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Region (Regulatory Domain) Came Wrong... How to escalate case?
Hi there, I purchased this top-tier router from Amazon US, came set as Canada and, for regulations, routers in North American have that field disabled. I've been on the "Pro Support" line for...
Hi Timmy256,
First you have to set the 5GHz WiFi on the RS700 as I described, so the RS700 could operate in the 160MHz mode.
Regarding if a client could connect to the RS700 in 5GHz band 160MHz-mode, there are multiple factors:
1. the client needs to be able to operate in 5GHz band 160MHz-mode as I mentioned.
2. run the test at a short range between the client and the RS700.
3. Smart Connect should direct the client to the 5GHz in this case, so enabling Smart Connect should be OK.
4. Some clients might insist connecting to the 2.4GHz, but this should be rare for clients which support 160MHz mode.
So I suggest you run the test with the Smart Connect enabled if you would like to have the same SSID for all the bands. If that doesn't work and you cannot tell if the client is connected to the 5GHz, then use different SSID for different band to run the test. Thanks.
I'm afraid that you cannot have the US region if you use the router outside the US.
For our routers sold in US and Canada, everytime when the router is powered up, it detects the region where it's located (I cannot share more detaisl on this). If the detection finds the router is not located in US, the router applies the Canada region. There are no workarounds since that could be against local regulations.
If the router is phsycially located in US but it still applies Canada region, then it should be an issue.
Thank you so much for replying guys! It’s great talking to someone who understands the topic at hand, after literally engaging with the “Pro Support” for two months and they having no idea what I was talking about.
I’m trying to add as much information as I can:
- The router is not in the US right now and it’s defaulting in Canada, so it’s detecting the region wrong. I also inspected (HTML) the region field and my region isn’t listed there, so perhaps you don’t have it configured in the router, that is why you are defaulting to Canada? In any case, a closer one would be US, as it’s basically inherited from those allowed frequencies
- I was made to sign an NDA with support and they sent me Beta firmware from engineering that would supposedly allow me to change the region… still did nothing, as you can imagine. Also, they made me flash to the original release firmware, as there it would be possible to change the region. Every time I mentioned that this Regulatory Domain is probably locked for a reason, but it’s like talking to a brick wall. I’m not even sure it’s an AI replying the cases. They even said that they checked on the engineers routers and they confirmed the region field was editable with the beta firmware… was it all a lie? Why would they say that? I can provide you with the case number if you want to read through my frustration in that very long conversation. Those people are not capacitated to support issues beyond “hey, I went to routerlogin.net I don’t know my password”. They have zero idea on any technical matter; what a disconnect. You guys showed, in a single message, that you know a lot about this and what is actually going on vs. two months with “Pro” Support… yikes
- Another quirk I noticed; probably a bug too. Let’s start fresh (factory reset router), so nothing carries over. I go to check the region in the Wireless settings, it shows “Canada”. If I hit “Apply” on that Wireless page (without touching anything else; only pressing the button), after the WiFi comes back, region says “United States”! This is repeatable and happens every time! But I can’t make that setting stick, so after a power reset, it comes back as Canada. I’ve tried flashing a firmware when it said “United States”; all kind of things to try to make it stick, but it would always return to Canada
So, as it stands now, according to what you mentioned, you default to Canada if the router is not detected being in the US, but that puts us in violation of other countries regulations. Have you considered the possibility that the user might travel along with the router? Or purchased in the US and moved somewhere else? Setting the region as “Canada” in those scenarios is still wrong.
If I provided you identity proof, government documents, pictures, NDA, whatever you need that I’m in a different country, would there be a way to unlock this and enable me to allow me to set the region properly?
Thanks again for your messages; I really appreciate taking to some REAL human beings!
Hi again BH_C, coming back with some questions that I’ve seen you comment on this thread: RS300 Region Incorrect
- You mentioned to that user that the reason the region is setting as Canada for them is because of a Netgear shipping mistake, and that he should replace the unit. But in this thread, you just mentioned that the region gets resolved dynamically depending on location detected by the router. Which one of the two affirmations is correct?
- You also mentioned there that the difference between Canada and US is that US has a slightly higher TX power. Looking through the Linux Kernel regulatory domains, I see both Canada and US having the same TX power on the frequencies; only major difference being that Canada doesn’t allow 160 MHz for some 5 GHz bands. Could you confirm this? Is my (wrong) Canada region RS700, as of now, allowing usage of 160 MHz on 5 GHz or not? That is my main concern of why I’m going through all this; trying to make sure that I’m in the proper region and with 160 MHz enabled for 5 GHz.
Thanks again.
So my answer in this thread: RS300 Region may be incorrect. In the old days, for the products shipped to US and Canada, we hard coded the corresponding region. But RS300 and RS700 WiFi 7 routers are new and we have changed to geolocation detection. The detection is performed every time when the router starts up. When you hit the "Apply" button, it should not trigger the detection again and it should not change the region to US. Even if the GUI shows "US", I think the router still operastes based on the geolocation detected. If you change the browser to the Incognito mode to access the GUI again, the region may show "Canada".
For the 5GHz, Canada has lower power limit for some channels. And yes, Canada only has two 160MHz channels for the 5GHz (ch 36- 64 and ch 149 - 177). US has three 160MHz channels. However most WiFI client devcices do not support channel 169 - 177 (AKA. U-NII-4 band).
Since iin the North America area, we only sell the routers in US and Canada. The detection logic works well. We cannot stop people from purchasing the router from one place and using it in another place, but we cannot guarantee that it will work as expected. In the future, we may do detection for all regions.
If you PM me your case number, I can check what the trial firmware is that our team passed to you. We usually don't do that support. Thanks.