NETGEAR is aware of a growing number of phone and online scams. To learn how to stay safe click here.
Forum Discussion
Solved
Router Log-in
Hi, All of my devices but one seem to be on the 2.4gh band. Consequently the connection to the Roku stick is not great. I am trying to log into the router to change to Smart Choice so it will autom...
Thank you for the reply and helpful information IrvSP. It does not surprise me that what I posted doesn’t make sense. This is way more than I expected to have to do to set up a new router and connect everything. Now posters are discussing corrupt firmware updates. Our previous NETGEAR Router seemed so much less trouble. Or maybe we just didn’t know about or understand these issues. It too was a dual band however only one SSID or choice showed when we were connecting printers or phones or other wireless devices. This Router appears as Netgear07 and 5g. Or at least it sometimes does. My husband connected to 5g with his iPhone. Not knowing 5g was also our router I selected Netgear07 which apparently is the name/choice for the 2.4gh band. Setting up the Router I didn’t realize the bands could or should have two SSID so they both use the same SSID and password. There was not a good explanation in the start up guide of what Smart Connect is. Looking at it on the NIGHTHAWK app I can see it is not turned on. When I did turn it on My devices lost their connection, I got errors saying the router could not be found. I ended up rebooting the modem and router and reconnecting devices one at a time as I originally did. This is when I noticed I could not connect my phone to 5g. Since then most times when I check to see what is connected to which band printers, DirecTV, my phone and now the Roku Stick are all using the 2.4gh band and my husbands phone is on 5g. Even when I disconnected my phone by “forgetting the network and then reconnecting to 5g when I letter checked connected devices through the Nighthawk App my phone was back on 2.4gh. Oddly enough running slows tests through the Nighthawk App the speeds reach 10-12mbps (we have DSL). If I check my iPhone while it’s connected to 2.4gh and use the ookla speed test it reaches about 1/2 that speed. Connected to 5g it reaches the same speeds as through the Nighthawk App. I am thinking about contacting our DSL provider to ask if our DSL supports 5g. I hope that makes more sense or is clearer. I apologize for any confusion, I am still learning. I appreciate everyone’s patience and kind assistance!
I'm afraid you might still be confused and so am I?
PlayaGal wrote:
Our previous NETGEAR Router seemed so much less trouble. Or maybe we just didn’t know about or understand these issues. It too was a dual band however only one SSID or choice showed when we were connecting printers or phones or other wireless devices.
Might help if you posted that model number? It seems that it would have to have had Smart Connect on to do what you are saying... without it on, you should see 2 distinct SSID's being broadcast.
PlayaGal wrote:
This Router appears as Netgear07 and 5g. Or at least it sometimes does. My husband connected to 5g with his iPhone. Not knowing 5g was also our router I selected Netgear07 which apparently is the name/choice for the 2.4gh band.
Well, the actual DEFAULT SSID's are listed on the bottom label of the router. They should start with 'NETGEAR' and usually have a number after it. Even on the Dual bands only one SSID, the 2.4Ghz is shown. That is in case you can only connect via wireless. Once connected you go to the WIRELESS tab on a browse login to the GENIE GUI and you can then see the DEFAULT 5Ghz SSID and you CAN change either or both. If you turn on Smart Connect the 2.4Ghz SSID and password is the only one that will be broadcast.
PlayaGal wrote:
Looking at it on the NIGHTHAWK app I can see it is not turned on. When I did turn it on My devices lost their connection, I got errors saying the router could not be found. I ended up rebooting the modem and router and reconnecting devices one at a time as I originally did. This is when I noticed I could not connect my phone to 5g.
Yes, this is probably correct. Switching to it from it off probably did disconnect you and you would need a reboot. By the way, using the NightHawk app to me is NOT the way to go. It has limited functions. Better way is to use a BROWSER and for the URL enter the IP Address (or ROUTERLOGIN.NET) to get to the 'real' Genie Graphical User Interface (GUI). There supply the same USERID and PASSWORD (default is admin and password unless you changed it during setup) and you'll have a lot more capabilities to manage the router.
