Category: Lanzamientos

What’s new in future versions of OpenZFS

One of the most demanded novelties by system administrators is the possibility of increasing the number of disks in a RAIDZ, the developer and founder of OpenZFS Mattheew Ahrens has announced that he is finishing a new functionality that will allow the user to expand the size of a single vdev from RAIDZ1 on ZFS. In this way, if we have a vdev configured in RAIDZ1 with three disks, we could expand it to four, five or more disks without the need to carry out a backup and its subsequent restoration, because until now, this was only possible by losing all the data of the discs.

We must remember that the ZFS structure is organized in zpool which is in the upper part, just below we will find the vdev that can be configured in “Individual”, “Mirror”, and the different levels RAIDz1, RAIDz2 and RAIDz3, depending on the level of security to the integrity of the data you want to provide. A pool can contain several vdevs, it is not necessary that the size of the different vdevs be the same.

Until now, if we wanted to expand the storage of a zpool, it was enough to add an additional disk if we had it configured as “Individual” or as “Mirror”, however, this was not possible in the RAIDz of the different levels. Now this has changed, and we can increase the number of disks in a vdev configured as RAIDz. At a domestic and business level, as the number of disks in a vdev could not be increased, it was very necessary to do a good planning and know in detail the future storage needs, because once it was done and configured we could not do anything else to be able to expand a vdev, the only thing we could do is add an additional vdev.

Currently in the typical RAID that we can use with the EXT4 file system, we can expand and even change the type of RAID in certain cases, with the aim of expanding storage or data integrity, however, with RAIDz this does not it has been possible from the beginning, until now.

Now the zfs command “zpool attach” will not only be able to add one more disk in a configured mirror, but also in the existing RAIDz in a vdev. For example, we could expand a RAIDz1 of three disks into one of four disks, although what we can never do is change from a RAIDz1 to a RAIDz2, for example. We can only expand the number of disks within a RAIDz without changing the type of RAIDz.

The negative part of this new functionality is that it will take time to arrive. It is not part of any version of OpenZFS yet, the next version of OpenZFS 2.1 will not incorporate this very important functionality, however, it will surely be incorporated in the next major version of OpenZFS, but it is still unknown when it will be, the most important thing is that it will end arriving, surely the next year 2022.

Main features

This new family of NAS servers consists of two models, the QNAP TVS-672X has a total of 6 bays to accommodate disks, and the QNAP TVS-872X model has a total of 8 bays to accommodate disks. In these storage units we can install 3.5 “hard drives or 2.5” hard drives / SSDs, the rest of the technical specifications are exactly the same in the two models that we currently have in this family.

This new family of NAS servers we have a Intel Core i3-8100T quad-core 3.1 GHz processor, with x86 64-bit architecture, incorporates an Intel UHD Graphics 630 graphics processor, has a floating point unit. hardware encryption engine with AES-NI, and even has hardware accelerated transcoding, by incorporating a GPU inside. These NAS servers come with 8GB DDR4 SODIMM RAM, but can be expanded up to maximum 64GB of RAM (2 x 32GB DDR4 SODIMM), so we will have a large memory to perform virtualization of operating systems.

Regarding storage, depending on the model chosen we will have 6 or 8 bays to house disks, however, we also have 2 M.2 2280 PCIe Gen3 x2 SSD slots, These NVMe slots can be used to create ultra-fast storage pools with all SSDs, to use it as a read or read and write SSD cache, and also for automatic storage by levels with Qtier.

Regarding port connectivity, we have 2 Gigabit Ethernet ports with Link Aggregation supportHowever, the most interesting thing is that we have one 10GBASE-T Multigigabit port, therefore, we will be able to transfer at high speed through the local network thanks to this ultra-fast port. Of course, it supports Wake ON LAN, Jumbo Frames and very advanced management regarding the network to be able to use this NAS server as a firewall or router if we have virtualized an operating system such as pfSense. Regarding the USB ports, we have one USB 3.2 Gen 1 port (at 5Gbps), two USB 3.2 Gen 2 ports (at 10Gbps) and others two USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C ports (at 10Gbps).

