NETGEAR is aware of a growing number of phone and online scams. To learn how to stay safe click here.
Forum Discussion
(RAX45)_slow internet speed on 2.4Ghz
My model isn't listed anywhere that I've seen, but I think the RAX40 is the closest. Mine is the RAX45 6-stream wifi router. I first posted on the general Nighthawk wifi routers group. Thanks michael...
For the 2.4GHz band, manually select a channel instead of using the "Auto" setting, while auto works well in most cases, in heavily congested environments, it can cause issues by simply not finding any good channels and thus constantly scanning and switching channels depending on which has lower airtime use at the given moment which will change often based on other people in the area.
Also consider experimenting with the 20/40 coexistance setting. sometimes even in congested situations, it can provide a good speed boost, especiallly if neighboring APs are fairly close to the noise floor.
Beyond that, when it is performing slow, check other WiFi drvices on the same band to see if they are having similar slowdowns.
If it is just a single device, then I recommend also using the debug page on the router at routerIP/debug.htm and start logging, and during that process have the device in question disconnect and reconnect a few times. Then check for entries listing the device's MCS rates. Some WiFi adapters will behave strangely or simply not report all supported rates, or engage in other behavior that causes a very low PHY rate to be used, in some cases, it could simply be a driver issue with the WiFi adapter. I have seen this happen a few time with some of the more obscure WiFi chipsets.
Razor512 wrote:For the 2.4GHz band, manually select a channel instead of using the "Auto" setting, while auto works well in most cases, in heavily congested environments, it can cause issues by simply not finding any good channels and thus constantly scanning and switching channels depending on which has lower airtime use at the given moment which will change often based on other people in the area.
I was on channel 9 before, but it seems that was reset to auto with the firmware update (maybe?). I have switched it to 11.
Also consider experimenting with the 20/40 coexistance setting. sometimes even in congested situations, it can provide a good speed boost, especiallly if neighboring APs are fairly close to the noise floor.
Okay -- what is that, where do I find it, and what do I need to do? (Sorry, not that knowledgable)
Beyond that, when it is performing slow, check other WiFi drvices on the same band to see if they are having similar slowdowns.
If it is just a single device, then I recommend also using the debug page on the router at routerIP/debug.htm and start logging, and during that process have the device in question disconnect and reconnect a few times. Then check for entries listing the device's MCS rates. Some WiFi adapters will behave strangely or simply not report all supported rates, or engage in other behavior that causes a very low PHY rate to be used, in some cases, it could simply be a driver issue with the WiFi adapter. I have seen this happen a few time with some of the more obscure WiFi chipsets.
Everything slows down at once, across all decvices. Thanks for being so thorough!
- For the 20/40 MHz coexistence, it is a setting in the WiFi settings menu. It will be titled "Enable 20/40 MHz Coexistence" and will be enabled by default. That setting will cause the router to use 20MHz channel width instead of 40MHz channel width, thus half the throughput if it detects any overlapping APs. In a truly congested environment, 40MHz can slow you down, as additional airtime sharing will take place, but if the neighboring APs are far away, then that airtime sharing issue may not happen and you will get a nice performance bump.
Beyond that, try specifying a channel manually.
Also if unchecking the 20/40 MHz coexistence does not fix the issues, then check it again, as it is a useful feature in the vast majority of cases.Razor512 plemans, thanks, but...
I did a factory reset last night, and tested speeds with the new firmware and the old, with and without disabling the 20/40 MHz coexistence setting, and on a specific channel, not the auto setting. My download speeds on 2.4 are still under 10Mbps, sometimes as low as 1.5. Intestingly, the upload speeds were sometimes respectable (7-11) at the same time. 5g download speeds are 100 or higher.
Any other ideas?
