RAX120 with EX8000, slow WiFi on RAX120.

It seems like the issue occurs when my phone migrates from the extender to the router's wireless radios. I have found that by turning airplane mode on, then off or doing the same to the WiFi radios on the phone will restore the normal speeds when connected to the router. The only problem is when I cross over to the extender, the issue comes right back if I switch back to the router after that. The good part is that my extender is right in the middle of my house and covers 95% of it in a strong signal. My phone only switches to the router at night when it is in my master bedroom on the far side of the house.

This seems to be only a problem with portable devices, the wife's iPhone 8 Plus, and the kids' tablets exhibit the same issue. But the roaming feature works 100% and that is what is most important to my household. I have had no complaints from anyone else in the house about not being able to stream or download files. I am a bit more demanding on my devices however, and it has affected me when I am downloading large files (several gigabytes) to my Pixel 2 XL. I just have to be more careful that I am connected to the extender to make sure that the files download at 400+ Mbps rather than only at 40 Mbps.

The issue does not affect my wife's laptop. It will get consistently fast speeds no matter where it is in the house. The Nintendo Switch will never connect at the higher speeds, it will cap out at about 50 Mbps. But then again, it is the speed reported from Nintendo which could have a host of other factors influencing it. All of the Nvidia Shield TVs in the house are able to get 200 Mbps which is more than enough for video streaming.

I think that my solution is going to be running an ethernet cable from the office through the attic to where the extender is located and making the extender a hard wired access point. If it is used in this fashion, I think it will solve the speed drop problem for good. Another option is to disable the one SSID feature and run the extender under its own name, but this kills the smart roaming feature. It is frustrating, but ultimately I have a stable network that does what I need it to do at this point. To their credit, Netgear did attempt to contact me to resolve this issue, but nothing came of it. They really need to up their game and get their technical support team to be based in the USA. I don't have time to mess around with tier 1 support in Asia telling me to factory reset everything and rebuild my network from scratch.