Other very important characteristics of high-end NAS servers is the possibility of expansion. In this case we have two PCI-E slots, specifically we have one PCIe Gen 3 x16 slot and one PCIe Gen 3 x4 slot, so we can click a graphics card, QM2 units to use it as an SSD cache, and we can even use cards to have USB 3.2 Gen 2 ports (at 10Gbps) and other 10G network cards and even 25G to have more ultra-fast network ports.

This new family of high-performance NAS servers have an IR sensor to control it with a remote control, an HDMI 2.0 output with a resolution of up to 4K at 60Hz and a screen with action buttons. We must remember that Virtualization Station allows “passing” the GPU directly to the virtual machine, so we could have direct output for virtual machines and multimedia that we have installed on the NAS server.

Finally, this new family incorporates the QuTS version based on EXT4, it does not have QuTS Hero with ZFS file system, in addition, it could not be compatible because it does not have ECC RAM, so we will have to use the typical RAID of forever. Of course, the QuTS operating system has all the applications and functionalities of the rest of the NAS servers of the QNAP manufacturer, including Virtualization Station for complete virtual machines, Container Station for Docker-type containers, and also multiple backup and replication applications on servers. remote.

What’s new in Kali Linux 2021.2

As we are used to, every so often they launch a new version that incorporates some changes and improvements. Many of these are requested by the users themselves, to achieve optimal operation and have different functions with which to test the security of a network or a device.

One of the most significant changes brought by the new Kali Linux 2021.2 version is the incorporation of Kaboxer 1.0. Kali Applications Boxer (Kaboxer), is a tool that allows you to package applications in containers together with their dependencies. In this way we will be able to improve security, such an important factor. Now, with this new edition of the OS, they officially launch Kaboxer.

As usual, other changes that Kali Linux introduces in its new version are improvements in the theme, wallpapers and updates upon login, as well as different bug fixes. The latter is important in order to make everything work properly.

But beyond this, in order to improve security, it has disabled privileged ports. It has also added by default Kali-Tweaks v1.0, with which we will be able to make changes in the configuration in a fast way and uninstall or install applications easily. It is another of the changes brought by what is one of the best ethical hacking distributions.

New Kali Linux Tools

But something highly anticipated by the users of this distribution with each new version are the tools it incorporates. More and more we have available in this distro specialized in ethical hacking. In this way, once again he has added some very interesting ones:

• CloudBrute: used to find the infrastructure, files or applications of a company in the cloud.
• Dirsearch– Allows brute force against directories and files on a web server.
• Feroxbuster: used to perform forced navigation and to be able to list or access resources that may be accessible by an attacker.
• Ghidra– A very interesting open source reverse engineering tool. It has been very popular with the NSA.
• Pacu– Open source tool for finding vulnerable AWS servers.
• Peirates– A penetration testing program for Kubernetes.

Other issues to consider is the compatibility improvement, in the configuration menu and Bluetooth, as well as including rtl88xxau patches for older kernels. Also, something remarkable related to networks is that users without privileges will be able to run Wireshark after fixing some bugs.

In short, the new version Kali Linux 2021.2 is now available. As we always say, it is very important to have the latest versions available at all times to correct possible vulnerabilities and avoid failures that can be exploited by cybercriminals, in addition to achieving optimal performance. We can download the ISO from their website.

Requirements before upgrading to DSM 7.0

The manufacturer Synology has made a series of recommendations before updating the NAS server, something very important because we will not have all the services and options of the previous version.

The first thing to keep in mind is that, before updating to DSM 7.0, we need to have DSM 6.2 or higher, that is, we must update from the latest “stable” version. We must also bear in mind that the download and installation of this new operating system can take up to 20 minutes, plus the update of the different packages that could take up to 1 hour, depending on the hardware you have on your NAS server, the number of files and the number of packages installed. To avoid compatibility issues, if you have Active Insight, Synology Photos, and Secure SignIn installed during the beta version of DSM 7.0, you should update them first to avoid crashing.