PlayaGal wrote:
This is when I noticed I could not connect my phone to 5g. Since then most times when I check to see what is connected to which band printers, DirecTV, my phone and now the Roku Stick are all using the 2.4gh band and my husbands phone is on 5g.
Point of confusion for me. At this point from what you posted it seems SMART CONNECT was enabled? If that is the case, the router 'decides' who connects to what? I'll assume your husband's phone is newer? Probably AC speed capable while your's might not be? Other than the phones, those are all generally 2.4Ghz devices, so it would be normal for the router to place them there. As I mentioned before, Smart Connect is not a DYNAMIC version but a LOAD LEVELING implementation. The actual band the device connects to might be depending on time connected and other devices already connected. It might also be that it was determined your phone would work better on the lower band, especially if it connected far from the router. The BEST way to do it, TURN OFF SMART CONNECT and then CUSTOMIZE the 2 SSID's to be UNIQUE and also identifies the band, like ROUTER2 and ROUTER5 for the 2 bands (2.4Ghz and 5Ghz) and then connect the devices to those SSID's as you see fit. Be aware, connecting a 2.4Ghz ONLY device, like a printer for instance, can and will slow down the 5Ghz SSID for ALL devices that connect to it.
PlayaGal wrote:
Oddly enough running slows tests through the Nighthawk App the speeds reach 10-12mbps (we have DSL). If I check my iPhone while it’s connected to 2.4gh and use the ookla speed test it reaches about 1/2 that speed. Connected to 5g it reaches the same speeds as through the Nighthawk App.
That makes sense to me. The NightHawk app speed test done on the Router, not your phone. Any WIRELESS devices speed depends on many factors. One is what is the device RATED speed, today, usually N or AC, and that along with distance from router and the number of Antennea's the phone has determines speed. The 2.4Ghz SSID is good for at least 300Mbps. What is the DSL TRUE speed. DSL speed it the true number you should be getting on the ROUTER or via a WIRED CONNECTION. Now I don't understand why at 5Ghz connection the speed is faster? This could be a Firmware on the router issue.
PlayaGal wrote:
I am thinking about contacting our DSL provider to ask if our DSL supports 5g. I hope that makes more sense or is clearer.
Don't bother doing that. The router is the one managing the WIRELESS (USUALLY unless you have a modem/router from your ISP, what model is it?) SSID's. However this sentence makes me think the ISP's modem is also wireless and active? If so, it could be a problem and interferring? You might also be connected to it wirelessly, hence the two different SSID's you've seen, NETGEAR07 (which I'm sure IS the router) and 5G which would be unless you altered the setting? Could be coming from the ISP modem/router? Really need the ISP modem model I guess to be sure (or how the signal get to the R7000P?
The best way is to enable Smart Connect, and let the technology work as it is supposed to do and to be.
IrvSp any proof Smart Connect does load balancing targeting the same number of clients on each radio?
- Thank you Schumako
I am going to do that!
I appreciate your assistance!
Have a great day! schumaku, I went by reviews and what I've read.
For instance, from SMALL NET BUILDER site which I trust:
------------
The R8000's real promise is in improving total wireless throughput with mixes of client types. And here, the R8000 is a work in progress. NETGEAR chose to let the R8000 perform only a few tricks out of Broadcom's entire XStream technology catalog. So you might be better off manually assigning clients to its two 5 GHz radios, instead of using the very simple (and static) client assignment algorithms currently implemented.
------------
-----------------
Given the capabilities I saw in Broadcom demos, NETGEAR appears to have dialed XStream's capabilities down to a very simple level. Radio assignment appears to be based strictly on supported link rates, not the actual link rate in use. And NETGEAR has said it disabled dynamic radio assignment, citing problems it found with some devices not liking being steered. This bears another look, which I will do in Part 2, along with OpenVPN performance and full wireless testing.
