Netgear Introduces Orbi Routers for Wi-Fi 6 Mesh Networks

Netgear announces its Orbi Wi-Fi 6 Mesh System. The mesh system with support for 802.1ax WiFi will be available in October for a price of 799 euros, which includes a router and a satellite.

The new Orbi generation appears in the AX6000 series and the router and satellite bundle comes under the product designation RBK852. The parts are a bit wider and heavier than those of the RBK50 bundle from the previous AC3000 generation. The range has remained the same at 350 square meters.

On the other hand, there is an upgrade from Wi-Fi-ac to Wi-Fi-ax, or from Wi-Fi 5 to Wi-Fi 6, and an increase from six to eight antennas. The Orbi offers a maximum bandwidth of 1200Mbit/s on 2.4GHz and 2400Mbit/s on 5GHz, with a backhaul of 4×4 channels on 5GHz of 1200Mbit/s for the connection between router and satellite. Compared to Wi-Fi 5, Wi-Fi 6 offers, among other things, mu-mimo for a higher upload bandwidth and there is the 4g technology ofdma, which should lead to greater efficiency for more than one user. The latter would make the mesh system better equipped for, for example, simultaneous streaming by different users in a household.

Both the router and the satellite also have four gigabit Ethernet ports. In addition, a 2.5Gbit/s WAN port is provided and there is also support for wan link aggregation to bundle one of the gigabit Ethernet ports for WAN purposes.

The Orbi AX6000 has 512MB of flash memory and 1GB of ram. The chipset is Qualcomms Networking Pro 1200 and part of it is a Qualcomm quad-core operating at 2.2GHz.