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Forum Discussion
RAX120 Dropping Speed
A day into my new RAX120 and I'm running into issues with WiFi dropping speeds down to 20/30 Mbps or dropping connection altogether on 5GHz. Upon reboot, speeds come back to normal which on WiFi devices I range in the 700-800 Mbps range. I am link aggrogated from my SurfBoard 8200 and read in another post the link aggrogation may be the culprit. I'm running a wired connection off my multigig port to a 2.5Gbps network adaptor on my main PC and have been hitting speedtest averaging around 1050Mbps with peaks into 1100Mbps, so I'd rather not diable LAG as that's the main reason I even upgradted to the RAX120 in the first place. I have QoS and Smart Connection off to ensure my devices aren't being throttled by the router itself. The other posts I've read are dating back into mid-2019, has there not been a solution since? Is there an older firmware that supports LAG that is known to be stable for the RAX120? Pretty disapointed 24 hours in I've had to reset the device three times to address WiFi connection issues.
16 Replies
Its not just the RAX that's struggled with LAG. The Arris SB8200 does as well. I've got it and had to put it in a closet because LAG wasn't stable on it. The CM1100 was more stable in terms of LAG than the SB8200 in my experience.
As much as it pains me to say, try disabling LAG first. We know its got issues with both arris AND netgear. rule that out first. If the speeds stay good with LAG disabled, then we know thats the issue. Either for the Arris or the netgear. If it doesn't and your issues are only over wifi, I'd pm Christian_R Christian has access to beta firmware for the RAX120 that could potentially benefit your device if you're willing to try beta firmware.
Thanks for the helpful info! I'll continue to troubleshoot as I move forward and try switching LAG off to see if it helps remedy my issues however it appears the speed drop is only affecting WiFi. I'm running into the same DNS issues others have reported on all devices and that's been the bigger problem as it’s actually causing loss of service. Looks as if I’m not actually losing the 5Ghz broadcast, it’s just that all devices go unresponsive when the DNS issues arise (in the two days I’ve been running this router has occurred about 5 times). I'm running a Pi-hole so my router is only set to that as its only DNS, which has been operating just fine well before the introduction of the RAX120 onto the network. It appears reading the forum the DNS issue is unrelated to the actual DNS you’re pointing to, but rather a configuration issue with the firmware itself. I found aside from rebooting the router, if I log in during this DNS issue and simply reapply the same DNS settings I had it’ll resolve itself once it “applies” the settings. I’d be open to trying a beta firmware if it’ll address some of my issues. At this rate, I’m giving this a bit of time while within my return window of the device to see if it’s going to be worth holding onto or not.
DSN issues still seemed to be present even with LAG disabled, fortunately that doesn't seem to be the culprit. Though haven’t noticed any WiFi slowdowns during the troubleshooting so can’t rule it out as a cause for that. I know many are searching the boards with similar problems so will seek out beta firmware and update any progress made with it. With LAG re-enabled hit my best speeds yet - almost making the trouble worthwhile.
I have several wired devices and, after few hours to days the speed also drops. Usually I have 120MB/s download speed and 110MB/s lan transfer speed, but after time they drop to 35Mb/s download and 50Mb/s lan transfer. At the same time webpages are hard to load (appear to be offline, but several refreshes later they open). At first I thought it was due to DNS, but I've tried ISP's DNS, 1111, and 8888, but the results are the same. A reboot solves all these issues, but I have to do it several times a week and it's really annoying.
AC devices also suffer from speed drop. AX is just another nightmare. I have 1 AX201 and 4 AX200, and they all drop the internet randomly after few hours. They all appear to be online (no exclamation mark on the WiFi icon), but I just cannot connect to anything, until I dis/re-connect WiFi.
For this so expensive router, after the latest firmware I noticed a big drop on my 1000 mbps fiber speed. I revert the firmware to the stock firmware and never use their nighthawk app and it seems I never had any issues at all. This bitdefender software is just one of their moneymaking styles. Correct me if I'm wrong.
What were you using that was not stock and what firmware version are you on now.
Did you perform a factory reset after updating?
I've been using netgear router for 12 years now and my last one was R8500. After automatic install of the firmware I noticed a degrading performance of the router.the first release it worked flawlessly and then worked like 1 to 1\2 year it became a piece of crap. I
always have a fight with the internet providers. What a waste of money because I'm not buying cheap ones its their latest ones! On my RAX AX120, the first release firmware out of the box worked fine. The auto update is making it worse as I observed, this is just MY OBSERVATION!!!! No offense to whoever this KillerHippie is saying. So tired of seeing a very expensive router will just go down the drain, I decided to revert it the original firmware as if out of the box and hard reset it 30-30-30 like use before on old netgear routers of mine. MY EXPERIENCE after I used the nighthawk app with netgear armor on the last week of my trial because I dont want to buy it, my Iphone was
disabled for no reason that I cant open and have reset. I turned of my router and walla I was able to turn it OFF and do reset.
I reset everything (what a waste of time) I have 32 loT connected to it like garage, switches and CCTV my house is fully automated.
So on the consumer end this is not a joke! Im just an ordinary netgear user and if this situation happens it cost me a lot of time and effort to connect all of them. What I did was to disconnect if from my at&t IP passthrough gateway, hard reset it to 30-30-30sec and reconnect all of my devices changed my password.This is my current firmware that you can download from the website. Im not suggesting you also do this,
this is just my experience and currently I have no more problems. Mind you I'm pretty happy with my lifelock coverage! if they get my info.
All netgear firmware is stock! Bitdefender is a AV comany and not a 'style' but if you have multiple pc's and IoT devices it will offer protection as you can download Bitdefender for as many devices as you want for that one price. Its not really that useful on the router alone but does offer basic protection basically.
Well I finally resolved all my router issues. Went and bough an Asus AX11000. Range is way better, speeds are better, no drops ever, speeds never decrease for any reason, latency is better. Basically all around beats the snot out of this pile of junk hands down. My RAX 120 is now relegated to paper weight status.
