Netgear Introduces Nighthawk X10 Router With 802.11ad

Netgear has introduced a new router. The Nighthawk X10 supports the 802.11ad standard at 60GHz and can theoretically achieve wireless speeds of up to 7.2Gbit/s. Furthermore, the router is able to run a Plex server.

The router is equipped with four antennas, in addition to the usual 2.4 and 5 GHz frequencies, it can also broadcast a network at 60 GHz for support for the IEEE 802.11ad standard. In addition, it provides support for mu-mimo. The router has a Gigabit WAN port, a 10 Gigabit SFP+ port and six Gigabit LAN ports, two of which can work together to achieve speeds of up to 2Gbit/s.

According to the specifications, the router has a quad-core processor that runs at 1.7GHz and 1GB of RAM. The router has two USB 3.0 ports to which external storage devices can be connected. Netgear uses a suggested retail price of $499, which converted and including VAT is about 550 euros. At the beginning of December, Netgear will make the final euro price known and then the router will also be available.

The IEEE 802.11ad specification was part of the WiGig standard. The standard was established in 2009 by the Wireless Gigabit Alliance. WiGig forms a platform on which wireless alternatives to HDMI, Displayport and USB should be able to work. The Wi-Fi Alliance started in 2010 to work on the standard together with the WiGig alliance, in 2013 the development was fully transferred to the Wi-Fi Alliance. Due to the short wavelength of the 60GHz band, the wireless signal has poor range through walls and is mainly aimed at achieving very high transfer rates within the same room.