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WAX610 wifi slower in same room, than another router behind concrete wall
I just installed a WAX610 access point in a room that was getting slower wifi speeds than I had hoped. But I'm consistently getting double the speed connecting to an Actiontec router in the next room (befind a concrete wall and in an enclosed wooden cabinet) even vs connecting to the WAX610 in the same room, 10 feet away with line of sight.
I have confirmed that connecting via ethernet directly to the verizon wifi router I get 100 up and down as I'm supposed to. Connecting to the Actiontec router via wifi, 2.4 Ghz, signal strength approx -55dB, I get about 20 up/down. But then connecting to either 5Gz or 2.4GHz to the WAX610 I get about 10 up and down, despite a signal strength of -42dB.
There is a ton of congestion on the 2.4 frequency, all bands (dozens of other signals). But never more than one or two overlapping frequencies when using 5GHz. Regardless, whether 2.4 or 5, it's always slower when connecting to the weaker router in the other room. The ethernet cable is only about 30 feet at most (two cables with a passive connector), connected to a gigabit ethernet switch (I think, regardless it must be at least 100Mb).
Is there anything I'm doing wrong, before I return this device? Is there any particular tool/app I should use to get additional information? I'm using Netstop on an adroid phone to check signal strength and congestion, and just a typical brower and app-based speed test (i.e. ookla) to measure throughput.
Thanks so much in advance for any help!
6 Replies
Hi Raghu, thanks for your reply.
I was able to do some additional troubleshooting, and now I get expected speeds from the device. I believe it had something to do with the ethernet cable. I replaced this and now things are full speed. I suspect that the original cable (actually, was two short cables combined into a longer one with a passive female-female connector) might have had a bad wire/connector, such that perhaps the router was downgrading the speed to 10Mb?
However, now I have a NEW problem. One of my windows 10 devices will not see any of the SSIDs from the netgear AP. But three other computers, two which are windows 10, two cell phones, etc can all connect.
The computer that does not see the SSIDs can see wifi networks from several other routers (e.g. the neighboring apartments, my cell phone's hotspot network, etc). I've rebooted everything, uninstalled and reinstalled the desktop's wireless netword adapter, updated the driver, etc. I've used differnet bands (e.g. 2.4GHz vs 5Ghz). Very confusing why only one computer cannot see this Netgear AP's broadcasting networks. Hmm.
VEEP3 wrote:However, now I have a NEW problem.
In fact an old problem - there are still clients in the field which fail to even discover WiFi 6 APs and/or Mesh enabled (802.11k/v) over the air.
VEEP3 wrote:One of my windows 10 devices will not see any of the SSIDs from the netgear AP.
As I said above... Sometimes (for a test) disabling AX on the access point, limiting it to AC only can give some insight.
VEEP3 wrote:..., uninstalled and reinstalled the desktop's wireless netword adapter, updated the driver, etc. I've used differnet bands (e.g.
2.4GHz vs 5Ghz). Very confusing why only one computer cannot see this Netgear AP's broadcasting networks. Hmm.
Computer vendors are very lazy in offering current drivers for their systems on their download pages, no matter if it's Asus, Dell, HP, ... They hope Microsoft does it, but here we still see outdated driers for several adapter chipset makers.
Provide details about the exact adapter make/model - we can't help otherwise.
For Intel adapters, head here -> Intel® Driver & Support Assistant
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