NETGEARNighthawk WiFi 6 Router (RAX120) 12-Stream Dual-Band Gigabit Router, AX6000 Wireless Speed (Up to 6 Gbps), Coverage Up to 3,500 sq.ft. and 30 Devices

TL;DR - it's a great router with great capability. I was surprised at the ease of use and ease of configuration. It has great range, can handle multiple devices simultaneously, and has no problems with handling access to network storage. There are a ton of bells-and-whistles options that may or may not come in handy for the average user. It is expensive for a reason but the features are well worth it.This is the best router I have ever used, period. I bought one nearly 2 years ago when they first came out and I bought another one, here on Amazon, recently. This particular one was purchased to help set up my sister and brother-in-law's home network.The setup is very easy and quick and the menu's interface is full of options. Using 2x RAX120 routers for an AT&T fiber service of 1000/1000 Mbps at sis's and Spectrum 1000/35 Mbps in my home.The router's Wi-Fi coverage is approximately 3500 ft^2 (square feet) at 100% signal strength with the ability to beam-form to devices. Power adjustment values are 25%, 50%, and 100%. It is a dual band router with 12 streams (when working with 160MHz clients) broken down as 4x4 (4x 1x1 devices) on 2.4GHz band and 8x8 (4x 2x2 devices) on 5Ghz band. It can handle up to 8 simultaneous Wi-Fi streams (again, 4x 1x1 devices and 4x 2x2 devices). I have run tests to see how it handles walls, metal plates, blankets soaking up the waves, etc and the Wi-Fi still manages to beat through most of it even at extended ranges. A direct LoS (line-of-sight) Wi-Fi connection goes to nearly 200 feet (at 100% power value).There are 5x 10/100/1000 RJ-45 ports and a single 5Gbps (5000Mbps) RJ-45 multi-gig port (1x WAN/LAN + 4x LAN @ 1Gbps + 1x WAN/LAN @ 5Gbps). One can use the port labeled "Internet" (the single 1Gbps WAN/LAN RJ-45 port) as an extra 5th LAN port if you use the 5Gbps port, labeled "Multi-Gig", as your internet service connection. There are 2 ports able to link for aggregation. To take advantage of link aggregation, you will need a device that can team 2 ports. Usually, higher-end motherboards and consumer network gear have this ability but it is rapidly dying due to the newer 2.5Gbps NICs in the last couple generations of motherboards that take advantage of AMD and Intel CPUs supporting 2.5Gbps networking. However, if you have a multi bay NAS with link aggregation, those 2 aggregate ports would help balance the load on the NAS.Also, about the single 5Gbps RJ-45 port: this would be useful if we all had 5Gbps service from our ISPs; however, there is another use. Some of the Aquantia (now Marvell owned) and Intel 2.5/5/10Gbps NICs on consumer motherboards could take advantage of that 5Gbps port to improve network traffic speeds to/from the host/client. To clarify and simplify, your home network device-to-device speeds can take advantage of this.As far as networking, this handles video streams from computer-to-device without a hitch. You can use the 2 USB 3.0 (5Gbps) ports on the router to plug and storage device to get access to the contents of the storage device from any network connected device if you are not using a NAS (Network Attached Storage). For the average person, this is probably useful for streaming videos to any client device. Supported file system types (on the storage device) are FAT16, FAT32, NTFS (both with or without compression), Ext2, Ext3, Ext4, HFS, and HFS+. I, somehow, got my 5 bay DAS (Direct Attached Storage, NOT a NAS) to be identified with all 5 hard drives detected with their own drive letters and such after configuring the access from the RAX120's ReadyShare sub-menu in the router's setup/main menu in the Advanced settings tab. Made my day as I won't need to spend more on a 3rd NAS unit. I'm getting off topic though.

