Netgear R6300 802.11ac Wireless Router Review

Netgear R6300 Wi-Fi Performance Testing

We wanted to test our router in a real world application so we connected the Netgear R6300 to a PC running Windows 7 64-bit and configured it using Automatic settings for both 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz bands. We then took a laptop PC containing an Intel Centrino Advanced-N 6230 wireless adapter and moved it 25-feet away from the router. We didn’t tell the client anything more than the SSID for each router and let it automatically choose the channel to connect to. The routers were set to Unsecure Mode (for fastest data throughput), and with WMM / QoS turned ON. After connecting, we ran the PC application LAN Speed Test (LST) to measure file transfer and network speeds.

LST builds a file in memory and then transfers the packet without the effects of windows file caching. It then reports the time and calculates the network speed.

We repeated the test 2 more times rotating the router 90 degrees after each test to make sure that the routers speed was affected adversely by its orientation.

Test Results: The Netgear R6300 wireless-n performance turns out to be very solid. Speed tests for the 1 MB packets sizes were second only to that of the TP-Link-TL-WDR4300. Maximum Read speeds for the 802.11n devices are very close with no real separation between the different manufacturers.

Test Results: We test packets of 100 MB in size because they best simulate multimedia data that passes via your Wi-Fi. The Netgear R6300 again hangs relatively close to the leading Netgear WNDR 4500 N900 and delivers at a very good Read rate speed near 130 Mbps. If you were streaming data, this would allow you to stream HD movies stutter free.

Now, lets take a look at how the Netgear R6300 works with wireless 802.11ac.