Synology warns us that this new version of DSM 7.0 consumes more resources than the previous one, in addition, if your NAS has 1GB of RAM or less, you will surely have performance problems because it is very close to RAM. There are a number of Synology models that do not allow update via version notification, and you will have to download the update from Synology Download Center. If you have one of the following models, you will have to perform the update manually:

• 15-Series: RS815RP +, RS815 +, RS815, DS2415 +, DS1815 +, DS1515 +, DS1515, DS715, DS415 +, DS415play, DS215 +, DS215j, DS115, DS115j
• 14-Series: RS2414RP +, RS2414 +, RS814RP +, RS814 +, RS814, RS214, DS414, DS414slim, DS414j, DS214 +, DS214, DS214play, DS214se, DS114
• 13-Series: DS2413 +, DS1813 +, DS1513 +, DS713 +, DS213

If you have FS, SA, XS / XS +, and DVA series NAS servers you will not have DSM 7.0 yet, they will not have an update until next quarter, so you will have to keep waiting.

Important changes in DSM 7.0

This new version of DSM 7.0 does not support USB devices such as WiFi or Bluetooth adapters, nor does it support 3G / 4G modem, USB speakers or DTV, without a doubt it will be an important handicap. If you currently use these devices, when you update to the new version they will be disconnected and will not work. Another important aspect is that DSM 7.0 is no longer compatible with the EXT3 file system, the normal thing today is to use EXT4, however, if you come from far behind, before updating you should make a backup copy of your volumes EXT3 and transfer the data because it won’t support it anymore.

This new version disables NTLMv1 by default and only supports NTLMv2 by default, if you want to change this behavior you can do it in the SMB configuration. Other changes made is that the SSD block-level cache for LUNs is no longer supported, and neither are NT4 domains, Python3 support has also been withdrawn in its original package and now it has been integrated into the operating system directly.

If you use EZ-Internet, you are now in the «Router configuration» control panel, if you use DDNS (Dynamic DNS), all these services have been withdrawn: CloudNS, DNO-O-Matic, DNSEXIT, Dynamic DO !. jp, Joker.com, RU-CENTER, TwoDNS.de, Variomedia, Zoneedit.com, so you will have to change providers. The connection to the NAS server via QuickConnection is protected with an SSL certificate, and the domain will use a Let’s Encrypt certificate. Lastly, converting video to FLV and MP4 will not be supported on various models.

What’s new in this new operating system

In this new version of DSM 7.0 we have a new storage manager where we will have everything better organized and easier to understand, we have improvements in usability and also when performing different actions. We will also find new features in the storage sets, volumes and disks, for example, the «Fast Repair» function has been incorporated that will allow us to repair a RAID in much less time, however, the list of changes regarding storage is quite deep, all with the goal of improving data integrity.

The SSD cache today is very important to speed up the reading and writing of data on NAS servers, now it is possible to create and delete SSD cache without interruption of system services, software has also been incorporated to monitor accesses E / S and provide more accurate capacity recommendations, other changes include the ability to put all BTRFS metadata into the SSD cache to improve small file performance. Finally, the ability to enable automatic protection on multi-drive fault tolerant read and write caches has been added.

In DSM 7.0 we will have new monitoring systems for the general status of the NAS, the file system has been improved and also the file services, the management of users and groups has also been improved, in addition, now we will have greater security by default, Since they have incorporated TLS 1.3 when it comes to getting into the administration of the NAS server, in addition, we can force certain users and groups to activate two-step authentication. Lastly, the user experience has been vastly improved with the new DSM 7.0 operating system.

We recommend you access the DSM 7.0 changelog where you will find all the details.

Main features

This new 10G network card QXG-10G2T-X710 incorporates a total of 2 10G Multigigabit ports, this means that it supports a total of 5 speeds (10G / 5G / 2.5G / 1G / 100M), and will allow us to reach speeds of up to 20Gbps real thanks to the possibility of Link Aggregation with these two high-speed network ports . This new model incorporates a PCIe Gen 3 x4 interface, but it is also compatible with PCIe Gen 2, although in this case it is recommended that it be at least x4 (4 lanes) to be able to take advantage of the high speeds, otherwise we will not be able to take full advantage of it because we will have a bottleneck due to the interface itself. data.

