Wireless Reviews

Storage Performance

The NTFS / USB 3.0 performance benchmarks from the Router Charts shows the top five products tested with the current test process. This is the first NETGEAR router to break the 100 MB/s barrier for both write and read. Although Linksys' WRT3200ACM holds the top spot, it's not by much. FAT32 write performance dropped to 81 MB/s, but read held up at 104 MB/s.

Storage Performance Comparison - USB 3.0 / NTFS

Routing Performance

The NETGEAR R9000 was loaded with V1.0.1.20 firmware and tested with our V4 router test process. You can download an Excel test summary that contains all functional and performance test results.

Table 2 summarizes the performance test results.

Total Simultaneous TCP/IP and UDP throughput are proving to be better performance differentiators than the unidirectional benchmarks. The benchmark charts below are filtered for AC2600, AC3100 and AD7200 products. It's surprising that the R9000 ranks as low as it does for TCP, given the processing horsepower it has. It does relatively better for UDP, but, like most other products, still has over 60% packet loss at the posted throughput.

Total Simultaneous throughput comparison

The R9000 failed both the TCP and UDP connection tests. Most products pass the TCP test, but the R9000 completed only 2049 out of 3000 connections tested.

The Functional Score of 88.6% ranks it in the lower half of all routers tested with the latest V4 router test process. The failed tests indicated problems with defending against Smurf and Fraggle DoS attacks, and VPN passthrough, DNS and UPnP functions.

Wireless Performance

The NETGEAR R9000 was tested with our Revision 9 wireless test process with V1.0.1.20 version firmware loaded. Channel 6 and 20 MHz B/W mode was set for 2.4 GHz and Channel 40 and 80 MHz B/W mode was set for 5 GHz. I forgot to take photos with the router in the test chamber. The antennas were centered X and Y on the turntable, with all pointed straight up. The 0 ° position had the router front facing the chamber antennas.

Since the R9000 is an AC2600 class 4x4 router at its core, the average throughput plots below were filtered for AC2600, AC3100 and AD7200 routers. It's fair to include both AC2600 and AC3100 because the Intel 8260 2x2 test client doesn't support the 1024 QAM responsible for AC3100's inflated class number.

The average 2.4 GHz throughput chart shows the TP-Link and NETGEAR AD7200 routers at the same average throughput on downlin, but with the NETGEAR doing better for uplink. Remember these numbers are the average of all points tested with a 2x3 test client.

2.4 GHz average throughput comparison

5 GHz averages show the R9000 with an 18 Mbps lead over the TP-Link Talon on downlink and over 60 Mbps on uplink.

5 GHz average throughput comparison

I compared the R9000 to the TP-Link Talon, TP-LINK Archer C3150 and NETGEAR R7800 for the throughput vs. attenuation analysis. The 2.4 GHz downlink plot shows three of the four routers running about the same, with a slight initial dip for the TP-Link Archer C3150, out to around 18 dB. After that, only the C3150 maintains its throughput edge for the rest of the run.

2.4 GHz Downlink Throughput vs. Attenuation

For 2.4 GHz uplink both AD7200 class routers produce highest initial throughput. The TP-Link Talon, however, falls off rapidly after the 18 dB test and runs below the other products for the rest of the run until it disconnects first. This indicates a range disadvantage for this benchmark.

2.4 GHz Uplink Throughput vs. Attenuation

The 5 GHz downlink plot shows a real performance difference with strong signal levels (low attenuation values). But the R9000 appears the most well-behaved with steady throughput out to the 18 dB point and then matching the throughput falloff of all three other produdts from 24 dB onward.

5 GHz Downlink Throughput vs. Attenuation

For 5 GHz uplink, the TP-Link AD7200 turns in the poorest performance, and the R9000 and Archer C3150 pretty much equal for best performance.

5 GHz Uplink Throughput vs. Attenuation