Netgear WAC120 Wireless slow

[gwichman]

we purchased a wac120 over a year ago and its been a frustrating experience. i've had nothing but issues with the wifi.. it used to be that it'd start out up around 70-80Mbps which was obviously great but then within days (perhaps the next day) it'd crawl at 1Mbps. Seeing others reporting this problem and similar, i've done what i can to troubleshoot it and i've reached the end of my rope. Sadly, it's out of warrenty since i didn't take troubleshooting and getting it resolved within the warrenty period a priority.

At this point after some tweaking i think i at least got it relatively stable at around 20Mbps but can't seem to get to where it really should be. Also, my ipad has a tendancy to seemingly lose internet connectivity even though it has a wireless connection. i'll be using youtube and the video will stop playing and i'll have to tap "retry" for about 60 seconds before it starts working agian.

• 802.11/a/na/ac wireless is slow using a variety of devices. iphone 6s, ipad 9.7pro, LG G4 are the most used devices..
• i've tried adjusting the channel settings (both freq and width) but it never resolved the slowness issue. Including looking at wifi analyzer on my phone to find channels that aren't crowded.
• i've done factory resets and upgraded the firmware from scratch - reconfiguring everything. it's on 2.0.7 now which is the latest firmware.
• i've turned off WMM after reading suggestions elsewhere that that can help.
• i've tried making sure no other devices were interfering or using bandwidth.
• lastly, when using another wireless router (linksys) i get over 80Mbps instantly without problems.

so frustrating. I don't know if i'll get help at this point given it's out of warrenty but i think it's safe to say i probably won't buy another netgear wireless device based on my experience if i don't. 

[RaghuHR · Accepted solution]

Hi all

We have patch image ready for this wilreless slow on 5 Ghz radio. Please reach https://www.netgear.com/support/contact.aspx  to get the patch image

Thanks

Raghu

[Retired_Member]

Several thoughts

WAC120 is not a router it's a AP " Access point "

I believe the hardware has a 3 year warranty

 WMM must be enabled!

Explain how you connected and setup the WAC120

[gwichman]

thanks.. you're right an AP - which is how i'm using it. It sits upstairs in our master closet to cover as much of the house as possible. Meanwhile our router (a linksys) sits downstairs next to the cablemodem. Imagine a cablemodem plugged into a cisco/linksys router (EA6500), plugged into a netgear switch (GS110TP) which all the house's ethernet ports are plugged into. Then upstairs, the WAC120 sits plugged into one of the ethernet ports.

i generally have both the router and AP configured with the same SSID although i've tried various frequency and channel configurations in an attempt to ensure there is no interference when both unit's wireless are turned on. I've also tried simply turning off the wireless altogether on the cisco router to isolate any problem to the wac120.

i have to admit it doesn't make much sense to me that WMM would need to be enabled to reach speeds north of 20Mbps if there is no other traffic for it to prioritize. Why is that? I just enabled it and sure enough, back up to 88Mbps. I guess i'll need to see if it starts doing what it did before and deteriorates down to 1Mbps after a few days..

[Retired_Member]

Use channels 1,6 or 11 for 2.4

do not use any mode over 289 or 300 on 2.4

Use different channels on each device AP chan 1 router chan 6 for example

5 g if you actually have AC clients use 3 digit channels on AP and 2 digit on router

If no AC clients use 3 digit channels, first 2 on AP and last 2 on router and set mode to 300 on each

[gwichman]

ok so in my case i've gravitated towards using 5g since i seem to get better performance there on both devices. I put the router at 48 and the WAC120 at 153. They were on auto before. I do have AC devices but you lost me on "set mode to 300 on each". I don't see anything called mode nor something that i can set to 300..?

Thanks for the help!

[Retired_Member]

it should be located in wifi setup, same area where you select wifi channel

Mode...................................................................up to 289, 600 or 1300

Since you have ac clients set AP to 1300 using any 3 digit channel (1300 uses all 4 channels so it makes NO difference)

The router should use lower 2 digit channels, if AC router use any 2  digit channel and set to 1300

[Retired_Member]

your smart switch may be worth looking at too

[gwichman]

ya i don't see anything called mode or anything that i can set to numbers like that.. e.g. here is the wac120's wireless settings page. currently set to 3 digit channel:

[Retired_Member]

I assumed the WAC has a similar setup as the routers, which is not the case never mind the mode comments. Sorry about that.

[gwichman]

so it looks like after a few days that i'm more or less back to where i was before.. the AP wireless is great and fast for a day or so and then it either doesn't work (devices report that they can't reach the internet despite having a wifi connection) or it is doing something funky speed wise (starts out slow at 1Mbps and crreps up to 20 or even higher). If I unplug and plug the AP in, it instantaneously jumps to 90Mbps once it's back up.

so in effect, it's faster but i'm back to unplugging and plugging in the AP again. frustrating..

[Paul2004v]

I have exactly this problem too. 

My network connection is a 200Mbps cable link and Speedtest regularly puts it at that and it's nice and consistent. Our office has a large floor plan so we need a couple of AP's to cover everywhere. To that end, I've got two WAC120 AP's and they work great apart from the fact that over time, they get slower and slower. To workaround this, I reboot them once a week and that's all it takes for Speedtest to tell me I've jumped from 10-20Mbps back up to 200Mbps.

I've always put it down to a probably memory leak in the firmware as over time I've tried all sorts of different configurations and optimizations for the settings. Both AP's are on different channels for both 2.4 and 5G networks and the signal is strong with a reasonable overlap in when using WiFi analyser if I stand exactly half way between the access points.

All my devices are happy to roam between the two AP's and happily transition between areas of the office with no issues.

