I bought the R7000P exclusively for the Circle parental controls in the router. I formerly used a standalone device with an ASUS router which worked well, but my kids discovered all they have to do is pull the plug and parental controls go away. Now when they do that, internet goes away. (insert evil grin here).
I'm using the current firmware, and what I'm finding is serious degradation in performance the longer the router is active. The result is extremely slow internet connections. I'm pretty sure it's the router because when I reboot it, performance returns to normal. Unfortunately, the stock firmware is considerably less open than I'm used to (I'm very comfortable with Linux/ASUSWRT/DD-WRT), so I'm not sure how to properly diagnose. I don't really want to disable parental controls especially since it needs to work with Circle.
Guess my questions are:
A) Are there known performance issues / workarounds with this router?
B) If not, I have done the telnet enable route to get a look at the underlying O/S. The layout is somewhat confusing. Are there any tips or documentation on where to find diagnostic information? I'm also somewhat concerned about using telnet over SSH.
C) I realize this is more properly for the myopenrouter site, but I put a topic that got no responses. Is there any effort to create a DD-WRT build with Circle on it? If I had more information on the setup, I'd be happy to give it a shot myself.
Thanks in advance,
Dion
Model: R7000P|Nighthawk AC2300 Smart WiFi Router with MU-MIMO
I have had the same issues. I have a 250/MB connection and after I turn Circle on the throughput will drop to 125/MBs. After a few days the degregation will have dropped me down to 10/MBs. I can get back to 125/MBs if I reboot the router but no more then ever that with Circle enabled. Are there any solutions to this problem?
This issue affects the R8000 as well. When I reboot the router, I get my full connection speed -- 135 down, 5.5 up. Within an hour it is down to about 40-70 Mbps down. Two or three hours later, it is down to 25 Mbps. If I do not reboot within six hours or so, it has become so slow that some devices will refuse to connect. A reboot, or even disabling and re-enabling Circle without a reboot, restores the full speeds.
OK, first things first, please tell Joy she's awesome.
My issue may be due to the fact that I had an IPv6 tunnel. I recently switched ISPs from one that had native IPv6 to one that didn't so I set up a tunnel. I forgot that some browsers prefer IPv6 over IPv4, so that may have been the cause, and why it was hard to diagnose. In any case, I had video buffering problems early, and I turned off IPv6, and haven't had any problems since.
One suggestion I gave to her, though, and I hope you take it to heart. Your firmware is REALLY locked down. You really should add the ability to SSH into the router like literally every other router firmware I'm aware of. The telnetenable hack besides being exactly that is unsecure, hard to do, and resets itself. There should be some way to see processes, CPU load, things like that. It would make it a lot easier for those of us stronger in the force to help ourselves 🙂
OK, I'm going to use my God given right to be inconsistent - there is a problem.
Today, no IPv6 tunnel to blame, I had 3 devices (iOS, Android, and a 3DS) connected to Wifi, but unable to access the internet. My laptop, however, was right next to them and operating OK. The only real diagnostic I was able to do was see how many devices were on, and it was only 13. Restarting the router - everything connects.
Probably this weekend I'm going to put DD-WRT on this router and use my old Circle device and just hide it. I'll write more when I get some more results.
I am seeing similar issues with similar symptoms and follow-up on my part as well with my R7000. Most concerning are the long lags in connections (web pages hanging on initial load, image loads hanging) but I suspect overall throughput has been affected as well. Rebooting the router last night seemed to fix things but now the problem is recurring after a few hours.
Please add me to any communication threads on this topic. I hope we can find a resolution, Circle is the best tech I've found yet and it really upped my satisfaction for this Netgear router.
I have this same problem with my R8000! This is relevant because I was about to send it back and buy a R7000p... But I see it hasthe exact same issue... internet speeds get slower and slower until I reboot the router.... running Circle.... I love the router and need a fix bad.
I contacted support about the issue hoping that it was a Known Issue but I guess it wasn't (!) Weird, as I saw several reports of the performance issues around the time they unveiled Circle for the R7000.
I don't have time to collect logs and troubleshoot the issue, so I wasn't able go anywhere with the support request. I just stopped using Circle. But if you have time, see if you can help Netgear support find the issue.
Yeah, just reaching out to the people that just responded.
I do think there's still a perf issue. It's really hard for me to isolate it. I've switched the router to DDWRT and used a Circle physical device, and gone back. Problem is, I can't completely dismiss the possibility that it's my internet connection instead.
I occasionally get other weirdness with the Circle. Sometimes I just disable it for a time and re-enable it and that helps.
I'm basically at the point that performance is acceptable most of the time, and the convenience of having Circle in the router outweighs the performance pains. I even switched to using static IPs and "real" DNS records to make up for the lack of DNS in the router (ironically Circle uses dnsmasq which is what most other routers use to provide DNS)
So at this point, without a reproducible bug report I don't see Netgear fixing this. They "know" about this btw - I worked with them on it, just nothing solid came out of the testing...
Model: R7000P | AC2300 Nighthawk Smart WiFi Router with MU-MIMO
Well I have turned off all the IP6 stuff (that I just found in this thread last night) and I have not had an issue in about 6 hours so I am very pleased.
Is this the slowest router on the market? How can it take more than 5 seconds to get respons? Why can I only connect to admin using wifi (maybe it is possible with cable on the Network, but not automatically). I really hope issues with circle have being solved, otherwise I'll have to return yet another netgear router.
Model: R7000P | AC2300 Nighthawk Smart WiFi Router with MU-MIMO
Ultimatley I ended up turning the Cirlce feature off and went and purchased a stand alone Cirlce unit and all is well with no issue at all. It also has the added benifit of no monthly subscription as well.
Well, I'm deployed to Kuwait now, so router things have gotten harder 🙂 I did have to reset the router remotely the other day. So definitely there's still an issue. The standalone device works well so long as your kids don't learn which cable unplugs it 🙂
Maybe when I get back we won't need to use circle anymore. I now have 3 adult kids and one high schooler, so my days of restricting internet SHOULD be over, right? 🙂
Otherwise, if I get time at some point I'll look at running the software through DDWRT. That should be a more stable environment. Good hearing other people still expressing concerns about this.
