Netgear withdrew its new Nighthawk RAXE500 router at CES today. This is a true tri-band Wi-Fi 6e device that operates three independent wireless networks using spectrum in the recently unregulated 2.4, 5 and 6 GHz frequency bands to provide large amounts of bandwidth – theoretical maximum speed of 10 , 8 Gbps combined – with very little latency.
The FCC opened 1,200 MHz of bandwidth in the 6 GHz frequency band for Wi-Fi in April 2020. The main benefit is the availability of 59 non-overlapping channels in this spectrum, compared to 25 in the 5 GHz band and only three in the 2.4 GHz band. Wi-Fi 6e equipment is likely to have a slightly shorter range – particularly compared to 2.4 GHz – because shorter wavelength radio signals are more easily absorbed by walls and even the atmosphere.
NetgearThe Nighthawk RAXE500 can take advantage of the fastest residential broadband speeds available through its multi-gig WAN and link aggregation capabilities.
The 6 GHz frequency band, on the other hand, will be much less congested. In addition, only Wi-Fi 6e customers will be allowed to use this spectrum. The short-term drawback, on the other hand, is that there are very few Wi-Fi 6e customers to begin with. Intel has a share now and Broadcom and Samsung will have one soon, but that’s it.
The Nighthawk RAXE500 is powered by a 1.8 GHz quad-core processor and is equipped with a multi-gig (2.5 Gbps) WAN port for those with very fast broadband connections. Two of its five gigabit Ethernet ports can be aggregated for 2 Gbps LAN or WAN connections. The bat wing router also has two USB 3.0 ports. It will be available at the end of the first quarter and will sell for $ 600.
NetgearThe Netgear Nighthawk AX6 / 6-Stream is a DOCSIS 3.1 cable modem / Wi-Fi 6 router combination.
Netgear is also introducing a new DOCSIS 3.1 cable modem with an integrated Wi-Fi 6 router. The Nighthawk AX6 / 6-Stream (model number CAX30) is compatible with Xfinity, Spectrum and Cox’s broadband cable service. It will sell for $ 300 when it is available later this month, joining offers cable modem currently available from Netgear, the Nighthawk WiFi6 AX6000 (model CAX80, $ 430) and the Orbi Tri-Band WiFi6 cable network system (model CBK752, or $ 600 for the router plus a satellite, $ 450 for cable modem / solo router).