Upgrading our WORST Wifi Setup - NETGEAR Nighthawk Pro Gaming Router DUMA OS Showcase

[JonoT]

 

Thanks, NETGEAR for sponsoring this video! Pick up a NETGEAR Nighthawk Pro Gaming Router on Amazon at https://lmg.gg/netgearnighthawk

 

We drove all the way out to Colton’s house to upgrade his WIFI with networking hardware from NETGEAR, including the XR500 router and Nighthawk X6S Mesh Extender.
 

[AnonymousGuy]

Wireless performance is pretty much never the actual problem unless you're in a large house with range issues, it's router performance that you should address with an Untangle or pFSense box.  These "gaming" wireless routers have shit-tier specs for routing performance....512MB of ram...really?

[Guest]

Will there be a Friday livestream today?

[SkyHound0202]

Wired Gigabit Ethernet Master Race

[Guest]

Have had this router for a few months as an upgrade to the old nighthawk, Duma OS is a huge upgrade in terms of stability. Used to get a lot of errors with the old one, this is much much better. Enjoy.

[Tubbee]

So is there actually a difference from the router your isp gives you compared to one like this?

is there any speed gain at all?

[AnonymousGuy]

6 minutes ago, comander said:

"it depends"

If you're on a 50Mbps connection you really don't need much processing power or RAM to handle it. 
Heck you can do QoS, non-accelerated on just about anything. 

$40 (on sale) EdgeRouter-X is good for SQM QoS in the 100-150Mbps range even. 

As far as range is concerned... more APs at opposite ends of the house. 

I would say that number of active clients is more important than the connection speed.  I can download a gigabit speed file all day long and any router can do it.  But when you get a 6 person household with everyone loading up games and streaming that a router gets melted if it's not powerful enough.  And if you want to add in any sort of live packet processing (antivirus or whatever) then these all-in-ones just can't do it at anything above 20Mbit.

[Nystemy]

To be fair here.
Colton's reflection on the upgrade after 2 weeks of usage is a very valuable addition to the video, and I wouldn't mind seeing it in more of these videos focusing on improving an experience.

[Kevo05s]

I thought Colton got fired a few years ago... Twice actually?       /S

 

Good video guys!

[mynameisjuan]

Ugh the cringe of reaching to show off this router, especially after the range extender and hiding the phone when getting "double the speed"... I mean it's hard showing off a "gaming router" which in reality doesn't add much

 

 

 

[Razor512]

For the anti bufferbloat, you do not need to lower it so much. The goal is when high priority packets are detected, it will cap the WAN throughput to whatever throughput is set by those sliders.

 

The most efficient way to use it, is to measure your throughput multiple times throughput the day on a wired connection to get an idea of how much your throughput fluctuates. Then using the lowest point that is reaches on average, set the antibuffer bloat to probably 5% or so under that lowest point. That will ensure that you are never 100% saturating the WAN connection when high priority traffic is detected.

 

Aside from that, the per device throughput sharing can be adjusted to determine how the throughput is shared during times of WAN saturation after the anti-bufferbloat has done its job.

 

That feature should be used mainly for devices which do adaptive quality while streaming, since they tend to drop the quality when packets get dropped, and they can't really tell the router that it could stream at a higher quality if more throughput was available, you should instead have it set to ensure that it gets something like 30Mbps guaranteed when the connection is saturated.

 

Also for the X6s extender, there are 2 ways you can use it,you can have it use the 3 stream radio as the back haul or the 2 stream radio as the back haul. If you will not have many devices on the extender, then you may get better results by having it use the 3 stream radio as the back haul.

 

PS also be sure to ensure that the share excess option is turned on when it comes to the per device throughput settings that way it doesn't slow them all down 100% of the time, you only want those ratios to kick in when the connection is saturated.

 

[Egg-Roll]

The problem I see with Coltons network isn't the devices necessarily, it's the fact he is running Cable. Unlike DSL/Fiber (unless it is fiber, but looks cable) Cable will shit bricks if everyone locally turns on their TV to watch the big game or if everyone decides to download the next update of GTA V. I've seen it in Toronto, not saying it is the issue but my guess it's a very good chance. In other words he can have the best of the best but because of cable he'll never get the full use.

