My home is on Verizon FiOS with 400mbps up/down. I have an Ethernet line running from the ONT to my router, and the router backfeeds all of the coax in the house through a MoCA adapter. If I connect my laptop directly to the Ethernet link and run a speed test, I’ll see about 300mbps up/down — not too far from what I’m paying for. But if I disconnect the MoCA adapter so that nothing else is attached and run a speed test from the router’s QoS interface, I’ll only get ~95mbps up/down. Does anyone know why my router thinks it only has a third of its actual available bandwidth? Are there any configurations that I should check? I've already tried factory resetting.

Update: I tried a lot of stuff. I tried updating the installing the initial release of router firmware and updated through every release that Netgear had provided. No luck. I tried unplugging the ONT BBU and disconnecting the battery terminal -- didn't help. I spent a long time contemplating the graveyard of ISP equipment and the labyrinth of coax splitters they had mounted. I chatted with Verizon support: "Your router, your problem." No help here. No matter what I did, the WAN statistics in the admin interface read 100M (Full).I had figured that autonegotiation was failing (the WAN port itself was immaculate), but I didn't know how to verify that (those logs aren't visible) nor test it. In the end "WAN capped at 100ms" was the magic search-engine phrase to find the solution. SNB forums provided the solution -- stick a dumb switch between the ONT and the router. The ONT negotiates with the switch, the switch negotiates with the router, et voilà. Speed's up to scratch.

Netgear AX3000 / RAX40 detects lower bandwidth than link actually provides

3 Replies

leaf_water
Aspirant
Oct 18, 2020
Update: I tried a lot of stuff. I tried updating the installing the initial release of router firmware and updated through every release that Netgear had provided. No luck. I tried unplugging the ONT BBU and disconnecting the battery terminal -- didn't help. I spent a long time contemplating the graveyard of ISP equipment and the labyrinth of coax splitters they had mounted. I chatted with Verizon support: "Your router, your problem." No help here. No matter what I did, the WAN statistics in the admin interface read 100M (Full).
I had figured that autonegotiation was failing (the WAN port itself was immaculate), but I didn't know how to verify that (those logs aren't visible) nor test it. In the end "WAN capped at 100ms" was the magic search-engine phrase to find the solution. SNB forums provided the solution -- stick a dumb switch between the ONT and the router. The ONT negotiates with the switch, the switch negotiates with the router, et voilà. Speed's up to scratch.
- Christian_R
  NETGEAR Employee Retired
  Oct 22, 2020
  Hello leaf_water,
  
  Welcome to the community! Have you had a moment to contact our support team regarding your issues?
  
  https://www.netgear.com/support/default.aspx
  
  Christian
  - leaf_water
    Aspirant
    Oct 23, 2020
    Hi Christian,
    
    Thanks for reaching out. Although I don't know why Ethernet autonegotiation failed, I managed to resolve my issue by adding a switch between my router and ONT. I did try reaching out to support, but my support period had lapsed. The shortest (read: cheapest) support subscription is half the price of the router, so I think I'll eat the cost of a switch instead of doing a deep dive on autonegotiation. Cheers.

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Netgear AX3000 / RAX40 detects lower bandwidth than link actually provides