This new network card with 10G ports, incorporates compatibility with SR-IOV and iSCSI, and also with virtualization applications with intensive input and output use, and in addition, the latency will also be really low, benefiting from the new built-in Intel X710 chipset. Thanks to this new network card, we are going to obtain great wired performance using its two 10G ports. SR-IOV technology allows us to assign the bandwidth resources of a physical network card directly to the virtual machines that we configure with Virtualization Station, in addition, it guarantees reliability of the applications that we run in the virtual machines and reduces CPU consumption . The incorporation of iSCSI will allow computers, servers or VMs to use the storage of the QNAP NAS as virtual disks, being able to partition, format and use these virtual disks as if they were local disks, and we can even use them as storage expansion or backup destination. Finally, we must bear in mind that SR-IOV is compatible with certain QNAP NAS models, not all models.

Regarding the compatibility of this new QNAP QXG-10G2T-X710 model, it is compatible with Windows, Linux and Unix operating systems without any problem, the only thing we will have to do is install the corresponding drivers so that they work on the computer where we are going to install. Of course, if you install this QXG-10G2T-X710 network card in a NAS from the manufacturer QNAP and you have the version QTS 4.5.2 (or higher) or QuTS Hero 4.5.1 (or higher) you will not need to install any additional drivers, because the operating system itself already includes compatibility with this new Intel chipset, so we will simply have to “click” the card into an available PCIe port on our NAS and it will automatically recognize it.

In the contents of the box of this 10G network card, we have a total of three profiles to adapt perfectly to the different equipment where we are going to install this new network card: low profile support (it comes pre-installed with this), support for full height and also other specific support for certain NAS servers from the manufacturer QNAP, therefore, all the accessories necessary for the start-up of the equipment come.

We recommend you visit the official website of this QNAP QXG-10G2T-X710 network card where you will find all the details of this new model, in the meantime, we recommend you visit our list of best Multigigabit switches where you will find a ranking of the best.

Main features

QNAP has been launching Multigigabit switches for a long time, and this time it was not going to be less. This QSW-IM1200-8C model has a total of 8 10G Combo portsThat is, we have 8 10GBASE-T Multigigabit ports to connect normal copper Ethernet network cables, but we also have 8 SFP + ports at 10Gbps speed, ideal for using transceivers and using fiber optics to connect different equipment. We must bear in mind that, with Combo ports, we can use one type of interface or another, but we can never use the RJ-45 connection and the SFP + connection in the same port, because one of them will not work. In addition, we have 4 dedicated 10Gbps SFP + ports.

Thanks to the 10G connectivity incorporated in this switch, we can take advantage of this model to connect a large number of equipment, either from the manufacturer QNAP or other manufacturers. Below, you can see an infographic of all the 10G Multigigabit equipment that the manufacturer QNAP currently has:

The 10G switches have the disadvantage that they get very hot, for this reason, it is very normal to find fans in the switches to extract the hot air from their interior and keep the temperatures under control. East manageable switch is fanless, this means that it does not have a fan to cool its internal components, however, it does have a highly advanced passive cooling and a metal casing to dissipate heat as best as possible. This switch is capable of operating from temperatures of 0ºC to temperatures of 65ºC without any problem. We must bear in mind that this type of industrial range switches are designed to be in factories, outdoors in places to manage the Internet of Things in cities, and in many other places where temperatures vary greatly.

On the front of this switch is where we will have the status LEDs of the equipment and the 12 10G ports, either Combo ports or dedicated SFP + ports. The most characteristic of this new model is that it incorporates a very advanced power supply system, being able to accept voltages from 9V to 54V, without causing any damage or restart to the equipment. In this way, in places where the voltage varies greatly, this equipment is ideal for such “unstable” environments.

In addition, it incorporates a protection circuit to prevent damage to the internal power supply itself and also to the equipment components. Of course, in this rear area we have a local management RJ-45 port and also a serial port.

Regarding the firmware of this new QNAP QSW-IM1200-8C managed switch, we have all the management features of the rest of the manufacturer’s switches, specifically, we have the following options:

• VLAN: allows us to segment networks into subnets
• Link Aggregation: allows us to create an aggregation of physical links, we can have trunks at 20Gbps or more.
• RSTP: avoids loops at L2 level
• LLDP: discovery of other computers using this standard protocol.
• IGMP Snooping: allows efficient management of multicast traffic
• Access Control Lists (ACLs) – Create access control lists and allow or deny IP / MAC access.
• SNTP: allows you to check the time from a remote server.
• QoS: allows prioritizing the different equipment or ports, it also has a bandwidth limiter.