 

So because how cable works his issues could be caused by big games while playing, where as after this install 2 weeks nothing good has been on (and obviously before the Raptors took over the world). If shaw decided his area would work good on a 10 gbps connection and there are 500 people on it... You see where this is going right? Not to mention cable traffic at the same time which could cause issues.

[Luscious]

I've been using Netgear stuff for close to 10 years now. First was wireless G, then N and now AC. They've improved the features of earlier models, run a lot cooler and look better as well.

 

http://lgponthemove.blogspot.com/search/label/Netgear

 

One thing I could nit pick on is the lack of a matching 5 or 8-port switch for folks who just have too many devices LOL The second thing would be to bring 10GBE into their lineup, both for routers and consumer switches. So many high-end motherboards are coming with 10GBE now that it makes no sense to still be plugging into a 1GBE port on your router/switch.

[Razor512]

I wish router makers would just move to having the high end routers include 4-6 10GbE ports.

It is horrible that they are still mainly using 1GbE that is beyond obsolete. Why must we still be stuck with 20 year old tech in our mainstream routers?

[mynameisjuan]

1 hour ago, Razor512 said:

I wish router makers would just move to having the high end routers include 4-6 10GbE ports.

It is horrible that they are still mainly using 1GbE that is beyond obsolete. Why must we still be stuck with 20 year old tech in our mainstream routers?

99% of people don't need 10gig. Most people can't come close to a gig. Unless you are transferring video or 10s of gigs worth of files through the LAN there is not benefit to 10gig. And that just at the switch level let alone router

 

1gig will be here to stay for a while. Plus most consumer routers cannot handle 10gig without software trickery.

[Razor512]

The issue is that without 10GbE, most NAS devices as well as home servers are being bottlenecked significantly.

 

Realistically speaking, 10GbE should have become mainstream at the consumer level in 2008, with 10GbE becoming mainstream by 2015, and 2019 should really be a push for 40GbE in the home.

[kirashi]

3 hours ago, Egg-Roll said:

The problem I see with Coltons network isn't the devices necessarily, it's the fact he is running Cable. Unlike DSL/Fiber (unless it is fiber, but looks cable) Cable will shit bricks if everyone locally turns on their TV to watch the big game or if everyone decides to download the next update of GTA V. I've seen it in Toronto, not saying it is the issue but my guess it's a very good chance. In other words he can have the best of the best but because of cable he'll never get the full use.

 

So because how cable works his issues could be caused by big games while playing, where as after this install 2 weeks nothing good has been on (and obviously before the Raptors took over the world). If shaw decided his area would work good on a 10 gbps connection and there are 500 people on it... You see where this is going right? Not to mention cable traffic at the same time which could cause issues.

This is not quite correct, depending on the cable ISPs available where you live. HFC cable networks are built on a mixture of fibre & coax cabling, and in most areas (at least with Shaw Communications in Canada) actually do not exhibit over-saturation if the area has been upgraded to adequate standards. Essentially, an HFC network is fed by fibre lines to the node, after which its' converted to coax cable designed to long runs, with amplifiers added as required, before it gets to a tap block and then fed to your home via the drop cable.

 

Most cable ISPs understand the saturation problems they still exhibited about 5-6 years ago and have upgraded their HFC networks from the head-end to the drop cable as required in a given area in order to ensure there is no over-saturation on the network. Obviously, in a brand new neighborhood, there will be growing pains if the number of connected customers outgrows what a node can handle, but this is monitored by automated tools by competent ISPs so that plant technicians can plan & perform upgrades as needed.

 

If you want to learn more about how DOCSIS 3.1 Full Duplex is capable of speeds faster than gigabit fibre, check out https://www.cablelabs.com/technologies/full-duplex-docsis -- the industry is still far away from being able to provide these speeds, of course, but once ready it should allow for faster speeds for all customers without the cost of installing fibre to everyone's individual homes.

 

[mynameisjuan]

40 minutes ago, Razor512 said:

The issue is that without 10GbE, most NAS devices as well as home servers are being bottlenecked significantly.

 

Realistically speaking, 10GbE should have become mainstream at the consumer level in 2008, with 10GbE becoming mainstream by 2015, and 2019 should really be a push for 40GbE in the home.

Again I think you are over estimating how many people have NASes and even then gig is plenty for streaming.

