Netgear RS700S - This Thing Is Great!

[Barryng]

Last March I purchased and installed a Netgear RAXE300 Router. Although I mostly forgot the reasons for replacing a previous five-year-old TP_Link router, the RAXE300 resolved the issues that drove me to do that. It provided excellent Wi-Fi coverage in my home, and I was very pleased with it until I recently checked my Internet speed and found, at best, I was only getting 950 Mbs/s on an Ethernet connected desktop when the Comcast service advertises 1200 Mb/s. It did not take much troubleshooting to discover I was able to consistently achieve over 1,400 Mb/s if I connected my desktop directly to the single 2.5 Gb/s port on the Comcast router. To my pleasant surprise, it even achieves this over a 50 ft run of cat 5e so I did not install the cat 8 cable I was planning on pulling. The RAXE300 only has Gb ports (although it does have a 2.5 G input). Obviously, 950 Mbs was the maximum achievable with the RAXE300. Thus, the new RS700S.

The RS700S gives me consistently outstanding reliable WiFi coverage. Even at a far corner of my home, with four intervening walls including a kitchen with big metal appliances, on 6 GHz, I get a reasonably strong signal, and I am able to achieve about 500 Mb/s or greater on my phone. I am easily and consistently able to achieve 1,400+ Mb/s on my desktop. It also solved a couple of other nagging problems I was never able to fix or even determine what to fix. Previously, my three Comcast TV set top boxes would not behave well if connected to a RAXE300 port; I had to feed them directly from the Comcast modem Gb ports so I could not put it into Bridge Mode (although its Wi-Fi was turned off). Feeding them now directly from a RS700S Gb port works fine so the Comcast box is now finally in bridge mode. Additionally, my printer previously gave the appearance of a completely dead Ethernet port, and I even very briefly considered replacing it because of this. With the RS700S, for reasons that completely elude me, the Ethernet connection to this printer came alive and works perfectly.

Based on less than a week with the RS700S I fully endorse it. I wanted to put this out there as it is a relatively expensive beast but, in my opinion, an excellent very well behaved and performing device, more than I can say about any of the previous routers I used. I was originally going to get the RS600 (consequentially less expensive) but, because of the number of IOT devices in my home, some of which I really need to depend on, I decided to go for the RS700S because my research indicated it has somewhat better Wi-Fi coverage than the RS600. I suspect the RS700S was an overkill for me but now everything appears to work fast and completely reliably so I have no regrets. Although my RS700S is in my laundry room, for those that would place it in, say a living room, aesthetically it is much more pleasing than the typical modem style that resembles the original stealth bomber with jagged lines and multiple antennas sticking up with funky red and blue colors. It is 11.5 inches high so it will not fit on a shelf if it does not have at least this spacing.

 

[Janus67]

Out of curiosity, is there a reason you didn't look to a mesh system where you could place multiple access points throughout the house? Something like the eero pro costs $500 less and I imagine you'd get really good coverage, by placing the APs throughout the house and supposedly offers 2.5Gbps support. (not that the eero is end-all-be-all, but $700 for a router seems bananas to me if you're not using Prosumer hardware for a homelab).

 

[Barryng]

Good question. I did consider a mesh system, but I knew from my 10-month experience with the Netgear RAXE300 that a single point decent wireless router would work very well so there was no need to do much more than swap the RAXE300 with a new device, mostly just a plug and play exercise. I briefly looked at what I at least think appeared to be a competent mesh system (Netgear Orbi) but its cost was much higher. My only driver for doing anything was the need to upgrade my wired network to at least a 2.5G functional level so I could use the full 1.4G that has proven to be reliably available from Comcast (at least I have one thing really good to say about Comcast). That required a new router as the RAXE300 only had 1G ports.

My biggest concern, most likely unfounded, was to be sure, no matter what I did, that the excellent wireless service I already had with the RAXE300 was not degraded. That was THE driver to go with the more expensive RS700S. So, I ended up, almost certainly, spending more than I needed for a faster internet speed that, to begin with, I really had no justification to need. But I did end up with everything working really well and very high confidence that some of the truly important IOT devices here can be very reliably accessed. My wireless signal turned out to be even better now than what it was. Also, as an unexpected bonus, the two annoying problems I mentioned with the Comcast STBs and printer Ethernet port were completely solved, although I truly do not know why.

Another driver for my decisions, too intangible to effectively define, is my hard-wired need for everything mechanical/electronic/etc. in my life, including cars, to be at a perfect high functional level of operation. This extends to everything including professionally appearing wiring harnesses, cleanliness of machines, etc. So, to directly address the essence of your post above, I did not at all even try to make a credible business case for my "upgrade" but focused only on a small measure of function (1.4 G internet vs 950 Mb) and a large measure satisfying my needs as a retired electrical engineer that spent most of a career in the nuclear power industry. Not a good excuse at all but you asked and there it is.