I currently have a RAXE500 router. I get good speeds - but the Ethernet input is limited to 2Gbps, so the WiFi is capped at that 2Gbps. I have a 5Gbps symmetrical fiber connection, and I’d like to be able to access the speeds I pay for.
What router is best that can handle the 5Gbps input/output? I’ve done a lot of research on this, but I have read contradicting articles. What do you all recommend?
Something that has a 10Gb WAN port. Only one I know of is the Orbi 9 series, has 10Gb WAN, 1 2.5Gb LAN and 3 1Gb LAN ports. The orbi 860 has a 10Gb WAN but only 1Gb LAN ports.
You'll not see anything near 5gb over wifi unless you have 4x4 or higher MIMO devices. I was able to actually see a 4800Mpbs connection rate between my RAXE500 in wireless bridge mode and my 9 series on 6Ghz.
2.5Gb seems to be max rate on the LAN side for wired devices in the consumer domain currently.
There are 10Gb LAN ethernet adapters but still spendy along with Multi Gig LAN switches. My one XS505 was spendy.
When you start getting to those speeds, its very rare for consumer devices to have the capability.
You might be better of with a business class router that you can connect multiple multigig devices to and a router (in ap mode) to.
You won't see 5gig over wireless. Even hitting 2gig is going to be pushing it. Reason is to hit the 4800mbps link speed that most routers advertise per band, you have 4x4 antenna setups. I don't know of an AX device (yet) that supports 4x4 antenna's. Only 2x2. So your highest link speed is going to be the 2400mbps. And thats link speed. Actual throughput tends to be around 55-65% of the link speed.
At the consumer. home networking level, there is no current all in one solution that will meet your needs for both wired and wireless.
One that could partially meet the needs, is also extremely pricey when you add the cost of a $700 Asus GT-AXE16000 and a $250 10GbE switch, to allow multiple systems to take full advantage of the 5Gbps connection at least when on wired connectivity.
For wireless, the fastest consumer WiFi cards are 2 stream 802.11ax 160MHz adapters, they will connect with a PHY rate of 2400Mbps but real world speeds under very good conditions (basically in the same room), will be in the 1.8 to 1.9Gbps range in terms of real world throughput.
WiFi 7 (802.11be) hopes to increase the real world throughput by allowing for a aggregated 320Mhz channel width (split across the 5GHz and 6GHz bands), as well as 4096 QAM, though outside of announcements at CES, nothing is available that can be purchased yet, thus there is no telling how fast the real world speeds will be, as well as how many streams the 802.11be adapters will offer, though chances are 5Gbps+ for a single client device will not be too far off if things go well.
Outside of that, people with 5-10Gbps residential connections, with often either make due with the ISP supplied equipment if available, or they will do things like purchase a used enterprise or business level router that offers 10Gbps connectivity and has not been discontinued yet, and then look for a more residential focused 10GbE switch from companies like QNAP or MikroTik (mainly since many used retired enterprise 10Gbps switches that aren't being price gouged on ebay, are models that pull 80 watts, and have multiple loud 40mm fans, where you either live with the screech of the fans, or take it apart and then mod the case by cutting some holes into the top paneling and attaching some low profile 140mm fans to the case (replacing the 40mm fans).
Aside from that, this is an area where it would be good for someone in product development from Netgear to potentially inform us if any of their upconing WiFi 7 residential units will offer both 10GbE WAN as well as least multiple 10GbE or some kind of mixture such as 1 10GbE WAN, 1, 10GbE LAN, 1, 5GbE LAN, and a few 2.5GbE.
