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Forum Discussion
RAX75 1.0.3.88 firmware broke HomeKit
I've been using my Nighthawk RAX75 (the Cosco version of the RAX80) for several months, configured with SmartConnect without any major issues with HomeKit. A few days ago almost all of my 40+ Hom...
MacauBBS wrote:The SmartConnect problem has always been there,
Manually set the 2.4G/5G SSID to be the same, the effect is better.
That is incorrect - SmartConnect has worked just fine with HomeKit on my RAX75 for over 6 months when using the older firmware.
I previously tried two differe routers - the TP-Link Archer AX6000 and the ASUS ROG Rapture AC5300, and both had issues with their version of SmartConnect and HomeKit. I then switched to the Nighthawk, and had no issues with it for months, until Netgear released this new 1.0.3.88 firmware.
For the record, firmware 1.0.3.102_1.0.48 has severl fxes, but not one for Homekit. Most of my homekit devices became unresponsive within a few hours after upgrading from 1.0.2.76 to 1.0.3.102_1.0.48.
Unbelievable that Netgear is neither fixing this nor even acknowledging there's a problem. Knowing that Homekit worked in 1.0.2.76 and broke in 1.0.3.88 and higher should easily let them discover what code changes caused the issues...
Christian_R action please.
Hasn't anyone at Netgear heard of "HomeKit"...? As an FYI V1.0.3.106_1.0.50 does not work eaither. HomeKit devices stop responding within 5 minutes of a router reboot when using SmartConnect.
So was this issued ever solved?
No - Netgear still did not fix the issue in the current firmware v1.0.3.106_1.0.50.
If you want to use HomeKit and all the router's security patches installed, you will have to disable one of the best advertised features of the router - smartconnect. The only way to have HomeKit work is to disable smartconnect so you have two separate SSIDs for the two bands, and then configure all your HomeKit devices to use the 2GHz band as several of them are unlikely to support the 5GHz one.
I had to add an X1800 Mesh Extender to increase the WiFi coverage, and the issues with HomeKit started again even with RAX75 running the older v1.0.2.76 firmware.
As I had enough of this with Netgear blissfully ignoring the HomeKit problems, I purchased a pair of Asus RT-AX92U iMesh routers. Out-of-the-box they too had the same issues with HomeKit. After a bit of Googling however, I found the solution. Asus offers a TON of more features and configuration options. All we have to do was to:
Enable IGMP Snooping
Enable multicast routing (IGMP Proxy)
Disable Airtime fairness
Changing those 3 settings seems to have fixed all the HomeKit issues. It's now been 48hours without a single "not responding" error. It is to be noted that those settings need to be changed not only on the "user" 2.4GHz and the 5GHz-1 band used by clients, but also on the 5GHz-2 band dedicated to the backhaul.
And as a side-note... I have a 1GB fiber internet connection. Using the Nighthawk, even when hardwired, my computers would never exceed 490Mbps downlod speeds. I thought it was "normal" due to my provider (Centurylink) not having a "real" 1GB connection.
When I plugged in my new Asus, my download speed (hardwired) now oscillates between 960Mbps and 1.3Gbps. More than double the speed of the Nighthawk.
Asus rocks.