------------------
A later review with more testing:
------------------
Smart Connect
I mentioned earlier that I'm still finalizing the new SmallNetBuilder Wireless Testbed, so won't be presenting complete wireless performance data in this part of the review. Instead, I chose to explore NETGEAR's SmartConnect feature.
To recap, SmartConnect is NETGEAR's implementation of Broadcom's XStream architecture. SmartConnect uses two 5 GHz radios and assigns client to each one when they connect. The assignment is static until the connection between router and client is broken.
Dynamic client assigment is part of the XStream architecture, but vendors can choose which XStream features they use. NETGEAR told me they disabled dynamic client assignment because some devices "do not make a graceful switch".
--------------
Now the R8000's f/w was updated recently to cover all 3 bands. Here is where I 'drew' the 'load balancing' from:
I guess I could have misread it though? Maybe that is how you can USE the Tri-bands, but when I had SC enabled and actually looked where the devices were I found mixes of N and AC on both 5Ghz bands and some N and AC even on the 2.4Ghz with all bands fairly even. Of course when a device left the LAN it was removed from the band so there were differences at some points when I looked. This was with the tri-band f/w.
schumaku wrote:
IrvSp any proof Smart Connect does load balancing targeting the same number of clients on each radio?
I found it, in the R8000 manual (which I guess is for the old 5Ghz only implementation) and I suspect it still holds.
Page 73:
=======
Load Balancing
The router uses load balancing to distribute WiFi connections among all three WiFi bands, to ensure that both the WiFi bands are utilized. Load balancing avoids overloading a single 5 GHz band and ensures that both the WiFi bands are utilized and device connections are spread across the two bands.
=======
- Hello IrvSP-
I am so sorry to have confused you.
I really appreciate your detailed assistance with each part of my question. I would like to send screen shots of what I see but am not sure that is possible. In lui of that I am going to reread your notes and try to log into the router using a PC. Apparently I cannot send more than one photo. I wanted to send a screen showing Smart Connect turned off. (Which is the way the app was before I turned it on and lost connections. ) the last screen was to be a screen shot of all the devices connected to the 2.4gh band. If you would like to see them I can send them. I do feel like I have taken up way too much of your time. Thanks so much!OK, I can see the single screen capture... the NETGEAR07, NETGEAR07_EXT (I'll assume this is a GUEST NETWORK?), and NETGEAR07_5G.
I'll assume you've not modified them either and are the router defaults. NETGEAR07 is the 2.4Ghz SSID, and the NETGEAR07_5G is the 5Ghz SSID. So if you have a 2.4Ghz devices, connect it to the NETGEAR07. Have and AC device connect it to the NETGEAR_5G SSID.
N speed devices can be 'tricky'. Putting a slower device on any band can slow down ALL devices on that band (SSID). However, with your ISP speed, max. of 12Mbps, ALL devices will run at that speed. Should NOT make a difference. However you said it did, and that can be either interference on the 2.4Ghz or your modem is also a router with a 2.4Ghz wireless enabled. Probably not as your screen capture only showed those 3 SSID's.
Slow 2.4Ghz could be a load from another device on that SSID causing the slowdown (test with only the phone connected on 2.4Ghz to see if it is slow or speeds up with no other devices connected) or the firmware you are running on the router, especially if V1.0.9.64.
You can add more than one picture, but you have to use the PHOTOS icon on the menu. However, those do not appear with the reply. They are not shown until a moderator approves it which can take sometime.
- Thanks!
The ext is a WiFi range extender that we used with our previous router to get better reception in a bedroom. I connected it again to see if it made a difference. I will stave the photo of all the devices connected to the 2.4 band. There is one that got cut off. That’s the Netgear WiFi Range Extender. Hubby isn’t home so his phone sitting alone on the 5g is not showing. His is an iPhone 5s. Mine is a 6s. I am waiting for a Avast Smart Scan on the laptop to finish then I will try to log into the router. Thanks for you patience and help! Oh and someone asked about my firmware it updated during set-up. It is now 1.0.9.64.... just in case that is helpful info.