Terrible WiFi with RAX12 after switching off Xfinity AP

michail71
Apprentice
Jul 23, 2020
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.
- michail71
  Apprentice
  Jul 25, 2020
  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.
michail71
Apprentice
Jul 25, 2020
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.
- worldturning
  Star
  Jul 26, 2020
  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.
  - michail71
    Apprentice
    Jul 26, 2020
    LOL on the prefers 2.4. Most devices seem to blindly grab 2.4 when they see a stronger SNNR. With WiFi 6 it isn't as bad, but not optimal. I've got my desktop and router within 10 feet of each other and they will still go to 2.4 without a bit of configuring and "forget this" on my part.
    
    I could sware I did port 1 only on the XB6 only and it still failed.
    
    I've replaced all of my desktop clients now with Intel AX200 cards. They will outperform the direct ethernet connection but I'm suffering from random failures on all systems now. They can be easily bounded by an on/off of the wifi connection. But it only happens when connected to the RAX in ax mode. I think these failures are realted to the cards and perhaps not 100% the RAX.
    
    If I could combine the best of the XB6 and RAX, it would be an amazing device. Netgear needs to get their act together on a few things.

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Terrible WiFi with RAX12 after switching off Xfinity AP