Nearly none of my older WiFi devices (IoT, toys, etc) work with this router

New firmware didn't fix anything that I noticed. It only made things worse.

I'm currently now on 105. 106 broke way too much.

It definitely has nothing to do with modem or ISP. This is something that has occurred with both my old ISP (xfinity + X7) and my new ISP (Ziply + Fiber). Obviously two different ISPs with two totally different modems.

I know the difference between intranet and internet issues. This router definitely is a problem for intranet.

I tried manually setting channels and keeping them low for older models, but that didn’t help. It’s not that the devices couldn’t see or connect to them, but that they couldn’t authenticate no matter what. Interestingly, my car couldn’t authenticate to the 2.4GHz band either, but would on the 5GHz band.

I’ve disabled the AX mode for 2.4GHz.

In general, I’m INCREDIBLY disappointed with this router. I don’t think I’ll be purchasing any more Netgear products (which have been my go-to for many years now), unless Netgear actually plans to fix this stuff. I’ll probably recommend the company I work for stay away from Netgear products as well. I’m the staff engineer so my word carries weight. Netgear’s awful firmware support, especially on such an expensive home router, is very telling.

Maybe if Netgear would at least ADMIT this router is rubbish and do something to make this right for the numerous customers complaining about it on this forum, I might have some faith that they can turn their act around. But at this point, Netgear is clearly just playing a numbers game.