Benchmarking Netgear Nighthawk® X4S R7800 Firmwares

Last Modified: Thu, 06 Aug 2020 14:21:22 +0000 ; Created: Fri, 24 Jul 2020 19:42:04 +0000

Wanted to benchmark the performance of various firmwares for the R7800 router to see how they performed. Alternative firmwares offers options such as different features, more granular control, and additional security options. I tested these 3 firmwares:

Test Setup

I ran an iperf3 server on a gigabit wired connected machine to the switch. It was either connected to a LAN port or WAN port as per the test.

For the client I used a wired gigabit connection or a Wi-Fi connection with an Intel(R) Wi-Fi 6 AX200 160MHz adapter.

iperf3 commands

Documentation Reference

iperf3 --server --interval 2 --format m

  • 'm' = Mbits/sec

iperf3 --format m --bandwidth 10000M --interval 2 --parallel 4 --client 203.0.113.101

iperf3 --format m --bandwidth 10000M --interval 2 --parallel 4 --client 203.0.113.101 --reverse

Results

Firmware Client Type Server Type C->S Speed (Mbits/sec) S->C Speed (Mbits/sec)
OEM V1.0.2.68 WIRED LAN WIRED LAN 959 962
OEM V1.0.2.68 Wireless (5.0ghz) WIRED LAN 841 489
OEM V1.0.2.68 WIRED LAN WAN(wired) 944 948
OEM V1.0.2.68 Wireless (5.0ghz) WAN(wired) 733 460
Voxel R7800-V1.0.2.78SF WIRED LAN WIRED LAN 949 946
Voxel R7800-V1.0.2.78SF Wireless (5.0ghz) WIRED LAN 701 863
Voxel R7800-V1.0.2.78SF WIRED LAN WAN(wired) 949 947
Voxel R7800-V1.0.2.78SF Wireless (5.0ghz) WAN(wired) 712 868
openwrt-19.07.3 WIRED LAN WIRED LAN 949 943
openwrt-19.07.3 Wireless (5.0ghz) WIRED LAN 672 710
openwrt-19.07.3 WIRED LAN WAN(wired) 942 902
openwrt-19.07.3 Wireless (5.0ghz) WAN(wired) 817 461

Summary

For the WIRED LAN to WAN and WIRED LAN to WIRED LAN all 3 firmwares were close in performance.

Wireless / WAN for download (S on wan -> C on wireless) saw Voxel as the fastest, but upload (C->S) OpenWRT was faster.

Wireless / LAN for download (S on lan ->C on wireless) saw Voxel as the fastest, but upload (C->S) for OEM was faster.