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Testing the Netgear D6300, as we mentioned in the introduction, has the same restrictions as all the other 802.11ac routers we've looked at, including the Buffalo AirStation 1750 and Linksys EA6500.
This requires two bridged routers for speed testing, and the biggest limitation with this is the lack of diagnostics, so it's next to impossible to check connection speeds between the two and optimise the installation.
At least we reassuringly managed to achieve a 1000+Mbps connection between the Netgear D6300 and the Buffalo 1300 Media Bridge. This shows that interoperability seems to be a reality, at least for the same Broadcom chipset.
Despite our initial enthusiasm for the Netgear R6300, our performance expectations have been set far higher by the performance of the Linksys EA6500. So we are expecting more from new devices out on the market, but interestingly that's partly what the Netgear D6300 manages to deliver.
The headline speeds to walk away with from this test is an average upload of 53.7Mbps and download of 46.8Mbps in a same-room scenario. That's a solid improvement over the Netgear R6300, which comparatively returned 47.8Mbps upstream and 33.5Mbps downstream.
The big problem is that the Linksys EA6500 exists, and appears to be showing all the competition the door, with same-room average upload speeds of 68.5Mbps and downloads of 66Mbps.
Moving one room and a solid brick wall away only dropped speeds for the Netgear D6300 to 52.9Mbps and 46.3Mbps.
That again compares well to the Netgear R6300 at 45Mbps and 33.9Mbps, while it's far in excess of the disappointing Buffalo 1750. The issue is once again the Linksys EA6500, which still screams away at 60Mbps upload and 53Mbps download.
These types of speed do move the Netgear D6300 nearer to the three times faster speeds claimed throughout of at least 2.4GHz 802.11n, though it's more like twice as fast, falling short of what we'd like to be seeing and what we have seen from the new technology.
The Netgear D6300 remains an excellent 5GHz 450mbps 802.11n router. The same-room downstream speed of 34.3Mbps is among the best we've seen alongside the Netgear R6300.
This pack-leading speed extended to the long-distance test too, though the WD N900 Central still wins at our mid-range test involving solid walls.
As a 2.4GHz router, the Netgear R6300 is average at best. The performance at middle and distance was poor against other 300Mbps models. Same room performance was better at keeping up with downstream but not upstream speeds when pitched against the better performing models such as the Fritz!Box 7360.
