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Review on NETGEAR R6220 Wireless Router - Enhanced WiFi Performance by Amit Amit ᠌

Revainrating 4 out of 5

Cool product, happy with the purchase, maybe I'll buy it again.

After the purchase, the first thing I did was ate the firmware to the latest at the moment 1.1.0.50. The Internet worked without questions, it was not necessary to set up anything special. I connected an old Canon MF3110 MFP to the router, installed Netgirov's ReadySHARE USB Printer (USB Control Center) software, everything worked, something was printed and even scanned. But the next day after installing the program on another computer, the USB port fell off the router (it stopped responding even to a USB flash drive). Problems arose either when installing the USB Control Center, or when pressing the "scan" button in the program, or simply by themselves somewhere in a day. Only restarting the router helped. I experimented with a flash drive - it worked quietly for a couple of days. That is, the problem was with the MFP. I tried network printing to the raw 9100 port (as on the old router) to do without the ReadySHARE software at all, but this trick did not work with the R6220. Resetting to factory settings did not help. As a result, I rolled back to the old firmware 1.1.0.34, and, lo and behold, everything has been working without any failures for more than two weeks. So the cant is either in the new firmware 1.1.0.50, or in its compatibility with the USB Control Center v1.36. To recommend this device or not is an interesting question. If you are an ordinary user who just needs a "box for the Internet", then this option is quite suitable - in terms of the Internet and connecting computers / phones / tablets to the R6220 there are no complaints. Given the characteristics - cheap and cheerful. If you have a USB printer or MFP, then consider the above. If you are a happy owner of a printer / MFP with an ethernet or wi-fi connection, then everything should probably be fine (however, who knows). If you need a device for experimenting with alternative firmware, and at the same time you yourself are not going to participate in the development of these firmware, then everything is at your own peril and risk. Explore specialized forums - perhaps in the future there will be some options.

Pros
  • - It has been working flawlessly for a couple of weeks now (there was not a single break ©, the print server has not yet fallen off either) - Factory firmware and functionality will surely satisfy any average user - Classic design - Good signal on both 2.4GHz and 5GHz. Passes through two walls (one load-bearing, the other thinner) with furniture for at least 10 meters - Normal speed. Measuring the speed in an apartment building with a bunch of wi-fi networks is, of course, a thankless task, the results largely depend on the phase of the moon and on the connected device and, in fact, say little, but still some measurements are presented below Internet speed was checked using speedtest. Net. Declared by the provider - 100/100 Mbps. - By wire: 95/95 - 2.4GHz: on the tablet next to the router - 40-50/40-60; in another room - through a load-bearing wall and a closet, at a distance of about 4 m from the router in a straight line - on average 10/10 less, although sometimes the speed practically did not differ; on the computer next to the router, the numbers reach 85/95 - 5GHz: on a tablet 55-60/95 (here the result was always more or less stable both next to the router and in another room); for some reason, on a computer, the 5GHz test accelerates very slowly, often not even having time to dial 50 for reception (the maximum turned out to be 60), the return is stable 95 I checked the file transfer speed using a USB flash drive connected to the router by copying a 1GB file from the USB flash drive to the computer and back. - By wire: 0:37 from flash drive (27.7mb/sec), 1:03 to stick (16.3mb/sec; interestingly, the write speed periodically jumped up to 11mb/sec, despite the wired connection) - 2.4GHz: 1:42 from stick (10mb/sec), 2:20 to stick (7.3mb/sec) - 5GHz: 0:57 from stick (18mb/sec), 1:45 to stick (9.8mb/sec) At the same time, when copying to a USB flash drive, it takes about 50 seconds in addition to the specified time to prepare for copying (with any type of network connection, including by wire).
Cons
  • - There were problems connecting the MFP (printer + scanner) to the USB port of the router - after a while the port stopped working. In the end, everything was resolved, but I had to tinker. The reason turned out to be either in the firmware of the router, or in its interaction with the ReadySHARE software. More in the comments - The USB indicator does not light up when the MFP is connected, which at first was somewhat confusing when disassembling with a falling off port. Apparently, the indicator only responds to flash drives and disks - Difficulties with alternative firmware. I’m not special in this regard (and I thought about alternative firmware only because of problems with the MFP), but judging by the lack of support for this device on myopenrouter and the comments there, firmware development is complicated by the fact that the Mediatek processor is used here, and not Broadcom. As I understand it, there is no dd-wrt and opernwrt for the R6220 at all, there is only a certain LEDE, but it is also unstable at the moment