Hello yall, What a wonderful time it is to be English having given the Australians a reet good kicking in the Ashes. Nothing finer that watching Australians lose at sport. :)
Right now that that bit of gloating is over I want to talk today about the first 6 months ish that I have been living with the Netduma R1 router.
This review is not an in depth one but will point out the features that I personally have found very useful.
If you want to take a look at the official page you can go here. Netduma R1
If you want the ramblings of a 46 year old moderate gamer who plays Call of Duty pretty much every day for a n hour or 2 then read on.
I did my research on this one as the router is not that cheap weighing in at just under £149.00 and everything seemed to stack up in it's favour and all the right boxes were getting ticked.
So I ordered and waited impatiently for it's arrival.
When it did arrive I must be honest it's physical hardware appearance left a lot to be desired. I mean it's not exactly going to win any design awards but, and this but is bigger than Kim Kardashians. What it actually does is fantastic.
Ok so I ripped out my BT homehub and plugged this bad boy into my network with cat 6 cables and powerline plugs to maximise the connection speeds.
Put in the settings to get me connected and went and had a look at tutorials on the Netduma site to set it up correctly.
I will not bore you with the technical aspects of the R1 but in laymans terms this is what it does,
The R1 will allow you to specify the geographical area of the host you will connect to, and/or the Ping to that host.
The user interface is simple to use and settings can be adjusted with sliders. Any changes can take up to 2 minutes to take effect which is a built in anti cheat feature but once you have it set you're pretty much good to go.
The R1 also offers a congestion control setting and antiflood which is like a QOS on steroids system. It will prioritise your game data over other uses on your network.
You can actually see your ping stats to the host and change settings to get more games faster by increasing your filter or ping assist settings or limit the distance to a few hundred KM although I have found this means a longer wait to get into games.
If your friends live in another country as many of mine do you can basically white list them in a few clicks of a mouse so that they are not filtered and can join you even if they are outside your filter range.
In contrast if you connect to a bad host you can blacklist them so that you never have to play on that host again (this does not apply to dedicated servers).
The information above is just really scratching the surface of what the R1 can do for you and I would advise anybody thinking about purchasing one of these to pop over to the official Netduma website or to the very friendly and helpful forums at Netduma forum.
I use the R1 stand alone but you can use it in conjunction with your existing router, In the 6 months I have owned the R1 there have been 3 or4 updates making it better and simpler to use, the team are constantly working on the software and bringing out more updates and their patience with people who need help (some who appear to have had a personality bypass) is quite frankly amazing.
Granted many of these features should be available in game (call of duty) etc but they are not, Turn off my filter and I can connect to a host in Guadalajara from the UK, that was a good game..... not.
So having just pointed out a fraction of the abilities of this little gem is it for you?
I would say if you play FPS games such as Call of Duty, Battlefield, Destiny et al, on more than just a weekend then I would not hesitate. If you are a weekend warrior with surplus cash, again yes buy one.
If you are a casual gamer with limited funding then no.
What the R1 claims to is (taken directly from the Netduma website)
Never play a long distance, laggy game
Eliminate lag caused by others’ downloading and uploading
Allocate bandwidth to your gaming devices
Avoid laggy hosts
Easily configure your perfect settings
Does it deliver on those claims? Yes it does.
So in conclusion I would pop over to take a look at what other people are saying about the R1 or do a few searches on the interweb about it, It is not the prettiest router in the world by any stretch of the imagination but you don't have to look at the mantelpiece when your poking the fire :)
I have tried playing a few games with my geo filter switched off and man that sucker gets flipped back on again quicktime.
So whilst I now prepare to go to work till 01.00 hours I still have a smile on my face, not just because I own an R1, but because as I might have mentioned earlier. ENGLAND claim back the ASHES, in your face losers. lol.
Next up, Scuf 4 PS review
Peace out yall, THE BAGSTAXXX
Right now that that bit of gloating is over I want to talk today about the first 6 months ish that I have been living with the Netduma R1 router.
This review is not an in depth one but will point out the features that I personally have found very useful.
If you want to take a look at the official page you can go here. Netduma R1
If you want the ramblings of a 46 year old moderate gamer who plays Call of Duty pretty much every day for a n hour or 2 then read on.
I did my research on this one as the router is not that cheap weighing in at just under £149.00 and everything seemed to stack up in it's favour and all the right boxes were getting ticked.
So I ordered and waited impatiently for it's arrival.
When it did arrive I must be honest it's physical hardware appearance left a lot to be desired. I mean it's not exactly going to win any design awards but, and this but is bigger than Kim Kardashians. What it actually does is fantastic.
Ok so I ripped out my BT homehub and plugged this bad boy into my network with cat 6 cables and powerline plugs to maximise the connection speeds.
Put in the settings to get me connected and went and had a look at tutorials on the Netduma site to set it up correctly.
I will not bore you with the technical aspects of the R1 but in laymans terms this is what it does,
The R1 will allow you to specify the geographical area of the host you will connect to, and/or the Ping to that host.
The user interface is simple to use and settings can be adjusted with sliders. Any changes can take up to 2 minutes to take effect which is a built in anti cheat feature but once you have it set you're pretty much good to go.
You can actually see your ping stats to the host and change settings to get more games faster by increasing your filter or ping assist settings or limit the distance to a few hundred KM although I have found this means a longer wait to get into games.
If your friends live in another country as many of mine do you can basically white list them in a few clicks of a mouse so that they are not filtered and can join you even if they are outside your filter range.
In contrast if you connect to a bad host you can blacklist them so that you never have to play on that host again (this does not apply to dedicated servers).
The information above is just really scratching the surface of what the R1 can do for you and I would advise anybody thinking about purchasing one of these to pop over to the official Netduma website or to the very friendly and helpful forums at Netduma forum.
I use the R1 stand alone but you can use it in conjunction with your existing router, In the 6 months I have owned the R1 there have been 3 or4 updates making it better and simpler to use, the team are constantly working on the software and bringing out more updates and their patience with people who need help (some who appear to have had a personality bypass) is quite frankly amazing.
Granted many of these features should be available in game (call of duty) etc but they are not, Turn off my filter and I can connect to a host in Guadalajara from the UK, that was a good game..... not.
I would say if you play FPS games such as Call of Duty, Battlefield, Destiny et al, on more than just a weekend then I would not hesitate. If you are a weekend warrior with surplus cash, again yes buy one.
If you are a casual gamer with limited funding then no.
What the R1 claims to is (taken directly from the Netduma website)
Never play a long distance, laggy game
Eliminate lag caused by others’ downloading and uploading
Allocate bandwidth to your gaming devices
Avoid laggy hosts
Easily configure your perfect settings
Does it deliver on those claims? Yes it does.
So in conclusion I would pop over to take a look at what other people are saying about the R1 or do a few searches on the interweb about it, It is not the prettiest router in the world by any stretch of the imagination but you don't have to look at the mantelpiece when your poking the fire :)
I have tried playing a few games with my geo filter switched off and man that sucker gets flipped back on again quicktime.
So whilst I now prepare to go to work till 01.00 hours I still have a smile on my face, not just because I own an R1, but because as I might have mentioned earlier. ENGLAND claim back the ASHES, in your face losers. lol.
Next up, Scuf 4 PS review
Peace out yall, THE BAGSTAXXX
Nice one me old mukka :)
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