Fast internet is available almost in every bigger city and with the growing popu-
larity of Fiber internet, the speeds grow higher and higher. While cable-bound
networks are ideal for stationary computers, one would not like to have a cable
tangling from his/her notebook. This is where WLAN kicks in.

Although we have WLAN with up to 450 MBit/s, the real speeds are often much lower. A typical 2.4GHz network is at 450 MBit/s offering a net bandwidth of approx, 100 MBit/s at best.

That’s why the 5GHz band has been brought to life and is said to offer much higher speeds as the 802.11a/b/g networks.

Time for me to have a peek on the next-Gen WLAN. With the 802.11ac standard on the 5GHz network, Gigabit WLAN finally has arrived. So I took the time, ordering a R6300 from Netgear.

The router itself looks quite monolithic yet eye-appealing and modern. The WAF (Woman Acceptance Factor) could also be in the upper region as this device is not the usual dull box one is seeing these days. Design-like, Netgear did a good job!

So let’s set up the thing for testdrive. The setup itself is like the other genie-based devices you get from Netgear. Appealing GUI but sometimes not that handy (especially when interchanging settings. Meaning, you can’t export the settings from a WNDR4000 and port it to the R6300 (unfortunately!)

Okay. As soon as the router was set up, I took the time to speedtest the web:

What we see here are the values of my cablecom 100/7 Fiber Internet line. Almost maxing out all values, I can finally enjoy 100% speed of my internet line!

So the new router brought a lot of breeze into the WLAN. Fast, convenient and with reserves. I like that much!

Compared to roughly 45/50 MBit/s down and 7 upstream, the new router stands for a big improvement!

Update as of September 27^th:

Gaming is no problem at all with the new router. Even the firewall is acting as it should, defending your network against most attacks from outside. Sure, it can’t compete with a Fortigate firewall but hey, this is a consumer product and thus not intended for use in SoHo-environments.

The performance is yet outstanding and configuration is done quicky once the router is initially set up. During a hefty 8hrs-game session I didn’t have any flaws with the web.

Unfortunately I can’t test the 5GHz network as my notebook seems not to detct it in any way (even setting down the 5GHz network speed to 802.11n usual speed didn’t make my SSID appear in the WLAN analyzer window. Maybe this is a glitch that the 5GHz network is currently only in 802.11ac mode and thus only visible to 802.11ac-compatible network cards/sticks.

I can’t test this right now as the Netgear-own product, the A6300 WLAN stick is not yet available. But the performance over the 2.4GHz band is yet outstanding and outwitting most of the competitors so far.

Keep checking back for updates here. As soon as I can get hands on the separate A6300 WLAN stick, I’ll post a new thest here, how much bang for the buck you’ll have with 5G WLAN!