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I am a girl… well, truth be told, I am a middle age woman.
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I have serious girly tendencies when it comes to technology.
I am afraid of installing just about anything that has words like bandwidth, GHz (what does that even stand for???), Mbps, Gigabit, Ethernet ports and router. But give me something shiny and sparkly and I am immediately drawn to it (see box above)… Shiny… sparkly…no question about it (Just so you know, my eldest daughter just shuddered as she read that sentence).
Why?
Because she is a firm believer (and advocate) for women everywhere being able to do anything boys can do (and then some). Bedazzled phone case or not!
That means that there is no excused for me when it comes to technology. As I struggle to record a program on NetBox, I hear her in my head: “You can do it” she says… constantly. How did I get to be such a lucky mom that has a daughter that believes in me? Tackling this great big scary router was a task I was avoiding.
That may seem ludicrous if you know anything about me. I don’t let anything defeat me and I only grow stronger when adversity is knocking at my door.
That is why I avoided doing something for a very long time. I have to work… I said to myself. I have to clean… (another lame excuse). I have to wash the dog (a not-so-lame excuse). I have to watch Game of Thrones until 4:30 am (o.k. maybe I didn’t really have to do that). I did all those things just to put off installing my brand new Tri-Band router.
I avoided it for so long.
And now. Today. This week, I just feel… well, silly… stupid really.
Why?
Because it was so easy. Like. sooooooooo easy. I can’t believe I pulled the ‘I’m a girl’ card. Shame. Shame. Shame.
Are you wondering what I am talking about? I finally set up my NETGEAR Nighthawk X6 AC3200 Tri-Band WIFI Router and it was way easier than I could have imagined.
It was time. We have way to many electronics in this house that love to use WIFI almost every waking hour. I live in a household where every person has a cell phone (that is five of them). Four iPods. Three computers. One Printer. One tablet. Netflix on the WiiU and one gamer. That is an awful lot to ask of one small router. There are times that we are all competing for WIFI. We want to watch Netflix on TV. My daughter wants to watch it on her phone. My son is on his laptop laughing loudly at the videos he is watching on YouTube. It is the normal life of a typical Canadian home.
The R8000 is built just for a family like ours living in all three levels of this house. This router was made to ensure that you get full, uninterrupted access to WIFI. It’s six high-performance antennas can be closed or opened up for maximum range. If you have one child in their bedroom on their phones and your hubby is in the basement watching Netflix and you are in the living room on your tablet you might find that you are not going to get equally good reception in every room on every device. That is where the NETGEAR Nighthawk X6 R8000 Router makes a world of difference. The antenna helps you get a WIFI signal in any area without dropping a connection. It has Beamforming+ that improves wireless range and reliability.
I cannot tell you how many times, Netflix would freeze up because it really wasn’t getting enough juice from the router. Maybe it was that we were all using our devices to access it. How can this particular router help you? With Smart-Connect the NETGEAR Nighthawk X6 R8000 knows to designate slower and faster devices to a separate WIFI band. So, if your older computer works on one frequency but your super-duper-state-of-the-art Smartphone works on a different higher one, the tri-bands know how to pair them up accordingly. So the slow does not hinder the fast. This is how I see this illustrated in my head: If you are walking on one of that conveyor belt at the airport, you have people that are going slowly and business travelers that are always zooming by. You also have some slow poke (like me) that like to meander and then you have the mom chasing those kids that are running as fast as they can. Basically, different people traveling at different speeds. The key is, you never want to get caught behind the slow poke, right?
What if we all had different movable walkways that adapted to our speed and our urgency levels. Wouldn’t that be convenient? That is what the Tri-band does, it separates the slow from the fast and the faster. So some of the slow pokes… don’t weigh everyone down. Basically, it balances the load so all that awesome WIFI juice is spread all around! When everyone is on you want to make sure they are all getting to where they want to go – efficiently.
I am super happy I took the time to watch the videos to comprehend that my router was much better served working then just sitting in my office. Who knew that a piece of technology, that I was afraid to take out of the box, would be so easy to use?
More interesting stats for you boys (geeks): Pay attention they say a lot of really geeky things that make a lot of sense. 
Key Features:
- AC3200 Tri-Band WiFi
- WiFi Band 1: 600 Mbps @2.4GHz-256QAM
- WiFi Band 2: 1300 Mbps @5GHz
- WiFi Band 3: 1300 Mbps @5GHz
- Smart Connect intelligently selects the fastest WiFi for every device
- High powered amplifiers and six (6) high-performance external antennas
- Implicit & Explicit Beamforming for 2.4 & 5GHz
- Powerful Dual-Core 1GHz processor with 3 offload processors
- Memory: 128 MB Flash and 256 MB RAM
- Two (2) USB ports: (1) USB 3.0 & (1) USB 2.0 port
Security:
- Customized free URL to set up personal FTP server
- VPN support—secure remote access
- Guest network access—separate & secure
- WiFi Protected Access® (WPA/WPA2—PSK)
- Double firewall protection (SPI and NAT)
- Denial-of-service (DoS) attack prevention
Disclosure: I was provided a Nighthawk X6 AC3200 Tri-Band WIFI Router and a Trek Travel Router to use in my home for the purpose of a review. All my opinion are my own. I am part of the NETGEAR Brand Ambassador Team. You can find NETGEAR on Twitter, Facebook or YouTube.
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Margarita Ibbott is a travel and lifestyle blogger. She blogs about travel in Canada, the United States and Europe giving practical advice through restaurant, hotel and attraction reviews. She writes for DownshiftingPRO.com and other online media outlets.