Netgear Wifi Analytics (for Android)

Pros Free. Easy-to-navigate UI. Handy tools for optimizing home Wi-Fi.

Cons Bare bones, basic tool. Not for professional Wi-Fi deployments. Bottom Line Netgear's WiFi Analytics is a free Android app that's very handy when it comes to troubleshooting and monitoring a home network, and can be used with just about any router.

By Samara Lynn

Netgear's WiFi Analytics is a free Android app that I find very handy when it comes to troubleshooting and monitoring a home network. It's simple, but that simplicity is its strength and gives home users insight into a home wireless network, without need to know a lot about networking.

What it Does and Where to Get
This free app available on Google Play, checks the strength of a wireless signal, network status, which channels are most crowded with wireless networks, and more.

Relatively small at 459k, the app does not take up a lot of storage space on my Droid Razr M running Android 4.1.2. The app requires Android 2.2 and up.

Using the App
I have my phone connected to my test WiFi network using Netgear's R6300 router. As soon as I opened the app, the home page showed that I was connected to the router's WiFi. The same screen also has a meter with measurements of signal strength broken into Poor, Good, and Best. My network connection was in the low end of the Good area of the meter. I could also see that my signal strength was at -45 dBm and at 56%. Additionally, this screen has a button that lets you adjust the scanning time that the apps performs of the network.

There are several icons at the bottom of this screen. One is of a meter/gage, and gets you back to the screen meter view mentioned above.

The next icon is "Home." Tapping, takes you to a screen labeled "Home Testing", and is an extremely cool and useful feature. From this screen, you can test and record the signal strength for different areas in your home. By default, there are already rooms set up including: Living Room, Bedroom 1, Office…etc. You can add or edit any room. You move throughout your home and test the signal strength for every room. This feature would be fantastic for help deciding where in one's home is the best location to place a wireless extender.

Another icon at the bottom is represented by the traditional Wi-Fi symbol – tap it and all Wi-Fi networks in proximity are displayed. You can see which channel each router/access point in the area is using. If you are getting slow performance, you can adjust your channel settings if one seems crowded (careful with this, as depending on the country there are a limited number of channels you can use for the 2.4 and 5GHz bands).

Other information displayed about neighboring networks includes SSID name, encryption level, MAC address of each access point, and signal strength. You can tell the app when to auto-scan for neighboring wifi networks from this screen and you can filter the view to display only 2.4 GHz networks or only 5GHz.

Another menu option at the bottom of the screen opens the "Channel Interference" view. This view shows you the worst and best channel to set a network to; recommends channels; and shows how many networks are on a specific channel.

The next icon opens a graph of the signal strength of all nearby access points. This is a great feature for those who routinely connect to public Wi-Fi. You can quickly see which hotspot's access points in a given area are emitting the strongest wireless signal.

Finally, there is one last icon on the bottom of the home page screen which shows a real-time graph of signal strength over time.

Remember, this is a pretty bare-bones app that is ideal for use in a home networking situation. Small business Wi-Fi deployments would be better served by more robust tools such as inSSIDer for Office, or WiFiBuilder, both of which have additional capabilities and analytics for professional deployments.

Simple Efficiency
It continually amazes me, how Wi-Fi apps are allowing us to turn our mobile devices into wireless tools that years ago, you would need dedicated, expensive hardware to get some of the same information about wireless networks. While the Netgear Wi-Fi Analytics app is simple, and provides no customization options, it's useful and efficient at displaying basic wireless network information that can be used to optimize the wireless networking experience. It's an easy 4 out of 5 stars for networking utilities.

View the original article here

Netgear A6100 WiFi USB Mini Adapter AC600 Dual Band

Pros Tiny, portable form-factor. Helpful, accompanying software. Great throughput in 802.11ac mode.

