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Forum Discussion
Nighthawk R7800, no 80 Mhz Bandwidth
Hi Everyone, A number of years ago I purchased a Netgear Nighthawk R7800 router and set it up as another access point along with my Arris NVG443B modem/router supplied by Frontier Communications DSL...
If you left the wifi radios running on both the R7800 and the Arris DSL modem, then this would be interference between the two and probably causing the R7800 to reduce the bandwidth to 20Mhz to try and avoid interferences and help maintain wifi connections. This is NOT recommended having two signal sources. If you had turned OFF the Arris radios and extender, the R7800 would and should be broadcasting 80Mhz. 160Mhz if you enabled it.
Thank you for your quick reply. Unfortunately I am not sure it is an interference issue. I disabled the Arris 5 Ghz transmitter, rebooted both routers and waited 20 minutes. The Arris router was not transmitting (at 5 Ghz) and the Netgear 5 Ghz transmitter still had 20 Mhz bandwidth. I even disabled the range extender.
I reconfigured the Arris router and everything is back to "normal". Arris 5 Ghz at 80 Mhz and Netgear 5 Ghz at 20 Mhz.
I am open to more suggestions but have a feeling the Netgear router has an issue.
psuhacker wrote:
I disabled the Arris 5 Ghz transmitter, rebooted both routers and waited 20 minutes.
That does not disable the router function on the Arris.
Just another user with time on their hands.
Ha! Ha! Ha!, your response was pretty funny. All joking aside, I made a serious inquiry and would appreciate a serious response. I would like to hear from someone who knows router design/operation and in particular the Netgear R7800. Knowing the router setup I described, is there a test I can make to determine if the router has a defect? Please supply some detail.
We can joke about the issue later if need be.
Note: there is nothing wrong with the router having a defect. Stuff happens. For years the router has supplied my needs well and at this point the issue probably is academic. Of course, if there is a factory defect, I would like to hear from Netgear.
Are there any other wifi neighbors near by?
Something to try and see, load up Voxel's 3rd party FW and see if problem is seen there. Since the R7800 is EoS, you'll not see any more FW updates beyond last posted version on NG download site. Voxel keeps his up to date as possible for his stuff. I've used his FW on mine and works well. Something to try and see.
psuhacker wrote:
Thank you for your quick reply. Unfortunately I am not sure it is an interference issue. I disabled the Arris 5 Ghz transmitter, rebooted both routers and waited 20 minutes. The Arris router was not transmitting (at 5 Ghz) and the Netgear 5 Ghz transmitter still had 20 Mhz bandwidth. I even disabled the range extender.
I reconfigured the Arris router and everything is back to "normal". Arris 5 Ghz at 80 Mhz and Netgear 5 Ghz at 20 Mhz.
I am open to more suggestions but have a feeling the Netgear router has an issue.
Thank both of you for your suggestions. See the following:
I do have 5 GHz neighbors but their power levels (signal strength) are low relative to my output (if this was a neighbor issue I would expect the Arris router to be affected also?). The neighborhood 5 GHz spectrum is not crowded. My Arris router uses channel 36 and the Netgear router uses channel 149 so there is a wide channel/frequency separation. Also there is no channel overlap with others using the channels. In further trying to eliminate the possibility of interference, I separated the routers by about 20-25 feet with two walls in between. Still no change; still a 20 MHz channel.
I downloaded WinInfoView and it confirmed what my Android Wi-Fi analyzer said, the R7800 was transmitting 5 GHz at 20 MHz bandwidth (why would my range extender transmit the R7800 5 GHz signal at 80 MHz? I would think the range extender would follow whatever the router was doing). I wish I knew more about these things.
I also checked the Netgear web site and confirmed my firmware was up to date.
Lastly I visited the Voxel web site and downloaded what I think is the latest version of their R7800 firmware (R7800-V1.0.2.111SF). I am hesitating to install it (cold feet) because I do not want to turn my router into a door stop. Admittedly, I can be "all thumbs" with such things. I have to give this some more thought.
This may be a hardware issue and not software? I believe the R7800 uses a Qualcomm radio module and that is the device that creates the 80 MHz path. Maybe that is defective?
In any case, the router seems to be doing well for my purposes and this issue is, at this point, an academic one.
Lastly, I took Michaelkenward's note "Just another user with time on their hands" to be pointed at me. Sorry, my mistake, even though I am retired and do have time to research these things that interest me.
