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Forum Discussion
Terrible WiFi with RAX12 after switching off Xfinity AP
I deciced to replace the AP on my Comcast XB6 with the RAX120. Everything went great at first! I was hitting 870+ Mbps on WiFi 6 and 600-700 on 802.11 AC devices. Latency was low and legacy devices got a nice bump too. I have about 14 Devices on 5 GHz, of which 3 are WiFi6 compatible. There are 17 devices in on 2.4 Ghz, mostly light bulbs, switches, etc. WAN speed wired is 940/46 Mbps as reported by router. Overall, there would only be a few heavy streams at most.
However, I had my comast AP still up. I had an SSID overlap on the 2.4 band. Most devices seemed to stick there. With the 5 GHz SSID still operating on comcast, I setup a test SSID and had a few devices hooked up. This is how I ran my initial tests. Even 120 MHz was working great for AX and AC devices. I was using 3 PCs on AC and two PCs on AX. A few light bulbs wandered over to the 2.4 GHz band.
It all went down hill when I shut off the WiFi on the comcast modem. The 802.11 AC devices became unusable. Much worse performance than the the comcast modem ever had. Download was under 1 Mbps. The decices that are AX compatible still work great. There are just over 30 devices connected. The light bulbs all seem fine. App is reporting -40dBm. Comcast modem is at -50dBm.
I set the router back up on a 80 GHz channel but it didn't make any difference. The only other setting I have that isn't default is OFDMA is turned on in 5 GHz. I tried channel 36 and 157, which are both listed as best on the app. There doesn't seem to be an auto option?
I reactivated WiFi on comcast to make things usable.
So far I'm not too impressed with the router given it's price. :(
21 Replies
Just to update, I've disabled OFDMA but it didn't change anything. The Comcast modem just seems to outperform the RAX12 at 802.11AC and below, despite having an advantage in signal strength. Channeles are all clear, tried swapping them around.
I'm still confused on the great performance on both AC and AX I got on day 1. Nothing changed other than the SSID overlap going away and moving over 8 additional 802.11 AC devices that are mostly inactive.
- I believe it is the firmware. I’m on a beta I got from the Netgear Mod. I’ve had mine since March, and boy let me take you.. this top of the line router was a little disappointing first. I follow the community so I was able to filter thru all the issues. I never disabled any of the features. I very happy with my RAX200. My one wi-if 6 device reached 900megs connected to it.
My WiFi 6 device works amazing too. How does one get the beta firmware? I've done everything else up to this point.
I'm not sure if it's related or normal but the Admin UI is also very slow. Only 3 to 4% CPU and 418 MB of memory in use.
I'm back to my original testing setup and it's now blazing fast on 802.11 ac. So something with a device(s) or the load it doesn't like?
Sorry, not understanding your actual configuration.
Are you running both the XB6 and the RAX120 in router mode and are they situated near each other?
I have the same 2 devices and I tested the following two configurations:
1) XB6 in Router Mode w/WiFi off and the RAX120 in AP Mode
2) XB6 in Bridge Mode and RAX in Router Mode
I ended up using the configuration #2, but both configurations worked. I also hard reset the RAX120 when the firmware was updated.
Not running as many devices and have 3 AX capable iPhones.
I have the XB6 in router mode with AP still active and the RAX in AP mode. I had them near each other and have experimented with a 100 foot patch cable by moving the router around. Position in house has not mattered.
Each AP has 2 SSIDs, for the RAX I have duplicated the SSIDs with a *_test. (I've never found that 2.4/5 GHz selection works. I think that's just something ISPs and manufacturers use to simply things.)
My clients that started failing were
- PCs using a Realtek 8812AU based adapter with high gain antennas.
- Surface Book 2. It could not hold connection with the Realtek or internal. Every Surface device ever made has terrible WiFi performance.
- PC with both Realtek failed
- Same PC from 3 with a TP-Link WiFi card worked perfectly in AX mode and failed when driver forced to AC mode.
- I didn't get around to testing the TVs and smart deveices but Alexa did seem confused at one point.
What's odd is they all worked great with the initial _test setup. It's only after switching off the XB6 and reassignng the SSID in the RAX on the 5 GHz SSID that everything went to hell.
I fired back up the XB6 with the _test SSID on 5 GHz and then tested the clients that failed. The worked great, even with lower signal strength.
