RAX80 5 Ghz band... Bug preventing the 5Ghz band from running at full speed

Owlpower,

Very interesting. In my case, I did get very good performance with the 5 Ghz band, until I changed the SSID to something other than the default NETGEAR75-5G. After the change, the 5 Ghz would connect with anything. Also, a Wi-Fi monitoring utility would show 5G appear and disappear until I changed the speed to "up to 2400 Mbps." - Obviously there is a problem with the 5G band and 4800 Mbps. Sounds to me like this may be partially a problem with the code that applies the settings from the 5G Wi-Fi settings menu to the config. The firmware ste to its RESET 'default', more or less works correctly because isn't actually affected by the page's configuration code. If I make too many changes back, the only way I can get it working is to do a full hard reset.

Presently, I am awaiting a replacement for my RAX80. Sometimes it is very difficult to determine whether the problem lies in the hardware or software, which is firmware in this case. When the new one arrives, I will be able to report on whether the problem is the same on the new one. Up 'til now, the conclusion is that it is defective hardware on the current  one. 

This is an update to my previous post.

First off, the characters used in the SSID are definitely not the issue. I did find that the RAX80 I had at the time of my post was definately corrupting the configuration, though. Netgear sent me a replacement, (this is the third one in a bit under two months.) On this one, there is no config corruption and it doesn't lock up when attempting to change the 5 Ghz speed up and down, but the 5 Ghz band will not allow 5 Ghz adapters to connect when it is set as up to 4800 Mbps, even though they are Wi-Fi 6 compatible, with current Intel drivers and documentation that says they do. (I may try doing a binary file compare on the good and bag .cfg files just to check out the differences...) 

Interestingly, this box doesn't connect at 4800 with either the default or my custom SSID.  It IS much more stable, generally.

I have two new tools that arrived today: One is a new diagnostic Wi-Fi scanner app that can better diagnose the Wi-Fi signals. The other is a brand new PCI Wi-Fi 6 adapter that advertises itself as compatible with the Nighthawk RAX80 and a long list of other units. That will be arriving this afternoon, and I will have a much better chance to find out ith the RAX80's % Ghz band will talk to anything when set to 4800 Mbps. - I'll post more after my experiments. (Note: May not be able to do this right away because my wife wants me to clean the garage... ) :-| 

My problem is that my RAX80 won't connect when set at "up to 4800 Mbps." My (Intel) Wi-Fi adapters are AX-compatible. In order to connect these on the 5 Ghz band, I had to set it back to 2400 Mbps, which is half of the RAX80'S advertised specifications. Yes, that works fine, but when you buy a device based on its specs, why settle for less? That isn't acceptable to me. Why just settle for less? When the newer devices with 4800 adapters become available, I'll only be getting half of what I should. That's, simply not acceptable.

Netgear has just replaced that RAX80 with another one, which is still not capable of 4800 Mbps, but it is a lot more stable, in general. Today, I recieved two very useful tools. One is an application that can do more in-depth analysis of a Wi-Fi signal. The other is a Wi-Fi 6 PCI adapter which is capable of data transfer in excess of 3000 Mbps. It is also specified as fully compatible with the RAX80. - Withe these, I should be much more able to test the 5 Ghz band's capability to run at 4800 Mbps.