Very slow network speeds on 5GHz network on Orbi RBR50 after months of solid performance

Please try a factory reset and setup from scratch with the RBR and RBS.

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Zablalbaz wrote:

Hey All,

 

Hopefully someone can help me with this. I just started noticing some really slow network speeds on my 5GHz connected network devices a couple weeks ago. This is after several months of fantastic speed and performance with my Orbi routers. When I first set them up, I was seeing up to 700Mbps Internet speed test results on my Fiber Internet while connected to the 5GHz wifi network. Now I am lucky to see 15Mbps to 24Mbps while connected to either the 2.4GHz or the 5GHz wifi networks on my Orbi  mesh.

 

Before I go further, here are my specs:

Orbi Hardware Version: RBR50, and RBS50
Firmware Version V2.5.1.16 on both
Operation Mode: Router and Satellite
Region North America
2.4G Channel Auto ( 8(P) + 4(S) )
2.4G Mode Up to 400 Mbps
5G Channel 36+40+44+48(P)
5G Mode Up to 866.7 Mbps

Advanced settings:
Enable Beamforming
Enable Fast Roaming
Preamble mode: Auto
20/40 coexistence mode on 2.4 GHz is disabled
Daisy Chain Topology is disabled

 

Today, while I was going around doing my wifi analysis, I noticed that my phone was connecting to the Orbi routers' 5GHz network, but with only with a single, 20MHz wide channel. To be honest, I never looked at that before, so I don't know if this is typical of Netgear routers. But to rule out the phone, I also tried 2 tablets and my FireTV cube - all with the same wifi analysis tools - and they all reported back a 5GHz (5240MHz) connection with the 20MHz wide channel instead of a 40MHz wide channel.

 

Testing with my Lenovo Thinkpad also shows a similar result with the link to the 5GHz network only having a reported bit rate of 54 MB/s. This is the same laptop that was originally giving me 700 Mbps Internet test speeds and now is only giving me 24Mbps at best while connected to the 5GHz Orbi network.

 

As a further data point, I connected my laptop to a wired Ethernet port on the RBR50 and ran an Internet speed test and got over 800Mbps down and over 900Mbps up. I also ran the integrated speed test on the RBR50 and got the following results:

Latest test result (16:37 Apr 26, 2020)
DOWNLOAD UPLOAD
860.75Mbps 909.30Mbps

 

Since I purchased the Orbi Mesh system, I have manually updated the firmware twice. Once to V2.5.1.8 back in December 2019. And the second time to V2.5.1.16 today in hopes it would help. I did not reset the routers to factory state after updating them.

Could something have gotten corrupted during the first firmware update to v2.5.1.8? Has anyone else seen this behavior and know a fix?

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