 

Also 40gig is a dead standard and hardware was not ready for 10gig for consumers in 2008

[Egg-Roll]

8 minutes ago, kirashi said:

This is not quite correct, depending on the cable ISPs available where you live. HFC cable networks are built on a mixture of fibre & coax cabling, and in most areas (at least with Shaw Communications in Canada) actually do not exhibit over-saturation if the area has been upgraded to adequate standards. Essentially, an HFC network is fed by fibre lines to the node, after which its' converted to coax cable designed to long runs, with amplifiers added as required, before it gets to a tap block and then fed to your home via the drop cable.

 

Most cable ISPs understand the saturation problems they still exhibited about 5-6 years ago and have upgraded their HFC networks from the head-end to the drop cable as required in a given area in order to ensure there is no over-saturation on the network. Obviously, in a brand new neighborhood, there will be growing pains if the number of connected customers outgrows what a node can handle, but this is monitored by automated tools by competent ISPs so that plant technicians can plan & perform upgrades as needed.

 

If you want to learn more about how DOCSIS 3.1 Full Duplex is capable of speeds faster than gigabit fibre, check out https://www.cablelabs.com/technologies/full-duplex-docsis -- the industry is still far away from being able to provide these speeds, of course, but once ready it should allow for faster speeds for all customers without the cost of installing fibre to everyone's individual homes.

 

The keyword in your entire thing is most the issue is most providers including Shaw won't upgrade a small community in any rush which looks to be the case in Coltons situation (or at least depicted in the video). It's the same in Toronto, the old building area I was going based off of, rogers never really did much to upgrade the area (mostly houses low rise apartments and a handful of 30ish story condos), sure they saw the jump from 150 to 300+ and eventually the potential in the future to get 1gbps but they still saw the plaguing issues of Cable. Just remember one small detail that you forgot, even with upgraded cable if they decided not to upgrade the equipment or play hand-me-down from areas that get new stuff first (saves money and pushes life time on equipment while "upgrading" old development areas) on one end you will only ever see the max speed that equipment can handle, so if the old equipment can handle 50gbps but the fiber can handle 250+gbps you'll only ever see the 50. You claim Shaw wont over-saturate, but if 90% of the time over-saturation will not happen you bet your ass they will not put the best equipment in because it's cheaper not too, only reason for them to put good equipment in is if the network becomes over saturated and clients start complaining, and I mean really complaining as in can't watch netflix and can't stream a game during peak times (5-11PM), wait sounds familiar 

 

Another good example is where I live I live in a place with a decent population (not in Toronto), plenty of new builds but neither Rogers or Bell are investing much money on bringing faster speeds to me. The fastest I can get is 50/10 for DSL (100 directly from bell+phone hookup etc) and 250/25 for Cable(can get 1gbps from rogers but I actually don't have cable ran to where I live), and trust me what you get on speedtests is never promised to be sustained on Cable regardless of specs of the cable and hardware, I know no company that will over provide a developed area unless there is a genuine reason to, aka a lot of the homes turned into registered businesses or has a really high mix of residence and business units. In Toronto the people who had cable internet actually got 1mbps speeds during peak times, they where paying for 50mbps I think maybe 150 I forget now... If I was to get today the same 250-300mbps that Colton has I will likely see the same issues he has even with new cable ran to my door, simply because of old tech being used at one end that is out of our control as customers.

 

Fun fact where I used to live in Toronto has 1.5 gbps fiber from bell, want to know why? It's in a area where a good portion of the main road residencies it's near has been covered into businesses. I think some parts of where I currently live do have 1gbps as well but as said before companies like Bell, Rogers, and even Shaw have no intention to go out of their way to put shiny brand new equipment in areas that will not use it when areas that can and will use it (not to mention actually pay big bucks for it) could be more financially beneficial. So they can lay cables all day long and hell even right up to Coltons front door, but if they put a piece of tech on the other end that will only push out last gen speeds (like say 300mbps avg connection) he and his neighbors will never see those top speeds continuously till they get that fancy new equipment, they could get it tomorrow or in 5 years time when 1gbps is now the slow of yesteryear, and 5gbps is hot shit.

 

You can only go as fast as the slowest part of the setup, and that part might not be the speed cap enforced by what your paying for, remember all these ads are "up to" aka you can be getting 1kbps and they are still providing you a up to 1gbps connection.

