A New Begining

To be precise, a Brand New Begining.

Not long ago I posted this:
End of a fantastic Server 2000-2015

Since then I have been looking at what I can get to replace it. I have a US Robotics Router that serves as the internet gateway, I need a gigabit Ethernet switch (my current one is 100 Mbps), it will draw considerably less power than my Server did, but provide many functionalities that are important for me.

After long tiresome searches and consulting with people who have owned network devices from interested brands, I came across an alien face hugger; Whoops, I mean a Netgear Nighthawk X6 R8000.
Behold:

Ahh the sight and smell of new gear!

In the picture above is the face hugger, along with Belkin surge protector (I need the extra sockets), and a Western Digital 1 TB 2.5" USB 3.0 HDD. Wow what a mouth full that was!

Here is what I wanted:
-Good filtering and well configurable firewall.
-Network sharing my printer.
-Some kind of NAS like functionality to a connected drive.
-God awesome Radio for wireless.
-Built in Gigabit switch

Here is what the Netgear Nighthawk x6 R8000 delivers:
-All of the above.
-THREE RADIOS with the ability to join the 5GHz radios for automatic channel balancing.
-BONUS unexpected awesomeness: I can segment my network between the LAN side and the WAN side!
-BONUS expected(from reading specs) awesomeness: FTP server I can access from the internet as well as internal network.
-BONUS expected(from reading specs) awesomeness: TIVO media server compatible!

If I were asked to describe this awesome face hugger in one word, it would be "Incredible".

I can list and talk about all its features but that would be a large post, so I will only talk about the features important to me. You can read the full awesomeness, eh, I mean specs on the Netgear website.

On my server, one of the cool things I liked was the network segmentation that kept the internet side of the network different to the LAN side of the network. When setting up the netgear router I found that what it called Internet setup is really a WAN/LAN bridge. As a result, the ip addresses need to be different for the router(X6) and your gateway (modem, fiber modem, etc). My US Robotics allows a VLAN to be created which can be on a different network than its own network. What I did was do just that, the VLAN on the USR is on the X6 side of the network(my LAN) and the USR's address is on a different network. The USR itself creates a WAN bridge to the ISP but this is invisible to the X6 and it doesn't care either. So in the internet setup of the X6, I assigned an ip address for the routers network side and a gateway which is the USR's router address. I can still access the USR via the VLAN address for maintenance allowing me to disable internet remote access for security. Connecting wireless devices use the address provided by the X6 via its DHCP and get given the gateway address that is on the USR's lan side.

There is another advantage to this segmentation. I can fully utilise the firewall functions of both routers. More than that, I can setup the FTP service on the X6 and rather than fiddle with its accessibility, I can simply turn on or off the pinhole on my USR. DNS services are provided by the USR, which the X6 happily passes to connecting devices.

It just works, and works wonderfully. I checked the range and found that the 2.4 GHz radio gets me to about 30 Metres, and the 5 GHz radio manages 14 Metres. This is despite having the router placed inside an old concrete building! The 5 GHz range is lower because usually the lower frequency will travel further than the higher frequency, so not even this router can change the laws of physics. However in saying this, the stability and range seriously blows away any wireless devices I have owned.

It was so easy to configure the external hard drive. In fact it was so easy, you just plug it in and that's it, you have network shared drive! The only time you will need to change the work group on the router is if you use a different Workgroup for your windows computers. That is the only thing I changed.

Of course, I know what you are REALLY waiting for, you want to see the un-boxing pictures.
Well, here they are:

First opening of the box

What is sitting underneath the router in the box

Top view straight out of the box. The black strips on the label is my paint program edit so you don't eyeball stuff where it says no stuff eye balling. mmk?

Bottom view

Rear view

First power on!

It is now settled in to my place. Shes mine now!

I still miss my Linux sever and it will still return one day, but the Netgear Nighthawk X6 R8000 does a damn good job of replacing it at a considerably reduced power consumption. It is by far the best network product I have ever owned (previously my USR). Well done Netgear with this one! Cant wait to see what they will think of next!