Networking behemoth Netgear has moved swiftly to be first to market with a business router with Wi-Fi 6E. The WAX630E will be the first tri-band, business-grade Wi-Fi 6E product with cloud management and is aimed at small and medium businesses rather than the enterprise market.
The Netgear Insight Managed Tri-band AXE7800 Wireless Access Point (I’ll just refer to it as the WAX630E from here). The addition of Wi-Fi 6E makes Netgear’s latest offering the fastest and most powerful Wi-Fi option for small and medium businesses.
Since mid-March 2020, the pandemic had a dramatic impact on network usage and caused massive spikes in network usage and traffic. This trend, combined with the growing number of network-attached devices that businesses need for home and office use, has forced a lot of smaller businesses to boost their Wi-Fi capabilities to improve performance, spectrum efficiency and data throughput. Netgear claims that the WAX630E answers each of these demands by providing all the features and capabilities of the latest Wi-Fi 6 standard along with support for the newly released commercial 6GHz Wi-Fi band
The arrival of the 6GHz band for commercial use is a game-changer for wireless networking. BY introducing the new 6GHz band to work alongside the existing 2.4 and 5GHz bands, W-Fi is getting the equivalent of a new eight-lane highway. The 6GHz band will boost the speed and amount of traffic that Wi-Fi can provide and brings lots of advantages.
Netgear pioneered Wi-Fi 6E technology for smart and connected homes with its award-winning products like the Orbi Quad-band Mesh WiFi 6E System (RBKE960 Series), as well as the Nighthawk RAXE500 and RAXE300routers. Now the company is helping to bring 6Ghz connectivity for small and medium businesses and the WAX630E will be especially welcome in the fields of manufacturing, education, hospitality, municipality and retail sectors. It’s ideal for small businesses with limited IT staff and infrastructure.
Earlier this week I spoke with the super knowledgeable Doug Cheung, Netgear’s affable director of product line management, SMB Wireless at Netgear. Cheung told me: “As applications that include 4K and 8K video streaming or virtual and augmented reality become more pervasive, businesses will need to at least double their Wi-Fi connection speeds to support them,” before adding, “Wi-Fi 6E provides a wide, open, fast superhighway to provide the required capacity and speed. The new WAX630E is the perfect onramp for SMBs.”
The WAX630E features a tri-band design that leverages the latest Wi-Fi 6E technologies. On both the 5GHz and 6GHz bands, the WAX630E can operate in the widest 160MHz Wi-Fi channels. All three bands, 2.4GHz, 5GHz and 6GHz fully enable AX technologies such as MU-MIMO. Altogether, the WAX630E delivers a blistering aggregate throughput of 7.8Gbps, giving client devices on all three Wi-Fi bands ultra-fast access to the internet and Intranet.
The WAX630E is equipped with Netgear’s Insight which provides centralized, real-time cloud management and control without the need for extra hardware. The management platform is backward compatible with Wi-Fi 5 and Wi-Fi 6 Insight-managed access points.
Recently, high-profile cyber-attacks on businesses have shown how, in an increasingly connected and digital business environment, security is no longer an option. Some 43% of cyber-attacks target small businesses, forcing owners to place greater emphasis on how they protect sensitive data, whether that be financial or customer information. And with remote working here to stay, equipping employees with reliable Wi-Fi security in the office and at home is essential. To address these needs, Netgear’s WAX630E access point provides enterprise-level security without enterprise costs. Business owners can easily configure and maintain the security of their network.
Other security benefits include of the WAX630E include WPA3 encryption for the highest level of WiFi connection security. Users can have up to eight individual wireless networks (SSIDs) which can be split up for use by, say, administration, employees, guests and IoT devices. Multiple VLANs provide even greater network separation as well as setting up barriers between the individual networks for admin, employee, guests, HR, finance, etc. This is all possible thanks to the space that the new Wi-Fi 6E standard has freed up across all three bands.
The coming of 6GHz to the business market will make it possible for smaller business to scale up their wireless networking capability and capacity without the need to spend a fortune. Wi-Fi 6E is a big deal and frees up so much more space and speed. It’s going to make a big difference to smaller businesses and is relatively affordable. The backward compatibility with previous Wi-Fi standards means that the 6GHz can be rolled out on a company’s wireless network at a speed that suits them. For example, areas that have a lot of traffic can be upgraded first. This might be a large lecture theater, dining room or a busy warehouse.
If you’re a business comping with a creaking wireless infrastructure or have an older installation that doesn’t support the latest security standards, the WAX 630E brings all the benefits of the new Wi-Fi 6E standard at a relatively affordable price. The Insight management capability makes it even easier to control and monitor network health with fewer IT staff or by using a remote contractor.
Pricing & Availability: The Netgear Insight Managed Wi-Fi 6E AXE7800 Tri-Band Access Point (WAX630E) is available in two models. The WAX630 E-100NAS will retail for $349.99 while the WAX630EP-100NAS includes a power adapter and will sell for $369.99.
More info: www.netgear.com
Key Features:
- New 6GHz Band –– WAX630E offers many of the features and capabilities of Wi-Fi 6 access points, including higher performance, lower latency and faster data rates. It supports Wi-Fi 6E on the new wider 6GHz Wi-Fi band
- Ultra-Low Latency — Extends into the new 6 GHz band bringing 14 additional 80 MHZ channels for expanded spectrum capacity and less congestion and therefore lower latency
- Fastest Wi-Fi with Combined Wireless Speeds of up to 7.8Gbps ––Tri-Band Wi-Fi with combined wireless speeds of up to 7.8Gbps (0.6+4.8+2.4 Gbps).
- 8-Streams Tri-Band Wi-Fi — 8 WiFi streams (two streams of 6GHz, four streams of 5GHz, and two streams of 2.4GHz) mean more available bandwidth and less congestion.
- Multi-Gigabit Speed with PoE — Includes a 2.5 Gbps Ethernet port with PoE++ for high speed and easy wiring. An additional 1 Gbps Ethernet port is included for a wired extension to a Wi-Fi access point or a switch.
- Easy Installation — Easily configured and deployed with NETGEAR Insight or through the device GUI
- Remote Management — Remote Cloud monitoring and management with Netgear Insight for single-pane-of-glass management of all Insight Managed devices. One year Insight subscription included
- 8 Secure Wireless Networks (SSIDs) — Separate VLANs and WPA3.
- Separate VLANs — Separate networks to keep admin, employee, guests, HR, Finance department networks securely separated from each other
- Future Proof — Compatible with all the new and upcoming Wi-Fi 6E devices and backward compatible with Wi-Fi 6, Wi-Fi 5 and earlier generation devices