Cons Underwhelming throughput in 2.4GHz mode and for 802.11n. Bottom Line Netgear's new A6100 wireless adapter is a tiny wireless USB adapter that supports connection to 802.11ac routers. The only real benefit to having the Netgear A6100, is to use it to connect to the router at 802.11ac mode, otherwise more robust, on-board 802.11n routers are speedier.

By Samara Lynn

Netgear's new A6100 wireless adapter is a tiny adapter that's very similar to another tiny adapter I reviewed; Linksys' AE6000 Wireless Mini USB Adapter AC58 Dual Band. As with the Linksys adapter, the only real benefit to having the Netgear A6100 is to use it to connect to the router at 802.11ac mode. Otherwise, my 3x3 built-in Intel Centrino wireless adapter makes my laptop connect much faster to Netgear's 11ac routers in 802.11n and other legacy modes.

Setup and Specs
As mentioned, this is a small piece of networking hardware, although not quite as miniscule as the Linksys AE6000. The A6100 ships with a resource disc. You will need the disc to install the hardware, at least I did, because when I connected the adapter to my Windows 7 laptop, the OS could not auto-install the drivers.

The disc auto-plays and gives you the option of checking for updates, or you can just install from the disc. A Netgear Genie app for the adapter is installed on your system. It's a sharp-looking interface and is consistent with the Genie app for Netgear's routers.
The adapter has a soft, white LED that lights when connected to a network. It's also WPS (Wi-Fi Protected Setup) compatible. It supports up to a theoretical 130Mbps on the 2.4 GHz band and 433Mbps at 5GHz.

Features and Performance
One feature I do like better on Netgear's little adapter than Linksys' is the Genie app. It doesn't list all wireless networks in range, but it gives pretty detailed information, including a network map, which shows how all devices in the network are connected with one another (called network topology) and other cool information such as amount of packets sent and received, IPv4 and IPv6 information, and diagnostics logging.

I really didn't find the adapter's performance all that impressive in 802.11n mode at 2.4GHz. In fact, I received worse performance using it to connect to the Netgear Nighthawk router than I did with my laptop's on-board Intel Centrino 3x3 wireless adapter. This inferior performance was consistent whether I connected at 2.4 or the 5 GHz band in "Mixed" legacy or 802.11n-only mode.

For example, from a distance of 15 feet from the router, my laptop averaged throughput of 78 Mbps in 2.4 GHz 802.11n mode. The Netgear adapter only managed 42 Mbps.
Netgear's adapter didn't fare as well in 5 GHz 802.11n-only mode, either. My laptop's throughput against the tiny USB adapter's: 109 Mbps from 15 feet versus the AC6100's 90 Mbps.

Now, the slower performance from the Netgear adapter isn't particularly surprising, as I am comparing a 3x3 powerful, business-class wireless adapter to a USB adapter. So this definitely isn't an apples-to-apples comparison, as far as specs go. Still, I was surprised by how different throughput is between the two in testing.

Where the little adapter proved itself was in 802.11ac performance. It achieved triple-digit numbers when tested with the Nighthawk router, and gave some of the fastest 802.11ac speeds we've seen from an 11ac adapter. Of course, my laptop's adapter only supports 802.11n so I don't have a comparable test using the laptop's built-in adapter. Click the image for performance results.

An Ideal Adapter at 802.11ac
The best usage case for Netgear's adapter is a good on-board 802.11n adapter and an 802.11ac router you want to connect to—especially if you are considering the Nighthawk router. You can flip back and forth between the two depending on the standard you want to use to connect. For example, if connecting to 802.11n you use the built-in adapter, and, if trying to connect at 802.11ac, you connect the Netgear adapter to the USB port and disable the built-in adapter.

The A6100 is not ideal for use at the 2.4GHz band, but it is absolutely fine at 5GHz in 802.11n-mode and blazes in 11ac mode with Netgear's Nighthawk router (and can be used with any 11ac router). Plus, the Wi-Fi software is well-designed. The Netgear A6100 earns three and a half out of five stars for USB.

