So, I got my Nighthawk RAX120. Nice device, at least from the "looks". But that´s probably as far as it goes. I actually replaced an Asus AC5300 with this one... and went towards Netgear, as I have good memories from the past. I feel like meeting a girlfriend from the past which I haven´t seen in 20 years. Some things are good... the "looks" work. But I kind of feel like if she had spent the last 20 years in per-school!!!
So, step by step my concerns:
1. Zero parental controls. None. Nothing. Nada. In past at least there was this option with OpenDNS, which didn´t work that bad for my kids. Now there is really absolutely nothing. My solution? Install a Debian Box with PiHole DNS Server and throw some nice blocking lists on it, so at least the worst gets filtered.
Next I try to set this DNS server to the clients of the kids. I can set it as DNS Server in the WAN section, but that will apply to all. So let´s head over to the DHCP setup and throw in some static dhcp reservations for the kids devices, assigning the PiHole DNS Server to them, and leave the adult devices as they are. Or vice versa,.. put the PiHole as the main, and assign a public DNS to the adult devices. Even a better solution, as new devices will go through PiHole. But wait, there is no option to assign a DNS server to a static DHCP entry!!!! Am I now going nuts ????
After this disappointment, I figured that I can filter the clients also in PiHole and assign different blocklists to them. Done. Works. BUT of course, another issue... as I have to set the PiHole as system wide DNS in the WAN section of the router, now PiHole will receive the requests from the router,... so again, no way to assign different blocklists to different clients.
At least now I got slightly upset and decided to setup a ISC-DHCP Server on the Debian box. This would allow me to define the PiHole DNS server through DHCP to all clients, without having to modify the system wide DNS on the router. Now all clients send their requests directly to the PiHole, which then allows me to create various groups and assign them to various blocklists.
Problem 1 solved, with a quite heavy workaround. And I am angry. Because on the ASUS this took me 5 minutes and was all setup on the router.
2. VPN Client Setup: Wow,I know from my Asus, on which I also used it, that it´s a cool feature to be able to use the router as a VPN client. So went to this section of the GUI, and guess what... there is one predefined VPN client setup for "PureVPN". Who cares about that provider? I use various, but not that one. All of my providers support OpenVPN though, and in Asus I could setup a profile for each of them, and then, depending on the purpose, simply activate the one I needed. To limit this to PureVPN is just commercially motivated and absolutely worthless to me. Even if I´d be using PureVPN, the fact that a router maufacturer forces me to use them, would make me dump them. So simple. Homework really badly done, NetGear.
3. Bandwidth Monitoring: It was confirmed to me by support that there is no bandwith monitoring. And forget about doing it per device. I didn´t trust my eyes to see this on a high end 500$ device. They must be kiddin I though. There must be a way,... maybe SNMP or anything? NO WAY. I want to be able to see when certain devices are consuming high bandwidth without for instance anyone interacting on them. I want to know what´s going on. Maybe even be able to see the connections. Many things. But no. Not with NetGear.
I could keep going,... but I will conclude with a summary now.
The RAX120 is in my view a perfect device for my grandmother. She regretfully passed, but I am sure it would serve her just fine if she was still with us. BUT she would never spend 500$ on a router. For her a simple TPLink Router for 30$ will do just fine, to have her phone with the prepaid tarif connect on WIFI while at home and use it maybe for IPTV.
The people I know who are willing to spend this amount of money are:
- Nerds
- Families with many devices looking for capacity, range and CHILD PROTECTION
- Nerds
- Tech Enthusiasts
- Nerds
If any of the above compares ASUSWRT for instance with what Netgear is offering, the decision should be obvious. And don´t get me wrong. ASUS is by no means perfect. They have their flaws and bugs, and the HW for instance fo the AC5300 looks much worse than the RAX120, in my opinion. But being someone who started many years back with the Linksys WRT54G an OpenWRT based firmwares, you could do much more already 20 years back on these things than what you can actually do with a RAX120.
SO Netgear, please consider whom you want to have as your customers. The grandmothers or the power users. If you want to address the grandmothers, you should remove 500$ devices from your lineup. You will disappoint a lot of people and lose them, maybe forever. That´s what is about to happen with me,... The only thing that could safe you is if I convince myself to invest into another box and throw a PFSense Firewall between the router and the cable modem. The drawback is that it would be one more device to manage, as the wireless administration would be seperate from the router. But it would take care of many of my headaches.
And on a final thought, my grandma wouldn´t need to buy a 30$ router. Most cable providers provide modem/router combinations, which aren´t that bad anymore. For most people who don´t need custom configurations, that will be way enough, also for my grandma. The upgrade from my cable providers wifi router, which I got for free with the subscription, to the RAX120, was beyon the shadow of a doubt not a good investment.
I completely agree. For the cost of this device it lacks the features of others. I got suckered with the marketing of ARMOR. I was hoping for ~$60 a year I could really give my family a bit more security. I put the app on all my devices only to find out it doesn’t do much & you should pay bitdefender even more. Add to that my recent frustration with a crappy firmware update that I had to roll back.
Rax120 has a good hardware configuration, however, the outsourcing of firmware to India dragged down product evaluation. No new function of firmware at all. Just changed the UI.
