INTRODUCTION

   This may strike some of you as a bit odd but the first thing i do whenever i go to a hotel, restaurant or cafeteria I’ve never been in the past i always check to see if they have WiFi available and if so what is its strength and range. To my surprise most places feature mediocre WiFi signal strength at best with average overall range so in most cases it's not easy to get access especially if there are many people already logged on. This of course is not a problem we encounter at home or at the office but that doesn't mean people are not always looking for ways to improve both signal strength and range. Lately many manufacturers have focused in bringing consumers the latest 802.11ac standard which they many times marry with the older 802.11n standard to boost available wireless signal strength and in some cases even range. However it was no other than Netgear that first took things a step further with the revolutionary Nighthawk X6 R8000 router which is here with us today.

   NETGEAR (NASDAQGM: NTGR) is a global networking company that delivers innovative products to consumers, businesses and service providers. For consumers, the company makes high performance, dependable and easy to use home networking, storage and digital media products to connect people with the Internet and their content and devices. For businesses, NETGEAR provides networking, storage and security solutions without the cost and complexity of big IT. The company also supplies top service providers with retail-proven, mobile broadband solutions for their customers on the go. NETGEAR products are built on a variety of proven technologies such as wireless, Ethernet and Powerline, with a focus on reliability and ease-of-use. NETGEAR products are sold in approximately 44,000 retail locations around the globe, and through approximately 37,000 value-added resellers. The company's headquarters are in San Jose, Calif., with additional offices in over 25 countries. NETGEAR is an ENERGY STAR® partner.

   As made clear by the model name the main difference between the NightHawk R7000 which we reviewed a while back and the NightHawk X6 R8000 are the 6 high-gain Antennas which effectively allowed the R8000 to be the first tri-band router to ever hit the market. The R8000 manages that by broadcasting the regular 2.4GHz band on one channel (via 256QAM modulation) and two 5GHz bands on two separate channels adding up to a total bandwidth output of 3200Mbps (600Mbps on the 2.4GHz band and 2x1300Mbps on the 5GHz bands). However for the above to happen Netgear needed something powerful under the hood of the NightHawk X6 R8000 and for that they used Broadcom's 5G WiFi XStream five-core system which supports Beamforming technology and allows the broadcast of up to six 802.11ac and three 802.11n streams simultaneously. Other specifications include a dual-core 1GHz processor, 256MB of DRAM, 128MB of flash memory, three offload processors, 4 Gigabit Ethernet RJ-45 ports, WAN port, USB 2.0 port and a USB 3.0 port.