Mbps. Orbi doesn’t use the 6ghz radio band as dedicated backhaul like mesh wifi 6e products in general, however orbi uses one of @5ghz radio bands as dedicated backhaul link. This way, Orbi offers all available three distinct radio bands (2.4ghz; 5ghz and 6ghz) for connected devices.

Highlights

•      Quad band axe11000 mesh wifi 6e with 16 data streams
• .      Total aggregated bandwidth up to 11,000Mbps consists of 1,200 (2.4Ghz) + 2,400 (5ghz) + 2,400 (6ghz) + 4,800 (5ghz as dedicated backhaul)
• .      10Gbps WAN Port, 2.5Gbps LAN port, and 3x Gigabit LAN ports. For satellite nodes are 2.5Gbps LAN plus 3x Gigabit LAN ports
• .      Powered by Powerful Quad-Core 2.2GHz processor 512MB NAND Flash and 1GB RAM
• .      Works with alexa

Cons

• 1.      No usb port for storage
• 2.      No free network protection kit

This orbi rbk963 is still costly today, however it is ideal for large homes with heavy duty bandwidth applications including 4k and 8k video streaming, online gaming and still more. This Orbi rbke963 is very popular and becomes one of best mesh wifi system with premium model so far.    

Continued to best mesh wifi system part 2