 

Not to mention Shaw is a joke, I left Freedom about 1.5 years after Shaw bought it because they did exactly what Cable companies do, push the hot new shit in the newest parts and/or most dense parts leaving most of their smaller and large coverage area customers with old/dying tech. I left Freedom because I literally had 4/5 bars 4G data (that worked) but be damned if I needed to make a 9-1-1 call because nothing was going out or in (needed CAA, house call luckily), because the old equipment needed to be replaced/repaired/maintenance. I'm sitting pretty with my laughable low dsl speeds, 99.99999% I get those speeds, if I go with rogers today I might see those speeds after spending $100+ in fees at least, plus paying double for something I might never see true speeds for.

 

Long story short: MOVE TO THE CITY FOR BEST RESULTS!

And yes I know about half of where I live have had some decent cable/dsl rework done esp closer to the main roads (bell dominant area) but I still don't see the speeds available that are in Toronto, I'm not mad about it either because I know money talks for these big companies, I won't see Toronto speeds till Toronto sees speeds that the equipment can't handle (or it gets refinished, and replaced with new in 5-10 years). They are spending the millions in upgrading the cable underground because it's cheaper to upgrade as needed with the new stuff rather than replace old wire with old tech wire that one day would need to be upgraded anyways. So you can take your link and specs (which I know about already) and toss it because while the speeds of the cable are there and equipment exists that can push it, reality is just because I have a fiber 50 ft away from me that can deliver 1gbps+ doesn't mean the equipment 50 ft away from me can deliver that speed, I'm sure if I paid *insert company* the tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy said equipment I would get it the second they get it in and installed, but I won't and nor is anyone else would pay that price hence we have to wait.

 

Unless you actually have proof they are upgrading the systems as well the cable, which I can't ever see happening for anywhere but dense population areas because of the financial costs.

[kirashi]

6 hours ago, Egg-Roll said:

Unless you actually have proof they are upgrading the systems as well the cable, which I can't ever see happening for anywhere but dense population areas because of the financial costs.

I work for an ISP, but really can't reveal much proof without risking repercussions, so I don't blame ya if you don't believe me.

 

You're spot on that living in the city usually nets you the best internet, but would probably be quite surprised to know that those living in rural areas actually have it quite good too because the fiber portion of an HFC network runs along major highways, then splits off to each major neighborhood. That being said, there certainly are some areas that don't quite get the same treatment as others because it's not financially viable for an ISP to upgrade the network in said area due to a variety of factors. A good ISP will know this before they provide service to customers so they can offer what they are capable of providing. For instance, an ISPs greatest speed might be 500mbps, but in an area where they can only do 300mbps they'd be smarter to limit what they offer to the 300mbps package, and educate customers on why the 500mbps option isn't available.

 

What you're referring to on the equipment side of things is true, however, you're not understanding that it's up to the customer to contact the ISP if they wish to receive a higher tier of internet package and corresponding Customer Premise Equipment (modem) that goes with it. It does no good for the customer or ISP to provide an upgraded modem capable of handing 500mbps if the customer still only pays for the 300mbps package, for instance, same as it does no good for customers to buy a "1 billion megajolts per ultrawatt gaming quabbity" router if their internet speed can't actually provide this. (Sadly, many consumers still don't have a clue how wireless actually works.)

 

Now, there are definitely some ISPs out there (looking at you, Australia NBN providers) who market the crap out of "up to" speeds only to never be able to provide even 1/3 the speed because they don't actually have any logging or tracking in place for their network. The ISP I work for actually does have a couple of tools that run measurements on nodes in a given area to determine if those nodes are under-performing, after which the plant operations teams are alerted to make the necessary upgrades, but for customers of ISPs that don't (or those that do, but whose marketing departments are dodgy) all I can say is I feel sorry for ya.

 

Below is my speedtest results dating back to 2013 - to be clear, I haven't run tests on a regular basis, so all the results below are randomly gathered whenever I decided to run a test because of <reasons> over the years. We originally had a 30mbps plan, then bumped to a 150mbps plan, and now have 300mbps download. The first dip you see in the second half was because I decided that enabling QoS on my Netgear R7000 was a good idea (pro tip: it's most definitely not, because it's broken as hell), and the second 2 dips were because I was messing around with QoS settings after installing & upgrading Advanced Tomato firmware, respectively. Other than that, our speeds have been nice and stable, and we live in an area where both the local ISPs own website claim that their top tier packages are "not avaialble" despite being able to get them anyway.

