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Forum Discussion
AX5400 Starts Dropping Wi-Fi During Big Downloads
Hello Netgear Community, I'm hoping to get some help here. I've been trying to figure out a problem that has been plauging my house hold for about 9 months. In short, if both my wife and I are...
By default, if that router is using any channel between 36 and 48 on the 5GHz band then by default, it is using DFS channels, as it defaults to 160MHz vhannel width.
This is why you will often see something like this on the advanced tab. 36 + 40 + 44(P) + 48 + 52 + 56 + 60 + 64
In those cases, the only way to change that behavior, is to leave the default settings, and change the mode from "Up to 4800Mbps" to "Up to 2400Mbps" that will set the router to use 80MHz channel width and thus not use DFS channels.
As for the IP address issues, check if those devices are getting a 169.254 IP address. If they are, then it means something is prevent them from receiving replies to their DHCP requests.
If the issue is the DHCP server in the router, then the issue will also impact wired PCs, e.g., if you restart a wired PC, or simply open a cmd window and enter the following commands:
ipconfig /release
ipconfig /renew
If they fail to get an IP over Ethernet, then it could mean for some reason the DHCP server in the router has stopped responding.
If I look under Advanced > Wireless Setup > NETGEARXX-5G, I see the channel is set to 44, mode 'Up to 4800 Mbps' and transmit power control 100%. I have never touched these settings and so this would have to be default.
I've been watching this really close to see if I can come to any further conclusions as to what is happening. Here is an example of an experiment I ran last night.
It was late in the evening and I turned on my PlayStation, which is wired directly into my router. I had a few updates pop up. One was 11GB in size and the other was 6GB in size. I started the downloads and started playing my game. Both downloads completed and installed without issue. A few minutes later two more downloads appeared, one was 12GB and one was 16GB. I started those downloads. The first one of 11GB completed with no issues. The second download reached about 10GB in the download and everything started falling apart. WiFi dropped from my phone, the PlayStation stated the internet connection failed. Interestingly enough, on the PlayStation, I couldn't play an online game or use the voice chat feature, but the download continued and completed during this time. As soon as the download was complete, WiFi came back, the PlayStation showed connected again and I had full use of the internet. It's important to note that everyone in the house was in bed except me. No other devices were being used with WiFi other than those items that are typically connect 24/7. But no other downloads or streaming taking place.
So, this all took place while I was downloading a large file via a wired connection to the router and not over WiFi. This leads me to believe the router is prioritizing the large downloads and shutting all other channels off to optimize performance. I thought this might be a QoS issue, but QoS is set to 'Let Speedtest detect my internet bandwidth'. Could this setting be causing this issue? We used to never have a problem and then out of nowhere this started happening. We've tried two seperate Netgear WiFi routers and both respond in this way. One last note, I have 1 computer in the house wired to the internet coming in the house, but is not connected to the Netgear router via WiFi or LAN. When this issue happens, this computer completely seperated from the Negear router is not impacted at all. So again, this leads me to believe it's the router and not the ISP.