I'll try to be brief. I'm a retired tech and IT professional and well versed in troubleshooting computer networks and equipment. I am shocked that Netgear continues to sell this product. I read the negative reviews, many of which are a few years old, but ignored them thinking either that the problem must be fixed by now, or in my arrogance I assumed I could resolve the issue.When it's working, the router is good, but as many other reviewers have reported, it has an annoying habit of dropping wifi signal. The transmitter is usually down only briefly, perhaps 30 seconds, but when there are dozens of devices connected to it, it's quite a pain in the neck. It's also extremely irritating to have your movie or football game die at the most intense moment while you scramble to restore the connection.Now, in my experience a problem like this is almost always a matter of the router having excessive heat. It may be poorly ventilated, with shoddy construction, but most typically the heat sink designed to draw heat away from a critical chip is not doing its job. This could be a manufacturing flaw (e.g., the heat sink has inadequate thermal paste), age (the paste has disintegrated over time) or a design flaw (the heat sink is just not adequate to deal with the chip's heat signature). If it's a manufacturing problem it can be fixed by opening the box, removing the sink, and adding new paste. But clearly the problem here is one of design, not of manufacturing. The proof is that I tried two of these routers in a row and got the exact same results.Now, it stands to reason that if the unit is overheating, one might be able to take steps to mitigate that. For example, the unit could be placed in a way to maximize airflow, and kept away from other hot equipment. Or, the settings in the firmware can be modified to reduce heat production. Well, I tried everything I could think of, but no dice. As just one example, I changed the radio transmitter settings from 100% to 25% (the lowest setting). This means the transmitter will draw less power and thus produce less heat. The problem persisted, perhaps a little less frequent. I then went in and turned off essentially every advanced feature of the router, turning into a very expensive, large, and heavy version of a low end router, but yet the problem persisted anyway. That's' when I returned the unit to Amazon and traded it for another one. Same result.Netgear used to be a great company. But if you put out an expensive high-end (consumer) product that very clearly has a design flaw that breaks its fundamental function, and you continue to sell that product for multiple years without doing anything to resolve the flaw, then whatever else you might be, you are no longer a great company.I returned the router and instead bought two ASUS RT-AX3000 units, which so far are working perfectly, and actually have a more full-featured and well designed interface. I bought two because they don't have the range of the Netgear unit, so I needed two units to match the Netgear range (the total range is actually better, and the price for two is about the same as one Netgear). I have one set up as the router and the other as an ethernet-connected access point. They don't have the cool stealth fighter look, but are about about a third the size and weight of the Netgear unit, and they work.Okay, so I wasn't so brief. Shorter version: don't be an arrogant dummy like me. Avoid this model unless and until Netgear definitively fixes the design.Edit: One clarification. Looking over the other many, many one-star reviews, I think there are a couple of different issues with these routers. Many people mention random reboots. I have not experienced this. My problem was random dropping of the wifi signal, which is not the same thing. The router itself did not reboot. It continued to be accessible via its web interface, and it continues to function for ethernet/wired devices even without the wifi.The difference between these cases is that a full reboot takes much longer to get back up and running (several minutes at least), whereas the wifi transmitter dropout problem lasts for perhaps a minute or less until the transmitter comes back. Why is this important? It's not, other than having an understanding of what is going on. The full reboot suggests either an electrical problem or the main processor is overheating causing a shut down of the entire unit. By contrast, the transmitter-only dropout suggests the transmitter chip is overheating causing it to glitch but not impacting the entire circuit board.Having two different major design problems in the same (overpriced) router suggests really poor engineering. Probably the engineering department has been gutted. The failure to catch the problem prior to manufacturing suggests the QA department also has been gutted. The horrendous customer support outsourced to the cheapest possible noisy call center in India suggests customer support has also been gutted. The only department that seems to be properly funded is for cosmetic design because these routers look awfully cool, but unless you're crazy, you don't buy a router for its looks, but for its capabilities, stability, and reliability.Update: Closing in on two years since I wrote this review, which now has nearly 100 "helpful" votes, and I can say three things:1. Netgear has never reached out to me, so clearly they are not monitoring customer comments.2. Netgear is still selling the same product, evidently unchanged, as the one star ratings continue to flow in.3. The routers I put in place of this Netgear router, ASUS RT-AX3000, continue to work flawlessly, with outstanding total range and performance, and not a single drop out or reboot.What more needs to be said?