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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...
psuhacker wrote:Thanks for your response. I am not too concerned about the firmware itself, I am sure it works okay. I have always been concerned about these installation processes, whether this one in particular or the flashing process in general. I will try the Voxel firmware but will conduct a test beforehand.
Fully agree with your concern. The update process with the least chance of an issue is to use a web browser on a computer that is direct connected to the router via an Ethernet cable. Avoid the mobile application at all costs. Preferable not to use Wi-Fi for the connection. If your laptop does not have an Ethernet port, buy a USB to RJ45 adapter on Amazon.
A couple of tips from past experience. Do not connect the router you are updating to the internet when updating. Make sure the Wi-Fi (both bands) on the router you are updating is enabled and broadcasting. Perform a firmware default reset and reboot prior to performing the update. After the firmware update, configure the router from scratch. Do not upload a previous configuration file.
It looks like the votes are in. My original R7800 router is probably defective. The R7800 I purchased from eBay is broadcasting 80 MHz bandwidth at 5 GHz. My original R7800 router was only broadcasting 20 MHz.
The eBay router must have been old stock, never used. The antennae were still sealed in their plastic packaging and the router itself still had the plastic protective skin covering it. I only had to update the firmware one level (I performed the firmware default reset first).
Installing the router was a major undertaking, taking me a day and a half. For whatever reason, I was not able to use the automatic installation method (setup wizard) and had to manually install it. The original R7800 was installed using the automatic method and I now have a better appreciation of the fact that the IP addressing is important, among other things.
In a couple of days, I will update the original R7800 with the Voxel firmware to see if it makes any difference.
psuhacker wrote:
Installing the router was a major undertaking, taking me a day and a half. For whatever reason, I was not able to use the automatic installation method (setup wizard) and had to manually install it.
The manual install can actually be easier than the "wizard" when you have done it enough times. You just need the login details ad settings for your ISP. Minutes rather than hours
The wizard is fine if it can detect your ISP's. (Avoid mobile apps.) But there are so many of those out there that Netgear doesn't seem up to handling them all.
One thing you could try, now that you have an R7800 behaving itself, you could backup the settings:
And the reload them on the dodgy router.
This doesn't work between different models, but two R7800s should be compatible,
Just another user with time on their hands.
michaelkenward wrote:One thing you could try, now that you have an R7800 behaving itself, you could backup the settings:
And the reload them on the dodgy router.
This doesn't work between different models, but two R7800s should be compatible,
Recommend a bit of caution if one router is running stock firmware and the other is running Voxel's.
I guess at this point the testing is over. I loaded the Voxel firmware in the R7800 router that was not producing 80 MHz bandwidth at 5 GHz and it made no difference, still only 20 MHz broadcast. The Voxel firmware looks interesting and if the Netgear firmware on the eBay router does not meet my needs, I may go in that direction.
Many thanks for all the input I received from the Netgear community. I appreciate the help.
