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michail71's avatar
michail71
Apprentice
Jul 22, 2020

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 device...
Farscape's avatar
Farscape
Guide
Jul 23, 2020

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.

 

michail71's avatar
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

  1. PCs using a Realtek 8812AU based adapter with high gain antennas.
  2. Surface Book 2. It could not hold connection with the Realtek or internal.  Every Surface device ever made has terrible WiFi performance. 
  3. PC with both Realtek failed
  4. Same PC from 3 with a TP-Link WiFi card worked perfectly in AX mode and failed when driver forced to AC mode.
  5. 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

  1. Related to load
  2. 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's avatar
    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. ???

     

    1. Then I connected the Realtek to the Nighthawk and got around 100/10  
    2. 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. 
    3. I connected then Intel AX adapter to Comcast and got around 700/40
    4. 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.