As you can see, this equipment is really interesting in environments where there is a great difference in temperatures such as factories or outdoor environments, in addition, thanks to all its 10G ports we can have the best possible performance in the professional local network. Finally, because it is a manageable switch, we can configure its firmware in detail with all the available options.

Main features

This new family of switches is made up of the QNAP QSW-2104-2T model and the QNAP QSW-2104-2S, both have similar technical characteristics, but they have a fundamental difference: 10GBASE-T Multigigabit ports or 10Gbps SFP + ports.

The model QNAP QSW-2104-2T have two 10GBASE-T Multigigabit ports, this means that we can synchronize at speeds of 10G / 5G, 2.5G / 1G and also at 100Mbps, these two ports are ideal for connecting a router such as the QNAP QHora-301W that has 10G ports on the LAN, in this way, we can have a backbone network at a really fast speed. The other 10G port could be used to connect a high-performance NAS server that has this type of connectivity, in this way, we can transfer data at a real speed of 1.2GB / s as long as the hardware of the NAS and the PCs can withstand these high speeds. The rest of the ports of this unmanageable switch are four 2.5G Multigigabit portsThis means that we can connect different equipment via cable at more than twice the speed of “normal” in Gigabit Ethernet networks.

The model QNAP QSW-2104-2S have two 10G SFP + portsThis means that we can connect a NAS server or a PC with a DAC cable, or directly buy SFP + transceivers and fiber optics to interconnect the equipment. For example, we could use a 10GBASE-T SFP + adapter to make use of the QNAP QHora-301W router that has 10G ports, or interconnect several equal switches to have a backbone network at 10Gbps speed. Currently the manufacturer QNAP has several NAS servers that have a 10G SFP + port by default, therefore, we can use DAC cables for interconnection. The rest of the ports of this unmanageable switch are four 2.5G Multigigabit ports, this means that we can connect different equipment via normal Ethernet network cable at a really fast speed.

This switch model has a fully Plug & Play installationWe must remember that this model is not manageable, it is aimed at a domestic environment or a small and medium office where we want to have the maximum possible speed, but where we will not need any management option. Another very important feature is that it is fanless, this means that it will not generate any noise from the fan, the cooling is completely passive, something ideal in domestic environments. It also incorporates the IEEE 802.3az standard for energy saving, and even has a system for detecting and blocking ports if a loop is detected, but it does not have the possibility of configuring Spanning-Tree or similar protocols.

Without a doubt, the highlight of this unmanageable switch is its compact design, introducing 10G connectivity in both copper (10BASE-T Multigigabit) and fiber (SFP +), in addition to the corresponding 2.5G Multigigabit ports where we will connect different devices. wired. In addition, as it does not have a management firmware, the installation and start-up is Plug & Play, ideal for home environments.

Main features

This new series of NAS servers from the manufacturer QNAP has really interesting characteristics, they are included within the high-end equipment, both for processor, RAM and expansion possibilities to have great versatility.

Processor and RAM

This new series of NAS servers all have the same processor and RAM memory capacity, the only difference is the incorporation of more or less bays to house 2.5 “or 3.5” disks. The processor that governs these new servers is the AMD Ryzen V1500B, a Quad-Core 2.2GHz processor, has a 64-bit x86 architecture, has a floating point unit and a hardware encryption engine for AES-NI. In the case of needing a graphics processor to have hardware accelerated transcoding, we can install a GPU through one of its PCIe ports.

This NAS incorporates 8GB ECC DDR4 SO-DIMM RAM, but allows for expansion up to 64GB RAM ECC DDR4 capacity in 32GB RAM memory modules. Thanks to this large capacity of RAM, we can virtualize operating systems and have multiple processes running. Another important detail is that it supports ECC memory, ideal for the ZFS file system since this range of servers has QuTS Hero.

Bays for storage

This new series of NAS servers have 4, 6 and 8 bays for 2.5 “and 3.5” SATA3 drives, we can install both hard drives and SSD units. Of course, if we install SSD drives we can use them as a storage pool, as an SSD cache and even as Qtier for tiered storage.

