Netgear R6300 Dual Band Gigabit WiFi Router Review

The latest consumer routers from Netgear offer up an easy to use and intuitive user interface based around what Netgear have called their Genie platform. The UI is split clearly into two sections that give a basic control over certain features and then a more advanced section for further alterations. The basic home page gives a quick and clear overview of the routers status including current wireless settings and how many devices are currently connected.

Depending on the ISP, some internet settings may need to be entered in order to get connected to a third party modem or service.

The wireless page gives options to change common settings such as SSID, encryption types and security key.

In the basic window, you do get a detailed list of devices that are connected to the router with their IP address, name and MAC address.

ReadySHARE is a feature that Netgear have integrated into their latest systems to make file and printer sharing a whole lot easier. File sharing is as simple as connecting a USB drive to the router and enabling the drive through  the user interface. Printer sharing requires a USB control centre to be downloaded to each system that redirects the local USB port to the router for printing. Once installed, this driver runs in the background with no further intervention required.

The last new feature that we see with Netgear’s routers is a guest network that creates a separate SSID that can be set to mask any devices from the rest of the network, giving them internet access. This is particularly useful to prevent unwanted users from accessing any other systems on the network whilst connected.

As you may be able to work out, the advanced page gives a more in depth access to the router with more options to play around with, particularly useful for the more tech-savvy users amongst us.

The smart setup wizard is one of the few options that doesn’t differ between the two configuration tabs.

WPS is a quick an simple solution to getting new wireless devices connected to the router with out having to enter a passphrase each time.

As any other router, the R6300 has a built in DHCP server to assign IP addresses across the network. Through the advanced LAN setup, the IP address can also be configured to a particular pool (for example 10.0.0.x as shown here) and and subnet (255.255.255.0 by default).

Another feature that the R6300 hosts along with ReadySHARE is for a media server. This works when a storage drive is connected to the router. The system automatically scans for content and shares it across the network as though it were a normal network device.

On top of wireless security, securing those devices that are already connected is crucial and in some cases, this can include filtering out certain websites that may contain harmful content in one way or another.

Keeping the router up-to-date with the latest firmware can be done in one of two ways. Firstly the system automatically flags up if a newer firmware is available allowing the user to update the system, and secondly a manual check and update page allows for downloaded firmware to be installed.

A large number of ISPs impose usage caps in their internet packages and more often than not, users go over their usage allowance and incur charges. A nifty option that we are seeing with the new line of Netgear routers is a traffic meter that can cut access to the internet when the usage cap is reached, whether this be in bandwidth or time.

Test system:

• Asus Maximus V Forumla
• Intel Core i7 3770k
• Corsair Vengeance 1866MHz 16GB
• AMD Radeon HD 7970
• Corsair H80
• Corsair HX1050W
• Kingston HyperX 240GB SSD
• 3 x AOC E2795VH

We would like to thank AOC, Asus, Corsair, Kingston and Lian Li for supplying us with our test system components. Many different software applications are also used to gain the broadest spectrum of results, which allows for the fairest testing possible.

Software used:

• LAN Speed Test