Don't expect this system to bottleneck your network speeds anytime soon.Īs for the rest of the ports, each device in the system, router and satellites alike, includes a LAN jack that supports wired connections at speeds of up to 2.5Gbps, which is great if you plan to connect the things with an Ethernet cable for a fully wired backhaul. Conveniently colored in can't-miss yellow, that WAN port supports incoming speeds as high as 10Gbps, which is twice as fast as the fastest internet plans available anywhere in the US. The Orbi AXE11000 router features a WAN port that supports incoming speeds of up to 10Gbps, which is twice as fast as the fastest internet plans in the country.Įach device looks identical, but they aren't one of them is your designated router, and it includes the WAN port that you'll use to connect the system with your modem via Ethernet cable. In other words, they don't just look like Orbi routers they look like nice Orbi routers - and they're also available direct from Netgear in an all-black build, which is another nice design touch. Design-wise, they look quite similar to the previous generation of upright, incisor-ish Orbi systems, but the addition of bronze accents at the base gives them an appropriately premium look in comparison. The Netgear Orbi AXE11000 is a mesh system made of three large-sized devices, each equipped with 12 separate internal antennas, high-power amplifiers and a 2.2GHz quad-core processor. This is as strong a router as you'd expect for the price, and it might not be long before most of us will want our home networks to support Wi-Fi 6E, but there's no need to break the bank here. It's mostly a moot point since the system works so well, but it also makes the Orbi AXE11000 tough to recommend for most households, especially up against worthy alternatives that cost considerably less. That makes this mesh system a bit like a bodybuilder - excessively powerful, but maybe not quite as nimble as it ought to be. It was still able to max out my average speeds in every room of every environment I tested it in, but it wasn't quite as flawless as its predecessor, the less advanced Orbi AX6000. With four bands to juggle, the mesh has more work to do as it routes your connection, and the system seemed to struggle with that process a bit more than earlier-gen Orbi setups.
Higher-end extenders won’t require this so it’s something to look out for.Sure enough, the Orbi AXE11000 was an impressive performer when I tested the system out at my home and at the CNET Smart Home - but it wasn't perfect. Some lower-end extenders require you to create a separate Wi-Fi network - like “Smith_EXT” - that you have to manually connect to every time you walk through that part of the house.Some models allow you to plug in an Ethernet cable and connect it back to your main router, which is the best possible option as long as your home allows for it.You can alleviate some of this with a “tri-band” extender - like the Netgear EX7500 - which dedicates an antenna to communicate with your router (which is known as “backhaul”).The extension of the signal takes a bite out of its speed, in other words. “You have signal where you need it, but it can be half (and sometimes less) the speed you think you have,” explains Dionicio. And depending on the extender, the wireless signal solution comes with a few downsides: namely, the signal might be slower. Should you get a wireless range extender?Ĭompared with mesh Wi-Fi setups (which we’ll get to below), extenders are a bit more clunky to set up since they don’t integrate as seamlessly with the router. Instead, the extender just repeats the signal, acting as a middleman between your router and your computer, smartphone, TV, or whatever else you’ve got on your home network. “The router isn’t aware of the range extender.” “A range extender regenerates a signal from your router,” explains Rowell Dionicio, managing director of Packet6 and a Certified Wireless Networking Expert. You’ve probably heard of range extenders before: they’re those little plug-in devices that help broaden - or extend - the coverage of your home network.
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