The most interesting thing about this NAS server is the incorporation of 2 M.2 SSD slotsIn this way, we can install M.2 SSD NVMe units to greatly accelerate the general performance of the operating system. These drives come out of the box, and can be configured as a storage pool, as an SSD cache, and also as a Qtier for tiered storage. QNAP recommends installing a heatsink to these drives to prevent them from losing performance when we are using them heavily.

Connectivity

The connectivity of this new NAS server is very interesting, on the one hand, we have a total of two 2.5G Multigigabit ports, therefore, we can configure a link aggregation and have up to 5Gbps of speed together. However, we could also install a 5G card and even 10G if we make use of its PCIe ports that we have available on the server, in this way, we will further increase the performance in the local network of the NAS server.

This team has a total of 3 x 10Gbps USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A portsIn this way, we will obtain high speed rates in reading and writing when making backup copies. We also have a 5Gbps USB 3.2 Gen 1 port that is Type-C.

Finally, as for the PCIe ports, we have 2 PCIe 3.0 x4 ports, therefore, we can install expansion cards with 10G ports, QM2 cards for acceleration with high-speed SSD cache, a WiFi card and even a GPU thanks to these two interfaces that the server incorporates. This model does not have an HDMI output, but if we install a graphics card it will incorporate it.

Operating system

A very interesting feature of this NAS server is that it incorporates both the QuTS operating system and the QuTS Hero operating system, the system itself at the first boot will allow us to choose between one operating system or another. The main difference of QuTS Hero with respect to the usual QuTS or QTS is the incorporation of the ZFS file system, this file system will allow us to have the best possible file integrity, in addition to having great performance in all read operations and writing. If you are going to choose QuTS Hero, it is recommended that the RAM be ECC type (with error correction), so if your NAS has this type of RAM and has a large amount, we recommend using QuTS Hero with ZFS.

Of course, we will be able to install and configure the typical services of Samba, FTP, SFTP, SSH, Telnet, RADIUS, web server, MySQL and many others, it is also compatible with Virtualization Station to virtualize complete operating systems, in addition, we can « pass »the GPU for graphics acceleration. Finally, we also have Container Station that will allow us to configure containers with Docker.

Main features

This new WiFi Mesh system is a team Simultaneous dual band with WiFi AX1800. In the 2.4GHz band we can achieve a speed of up to 574Mbps and in the 5GHz band we can achieve a speed of up to 1,201Mbps. In each of the two frequency bands we have a MU-MIMO 2T2R configuration, a very important detail is that in the 5GHz band we will have 80MHz of channel width, and not the 160MHz of channel width that would allow us to achieve double the speed with the same number of WiFi antennas. This equipment incorporates all the technologies of WiFi 6, such as Beamforming implicit and explicit, the MU-MIMO and the OFDMA in both frequency bands.

The team that acts as router It has 1 Gigabit Ethernet port for the Internet WAN and a total of 3 Gigabit Ethernet ports for the LAN. The model that acts as satelite it has a total of four Gigabit Ethernet ports for the LAN.

The most important thing about this new Orbi WiFi 6 Mini is its firmware, normally home WiFi Mesh systems do not allow you to configure VLANs or multiple SSIDs, however, this WiFi Mesh system does. The firmware will allow us to configure the 802.1Q VLAN standard both in the wired network and also in the wireless network, therefore, we can correctly segment both the wired network and the WiFi, separating the equipment from each other so that they do not communicate with each other. We can also configure access control lists to allow or deny traffic between the different networks that we can create. If we use a manageable switch with VLANs, we can manage them from the equipment that acts as a router to perform inter-vlan routing, in this way, we can pass the WiFi Mesh system a trunk of VLANs with all the created ones.

At the wireless level, it will allow us to create a total of 4 SSIDs, specifically, we can create a WiFi network for the management of the different devices, a wireless network for employee devices, guest WiFi network with captive portal and even also a separate WiFi network for IoT devices. This equipment supports all encryption standards such as WPA2-PSK and also the new WPA3-PSK, in addition, it also supports WPA2 / WPA3-Enterprise to authenticate clients to a RADIUS server.