View the original article here

Netgear Nighthawk AC1900 Smart WiFi Router (R7000)

Pros Sharp design. Great throughput at 5GHz. Excellent range. Wonderful QoS. Full VPN capability.

Cons Less-than-expected throughput at 2.4GHz band. Painful Bridge mode configuration. Slow to apply settings changes. Bottom Line Excellent throughput and range at the 5GHz band, lots of features (including full VPN)—plus a cool name—all make the Nighthawk one of the best routers we've seen from Netgear in a while, despite a few annoyances.

By Samara Lynn

The Nighthawk, is Netgear's latest router in the company's premium dual-band 802.11ac router line-up. The router looks as cool as its name suggests, with a trapezoid design and flared sides. The shape is reminiscent of the famed fighter jet of the same name. Yet the Nighthawk (model R7000) is not just dressed to impress: Excellent speeds on the 5GHz band when paired with Netgear's latest mini 11ac A6100 USB adapter and enhanced Quality-of-Service (QoS) that really shortens the time to buffer and stream video make the Nighthawk one of the top 802.11ac routers currently on the market for heavy-duty throughput tasks.

It's not a perfect device, with just okay throughput at 2.4GHz—at least testing in a heavy RF signal environment. It also takes quite some time to apply settings changes. However, with 802.11ac, the speed factor is most important at 5GHz, and the Nighthawk delivers the goods not just in data rate but in range, too. Bonus for router geeks: Nighthawk can be flashed with open-source firmware.

Specs and Design
The R7000 is a large router. It measures 1.97" x 11.22" x 7.26" (HWD) and weighs a little over 1.6 pounds. Netgear revamped the design from its last release of dual-band routers including the Centria and the R6300, both of which have an upright design with the devices meant to operate vertically in attached bases.

The Nighthawk operates horizontally (although it can be wall-mounted). The design represents Netgear's slickest router look yet. The wide base of the R7000 makes it very sturdy, even with cables connected to every port. With its wide base and rubber feet, this big router won't slip and slide all over a surface.

A beefy router certainly deserves beefy specs. Inside the Nighthawk is a dual-core 1GHz processor—powerful, for a consumer router. The R7000 supports 600Mbps at 2.4GHz and up to 1300Mbps at the 5GHz band. Three external antennas ship with the router and attach to the back panel. The R7000 also has 128MB flash memory and 256MB RAM.
There are two USB ports; one on the front of the router and the second on the rear. The front port is USB 3.0 and the back port is USB 2.0. The USB 3.0 port was deliberately placed on the front, away from the 2.4GHz radio, to reduce Wi-Fi signal interference. Both ports support USB storage and printers.

On the back panel are Gigabit WAN and four Gigabit LAN ports, a reset button, and a power button. LEDs on the top of the router indicate wireless, Internet, USB device connection, and other network activity status.

I wasn't surprised that with its hardware specs, the R7000 runs a tad warm. Not hot, just a little warmer than room temperature. I would place it in a location with good air circulation.

One other design aspect to note: The brick on the power cord is huge. It is thin, though, so you shouldn't have a problem placing it alongside other power adapters in a strip plug.

Setup
As is the case with most of the newer routers, the R7000 is easy to set up. An installation guide is in the package and outlines the few steps needed to set the device up. The instructions are clear, concise, and easy to follow.

The last step instructs users to launch a Web browser to finish configuration. When I did, a page displayed that the router was successfully connected to the Internet and the pre-configured wireless SSID and passphrase. I had the option to print this page or click a button "Take me to the internet." Clicking this button redirected the page to Netgear's external website where I could download management apps for the router, including the Genie desktop or mobile app, the ReadyVault app (for using the router as part of a backup solution), or access a link for help and support.

I have reviewed the two aforementioned apps, and they have not changed significantly since those reviews. You can read the provided link to the reviews for more details. The R7000's setup process is streamlined, well done, and should not present a problem for most users.

View the original article here