My guesses are
- Related to load
- The RAX doesn't like a 802.11ac device on my 5 GHz SSID side
I doubt it could be #1, this router is mostly idle with light bulbs making the count large. No settings or other setup has impacted the problem in a positive or negative way.
My kids are in fear of me activating the Netgear router on the SSID they are using.
Back to the saga, I was able to finally get everything transitioned over to the Nighthawk. I messed around with Adaptive Parity settings on the Realtek 8812AU adapters and it seemed to fix the overall stability of 802.1ac on the Nighthawk. My AX Intel cards were pulling 800-940/42 Mbps and the AC clients were respectable. Looking good!
Then this morning happened. Nothing changed and everyone in the house was sleeping. The Intel cards were getting 300/20 to the Nighthawk in AX mode. ???
- Then I connected the Realtek to the Nighthawk and got around 100/10
- I connected the Realtek adapter to the Comcast modem and got a solid 600/40 through AC with around a signal that was -25dBm weaker.
- I connected then Intel AX adapter to Comcast and got around 700/40
- Back over to the Intel AX adapter and Nighthawk and got 300/200. Not only was it slower, the speed test started off much slower and took longer to ramp up. I've noticed this on most of the tests. Much longer time to get up to speed.
I was puzzled but then remember the thread about needing to reboot every couple days. So I restarted the Nighthawk. It took several minutes to get connection back but when I did the Intel AX card was getting 600-700/30 with consistency.
The general analysis seems to be:
- Best consistent setup is Intel ax Adapter to the Comcast ac AP (that's on another floor on the another side of the house)
- Best performance is the Nighthawk, but only on ax and random at that.
- 802.11 ac performance can be worse on the Nighthawk
- Nighthawk has slightly better latency
- WiFi connections/negotiation seem to happen much faster to the Comcast AP (I picked this up with all the testing). This can be a delay of many tens of seconds
I'll try a firmware rollback but I'm getting exhausted. :(
I know this is the least popular statement on the internet but it appears "The cable company's equipment is better". I'd like to be proven wrong as I want this to work.
Farscape wrote:Sorry, not understanding your actual configuration.
Are you running both the XB6 and the RAX120 in router mode and are they situated near each other?
I have the same 2 devices and I tested the following two configurations:
1) XB6 in Router Mode w/WiFi off and the RAX120 in AP Mode
2) XB6 in Bridge Mode and RAX in Router Mode
I ended up using the configuration #2, but both configurations worked. I also hard reset the RAX120 when the firmware was updated.
Not running as many devices and have 3 AX capable iPhones.
How did you get bridge mode working? I tried twice and the XB6 and RAX don't seem to negotiate the settings.
Although, at this point I don't trust the RAX to be using it as a router and the only AP. I'm keeping an SSID open on the XB6 as an emergency fallback.
michail71 wrote:How did you get bridge mode working? I tried twice and the XB6 and RAX don't seem to negotiate the settings.
Although, at this point I don't trust the RAX to be using it as a router and the only AP. I'm keeping an SSID open on the XB6 as an emergency fallback.
I just logged into the XB6 and enabled Bridge Mode. Even after it enabled, I rebooted the XB6 again to make sure it stayed in Bridge Mode.
Note that you can't have another device connected to the 2nd XB6 network jack or you won't get an internet connection on the router (RAX120). It will "confuse" the XB6 to have 2 devices requiring an ip address after bridge mode is enabled. It makes sense to me now, but at the time, it was frustrating.
I made the mistake of having both the RAX120 (jack #1) and a laptop (jack #2) plugged into the network jacks of the XB6. I was using the laptop wired directly to the XB6 to enable bridge mode. I kept ending up with the red light (no internet connection) on the RAX120. I even did a couple of resets of the RAX120 and still no go. Finally found the answer on the xFinity forum. You may also need to have the router connected to jack #1 (instead of jack #2) on the XB6.
I'm using the RAX120 in a home with 3 floors of concrete block and doesn't have the ethernet or coax wiring to each floor so I was looking for a router with range and also curious about WiFi 6. The RAX120 is located near the middle of the 2nd floor. If there were ethernet or coax wiring on each floor, I would be using a different setup and equipment.
So far the RAX120 has been working well (no disconnects) and generally full speed except for the first floor where speed appears reduced about 65% from max (probably due to additional concrete block).
I do see an anamoly where my AX capable iPhone seems to prefer the 2.4GHz signal at night on the 3rd floor whereas it connects to the 5GHz signal during the day in the same area.
