Netgear Nighthawk RAX50 WiFi 6 Router

The RAX50 is a consumer WiFi 6 router that finds a legitimate home in live-audio rigs built around tablet control — think Avid EUCON, Yamaha StageMix, Waves SuperRack remote, or any mixing app that lives on an iPad. It is not a managed switch, not a dedicated audio-network device, and not a touring-grade piece of infrastructure. What it is: a solid, affordable wireless access point with four gigabit LAN ports, WiFi 6 (AX5400) capability, and a power draw that sits comfortably at 15 watts and peaks around 25 — easy on any conditioned outlet in the rack.

Four LAN ports sounds modest until you're at load-in and need to wire the house console, a playback laptop, a personal monitor server, and a stage box all into the same local subnet while the iPads roam wirelessly. That's a real topology and the RAX50 handles it without a separate switch in smaller rigs. WiFi 6 matters practically because it handles overlapping client connections more gracefully in dense RF environments — arenas and houses of worship are exactly the kind of spaces where older routers fall apart mid-show. The unit is not rackmountable in a standard sense despite the catalog flagging it as such; it will sit on top of or behind a rack rather than sliding into a rack space, so plan your real estate accordingly.

This router belongs in a fixed or semi-fixed installation — a house of worship FOH position, a theater monitor world, a corporate AV rack that travels in a road case rather than a splitter cart. If you're doing serious touring, look at a purpose-built managed solution like a Cisco Meraki or a dedicated Ubiquiti access point with a separate router/switch stack; those give you VLAN control, captive portal suppression, and interference management the RAX50 doesn't offer. For a one-person monitor rig where the goal is StageMix on an iPad and a hardwired console connection, $189 and 15 watts gets you where you need to go without overcomplicating the system.