NETGEAR is aware of a growing number of phone and online scams. To learn how to stay safe click here.
Forum Discussion
Solved
Slow WiFi/WNR2000v5
Hi all, I have a WNR2000v5 wired to a Surfboard 6141 cable modem, with high speed service from Wide Open West, here in Michigan. I have the fastest service available from WOW, 110Mbps. A WOW te...
No, that doesn't make a difference. The key things that the EX6100 are missing are NAT, a DHCP server and a firewall. You need NAT in order to share the one public IP address that your ISP has given you among all of your devices. You need a DHCP server in order to assign IP addresses to all of your devices. And you need a firewall to protect your devices from hackers. A router provides all of these crucial functions.
No one sells routers without at least one Ethernet port. You may not need to hard wire anything now, but in the future you may. Hard wiring is much more reliable than Wi-Fi. You should hard wire when you can and when it's convenient.
Before we even consider wireless, you are already losing bandwidth because the WNR2000v5 only has Fast Ethernet ports (100 Mbps). If you want to make full use of your 110 Mbps Internet Service, you will need to upgrade to a router with Gigabit Ethernet ports.
The problem with wireless speeds could be due to a combination of congestion and poor signal strength. Congestion can be caused by other neighboring Wi-Fi networks. Experiment with changing the Wi-Fi channel. There are tools, like Netgear's own desktop Genie program (link), or free ones like Vistumbler (link) and Acrylic Wi-Fi (link), that can help you pick the least congested channel. Poor signal strength can be caused by being too far away from the router, having too many walls in the way and disruption by cordless telephones, baby monitors and microwave ovens that operate in the same radio frequencies. Moving the router closer and eliminating troublesome radio noise makers can help improve wireless speeds.
You may also consider upgrading to a dual-band router that operates in both the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz frequencies. 5 GHz Wi-Fi is much faster and much less congested.
Thank you for your quick response.
I have 2 other wireless broadcast options here at the home, ready to implement. The first is a Netgear EX6100. The second is a Netgear WGR614v10, which is older, and I'm pretty sure isn't dual band like the EX6100. I was doing testing Friday night before my inital post, and found that the bottom light (the link light) on the SurfBoard 6141 blinks red with the current setup, and it was blue when I installed the EX6100 instead of the original, and current router that you discussed. I'm going to take the original router out of the loop and install the EX6100 as an access point and see if that helps at all. Of course, your input here is much valued and appreciated.
I downloaded the Genie app for my iPad, but cannot find the screen where I can see the channel traffic.
I'll take a look at those other programs as well.
Thanks!
Matt
I think you will find that neither the EX6100 nor the WGR614v10 are going to help.
I have the EX6100 configured as an access point, and am getting full speed on the 5Ghz band. I'm having some issues with 5G connections in the back bedroom, but I think that is either range or firmware related (small home, less than 1000 sq ft, and the modem is wired into the office, which is far across the home from the back bedroom). I did read a couple of posts where it was suggested to downgrade the firmware on the 6100 being a solution for the 5G connection issue, and I just 5 minutes ago did that, and I'll take the day and see how the connection reacts.
TheEther, what would you suggest I do to solve this? What products are you seeing in going through threads that are working for people?
Much thanks in advance.
Matt