This new WiFi Mesh system is sold in packs of a router and a satellite (SXK30), two satellites (SXK30B3) or three satellites (SXK30B4), although both the router and the satellite could also be purchased individually. A very important detail is that these new Orbi WiFi 6 Mini are not compatible with the Orbi for home environments nor are they compatible with the Orbi Pro that has WiFi 5. Another interesting feature is that, by purchasing this WiFi Mesh system, we will have one year subscription to NETGEAR Insight completely free, then we would have to pay for the management of the router through the Cloud.

Incorporating NETGEAR Insight in this type of device is a great success, because it integrates perfectly with the rest of the manufacturer’s equipment such as switches, professional APs and even routers, and we will have all the centralized management in the manufacturer’s cloud. Of course, we can use the apps for Android and iOS.

We recommend you visit the NETGEAR Orbi Pro WiFi 6 Mini official website where you will find all the details.

NETGEAR WAX620 Key Features

This WiFi 6 access point is currently the top model of the manufacturer NETGEAR in terms of professional WiFi access points, there is nothing better currently on the market.

Hardware features

This new WiFi 6 access point is Simultaneous dual band with Wi-Fi AX3600. In the 2.4GHz band we can achieve a speed of up to 1201Mbps, thanks to its four internal antennas in MU-MIMO 4T4R configuration and the WiFi 6 standard. In the 5GHz band we can achieve a speed of up to 2.402Mbps, thanks to its four internal antennas in MU-MIMO 4T4R configuration and to the WiFi 6 standard. This new access point has Beamforming technologies to focus the signal on the clients, MU-MIMO on the two frequency bands to send data simultaneously to several clients, and we also have OFDMA to fully optimize the wireless network. The internal antennas of the 2.4GHz band have a gain of 3.1dBi and the 5GHz band have a gain of 4.3dBi.

This professional access point has a 2.5G Multigigabit port with PoE / POE +, it supports the 802.3af / at standard to be able to power the access point correctly through the Ethernet network cable. Something that has caught our attention is that it supports PoE, but with a limited WiFi bandwidth because it does not have enough power, it will provide approximately 60% of the maximum bandwidth, therefore, it is always advisable to use PoE + switches with it. 802.3at standard to get the most out of this equipment. Another way to power this access point is through a PoE injector and even a 12V / 2.5A current transformer, but this current transformer must be purchased separately.

Today with professional WiFi 6 access points it is essential to have 2.5G Multigigabit ports with PoE, both in the manageable switch that powers it (as well as the Switch L3 D-Link DGS-1520-28MP) as well as the port of the WiFi access point. If we use a Gigabit Ethernet network, it is very likely that we have a bottleneck due to the high speeds provided by the new WiFi 6 standard.

Software features

This WiFi access point supports different configuration modes, such as AP mode, WiFi repeater, WDS mode and also WDS + AP mode. Regarding the security that this equipment supports, it supports the WPA / WPA2 and also WPA3 standards, in addition, we will have access control based on MAC, possibility of configuring RADIUS-based authentication with the EAP-TLS, TTLS and PEAP protocols, possibility to detect AP from neighbors, supports the possibility of configuring multiple-SSID with support for VLANs, it also has a guest WiFi network configuring a captive portal, bandwidth management, LLDP and more.

Today, two very important characteristics of professional access points are band-steering and also WiFi roaming, in this case, this new NETGEAR WAX620 model supports both technologies. In addition, this access point supports Instant WiFi Mesh, which will allow us to connect via WiFi with an access point that is already configured, to later repeat its wireless network, importing the configuration, VLANs, configured SSIDs, etc.

This WiFi access point integrates seamlessly with NETGEAR Insight, the manufacturer’s cloud management platform for routers, switches, access points, and NAS servers. By having routers, switches and APs centralized, we can create quite complex WiFi networks in a few minutes, as we show you here:

All configuration and customization options are the same in all WiFi access points, we will only find minimal differences depending on the hardware characteristics of the access point or switch. However, if you do not want to manage it from the cloud, you can always manage it locally in standalone mode, but we will not have features such as WiFi roaming or centralized management if you have multiple APs.

We recommend you visit the NETGEAR WAX620 official website where you will find all the details.