So coverage is great, there are no channel clashes, we're sufficiently far away from other AP's from other offices that they barely register on WiFi Analyser and yet, the WAC120's slow down dramatically over time.

I've never been able to solve it so any extra insight into the problem would be useful.

[gwichman]

I'm still working a support case through netgear on this issue that I opened on 8/5/16 (3 months and 2 days as i type this). I have sent them topology information, captured and sent network packets while the issue occures, screenshots showing it occuring, AP configuration files, setup a syslog server to send syslog dumps, various other info on my devices, diagnostic logs from the AP itself, installed inSSIDer and given them remote access to my wireless laptop via team viewer, and so on.

The feedback that i've gotten is that so far they don't see anything wrong. Their only actionable recommendation so far has been to replace my ethernet cable. That didn't resolve the problem.. I'm waiting to see what they say next. It's a good thing that i have a unix systems administration background because i can't imagine a regular home user doing half the things that they've asked me to do. To be fair to netgear support, the 3 months of elapsed time has a lot to also do with my ability to follow up with some of their requests (e.g. finding a laptop to install wireshark on so i can capture packets for them when i don't own one) at a time when it's occuring which I don't always have time to do. But i digress..

I'll update this thread with whatever resolution I end up getting one way or another, but my advice currently would be to avoid this model. At some point I expect that they'll just swap some other device for mine but we'll see. Needless to say my faith in the product and company has sufferred.. 

[DaneA]

@gwichman / @Paul2004v,

Have you tried to perform a factory reset then reconfigure the WAC120 from scratch and check if same problem will occur?

Regards,

DaneA

NETGEAR Community Team

[gwichman]

Yes. After reading some other's experiences around firmware upgrades and doing factory resets after them, I tried that to no avail.

[Paul2004v]

Yes, I've factory reset them several times usually after firmware updates and reconfigure them from scratch. If also reset them and then restored backups of my config as well.

Within a week I have to reset both devices as they both slow down dramatically. At the moment they're running the latest firmware for the European market and they were last reset a few days ago.

[gwichman]

I largely experience the exact same thing Paul describes most of the time. It's very fast (nearly 90Mbps which is what my cable tops out at) for a week or so and one day we're struggling to load web pages or stream across multiple wifi devices (ipads, laptops, etc) and speedtest shows 1-3Mbps so i go power cycle the AP and viola - back to nearly 90Mbps for another week or so.. It does feel like a memory leak

[gwichman]

Some updates.. My issue was finally handed over to the engineering team. The engineering team asked me to provide ping results to the AP both from a wired LAN device and my wireless device (laptop) when the issue was occuring. I waited for it to occur again and then captured both during the occurance and then again after power cycling the unit (showing before/after speedtests again). The results were mostly identical to my eye but I sent them in (i.e. no real difference).

Engineering then recommended replacing the unit and sent me an RMA. My replacement unit should be on it's way shortly. We'll see if that resolves the issue that i'm having or not. I assume they're sending me the same exact model but we'll see what I end up receiving. Further updates when i have them..

[raven99]

I just got my new WAC120 and am having the exact same problems, works great for a day or two at 90 Mbits then slows to a crawl at 1 to 2 Mbits download speeds. Rebooting the wac120 fixes the problem. This is with the standard 802.11ac 5 Gig Auto settings and several different iPads and iPhones get the same problem. The firmware version is WAC120_V2.0.3 Oddly the upload speeds are still at about 5 Mbits. Since Apple is out of the WiFi business now I was looking for a good replacement, so far the WAC120 is failing. This does sound like some kind of memory leek or error creep over time. This should be fixable in firmware.

[gwichman]

Short update.. I recieved my replacement unit today. Same model.. I updated the firmware and have it up and running at 94Mbps which is good. We'll see if it lasts.. i'm skeptical. I will report back either way

[gwichman]

Last night the AP did the same thing the prior one did. Dropped to 2-3Mbps.. I power cycled and it was right back at 90Mbps. So the replacement unit did not fix my problem. We'll see what netgear says next but i'm pretty tired of it all..

[Paul2004v]

Out of interest, do you have QoS enabled? I do and tonight whilst it happily streamed some 1080P HD content to an Amazon TV stick after that, the rest of the machines on the network slowed down dramatically as they were only doing general Windows networking and file sharing. My http downloads topped out at 20Mbps again when it should give 200Mbps.

Rebooting to AP's solved the issue again so I'm going to disable the QoS and see how things go.

UPDATE: Disabling QoS causes the AP's to top out at 20Mbps on my speed tests. Enabling QoS again and the speed tests return to full speed.

Could it be that the QoS management algorithm is failing/crashing/working in such a way as to limit the maximum connection speed by mac address and over time, the speeds are negotiated downwards to give all the clients a good chance of getting at least some bandwidth?

Paul

[gwichman]

I have previously yes.. turned off a bunch of things like QOS and dynamic channel selection.. It did seem to stabalize the AP but my overall throughput suffered a great deal.. I would then only get 20-25Mbps but at least it didn't seem to drop to 2-3.. I really didn't understand why a QoS setting would impact things like that considering nothing is typically using the wireless except the one ipad that i'm watching youtube on. But there may be somethign to all that..

[gwichman]

I would be interested in hearing how that works out for you in comparison though!

[rraju]

Hi,

Can any of you please send a copy of configuration (user back/restore configuration option), also please send a copy of the logs in the monitor page during the issue. I will try to reproduce the issue on my setup and check for any workarounds that I can suggest.

Thanks

Ranga

[rraju]

I also suggest you to upgrade to Firmware version WAC120_v2.0.7 which is the latest available.