 

[Egg-Roll]

1 hour ago, kirashi said:

What you're referring to on the equipment side of things is true, however, you're not understanding that it's up to the customer to contact the ISP if they wish to receive a higher tier of internet package and corresponding Customer Premise Equipment (modem) that goes with it. It does no good for the customer or ISP to provide an upgraded modem capable of handing 500mbps if the customer still only pays for the 300mbps package, for instance, same as it does no good for customers to buy a "1 billion megajolts per ultrawatt gaming quabbity" router if their internet speed can't actually provide this. (Sadly, many consumers still don't have a clue how wireless actually works.)

 

I was referring to the company side of things the local access points might not have the equipment to push the numbers needed and it is not financially logical for said company to upgrade that equipment at said time. No company is going to put new equipment because one person wants it, even if everyone wants it they still might not, even if the person knows full well the only thing holding it back is the company upgrading the local access points equipment. That is what I'm currently stuck in with Bell, they have yet to upgrade the local switch/node (assuming those are correct words for what I'm thinking of) to provide the speeds yet I'm sure we could obtain said speeds if they did. That's what I'm referring to, whether or not they seriously over sell the area is up to the company.

 

The equipment I'm referring to is the stuff companies like Bell has to buy homes for. I remember reading a article about it a few years ago about a resident house being boarded up (or blacked out windows) with security cameras that turned out to be a Bell building, I've also seen it in Toronto as well where I used to live.

 

I simply don't trust Cable companies because how Cable works, with DSL you get what you see. So if that means I'm stuck in the stone age so be it  It's better than having a angry wife because she can't watch Netflix while I'm trying to play games or other things that would require consistent internet. Like I said I could get 50mbps (with 10 up), I just don't feel like dealing with Bells workers breaking the law trying to swayed me into going with them. Last time I dealt with one they did something at the local box then tried to pin the blame on my 3rd party provider when I had issues, this was before the law was put in. (I'm sure there is a law)

[Lathlaer]

16 hours ago, mynameisjuan said:

Ugh the cringe of reaching to show off this router, especially after the range extender and hiding the phone when getting "double the speed"... I mean it's hard showing off a "gaming router" which in reality doesn't add much

Unfortunately I agree. It didn't look good. Dunno how much of it is editing or how much they wanted to hide but Linus saying to Colton "it's like double the speed" at 7:35 without showing anything looks cringy at best, dishonest at worst.

[ahuckphin]

I guess James' parents aren't employees 

[Razor512]

20 minutes ago, Lathlaer said:

Unfortunately I agree. It didn't look good. Dunno how much of it is editing or how much they wanted to hide but Linus saying to Colton "it's like double the speed" at 7:35 without showing anything looks cringy at best, dishonest at worst.

If set up right, it can offer good performance, I use it as a wired access point, but under wireless, if at a distance of around 10-12 ft line of sight, and a wired client connected to the X6s, you can get around 600-650Mbps on the 2 stream radio backhaul, or around 900-940Mbps if using the 3 stream radio as a backhaul. While it will certainly drop with longer distances, the benefit of it is pretty much the same as using another wireless router that offers a wireless bridge mode.

 

Basically, you can maintain a higher PHY rate at distance due to better antenna gain in these devices, as well as both endpoints being able to use close to a 1 watt transmit power, while most client devices will be at a 50-100mw transmit power.

[Lathlaer]

1 hour ago, Razor512 said:

If set up right, it can offer good performance, I use it as a wired access point, but under wireless, if at a distance of around 10-12 ft line of sight, and a wired client connected to the X6s, you can get around 600-650Mbps on the 2 stream radio backhaul, or around 900-940Mbps if using the 3 stream radio as a backhaul. While it will certainly drop with longer distances, the benefit of it is pretty much the same as using another wireless router that offers a wireless bridge mode.

 

Basically, you can maintain a higher PHY rate at distance due to better antenna gain in these devices, as well as both endpoints being able to use close to a 1 watt transmit power, while most client devices will be at a 50-100mw transmit power.

I don't know enough about this type of gear to judge and by no means am I saying that it's not doing what it's supposed to do - I am just remarking upon the awkward moment in this video