R6050 with mixed wired ethernet speed LAN clients

[John-Smith]

I have an AC750 R6050 Netgear Gigabit router with the WAN port connected to a Gigabit cable modem getting 1Gbps internet service.  On the LAN side, I have a combination of 100Mbps wired ethernet clients (Smart TV and an old laptop) and a 1000Mbps (1Gbps) wired ethernet desktop and several WiFi wireless smartphones, tablets and notebooks.

All clients except for the sole 1Gbps desktop are getting internet service appropriate for their speeds; however, the 1Gbps desktop has to wait sometimes several minutes before an internet activity completes sometimes getting timeouts and errors.

The cables are CAT6 and CAT7.

Also, still connected to the router, the 1Gbps desktop can connect to a VPN and gets internet service as typical as a VPN connection can be; but if that is the case, what the heck is going on with the routing and could this be related to DNS conflicts of some kind?  Or is the router able to provision Gigabit speed to the 1Gbps desktop while also handling the various speeds for the 100Mbps and WiFi clients?

Thanks in advance for reading!

[plemans]

You only have 1 gigabit device? 

Is it connecting at gigabit speeds? 

https://kb.netgear.com/24222/How-do-I-display-Internet-port-statistics-on-my-Nighthawk-router

[John-Smith]

In response to @plemans :

Yes, at the moment only 1 Gigabit device is attached to the LAN side and according to the router "Statistics" is connected with a "Link speed" of "1000M/Full" which appears to mean that it is 1000Mbps = 1Gbps.  Also on the WAN side of the router to the cable modem the link speed is at "1000M/Full".

The other wired devices on the LAN side, when they are on, their link speeds are only "100M/Full".

[plemans]

on the gigabit device, what actual speeds do you get when testing? 

[John-Smith]

In response for more information to @plemans 

Speed tests:

Case I: Normal (via router to cable modem)

    Testing time: 18m54s (real), 0m2.6s (user), 0m1.7s (sys)

     Download/Upload: 18.39Mbit/s, 30.13Mbit/s

Case II: Normal VPN (via router to cable modem with VPN)

    Testing time: 22.2s (real), 3.7s (user), 3.3s (sys)

    Download/Upload: 145.35Mbit/s, 28.50Mbit/s

Case III: Direct normal (direct to cable modem)

    Testing time: 23.5s (real), 4.9s (user), 6.1.s (sys)

    Download/Upload: 299.17Mbit/s, 28.85Mbit/s

Case IV: Direct VPN (direct to cable modem with VPN)

    Testing time: 23.0s (real), 3.9s (user), 3.8s (sys)

    Download/Upload: 164.96Mbit/s, 28.01Mbit/s

Note that in Case I sometimes the test will fail with "failed name resolution" and it is typical that the testing time does take around 20 minutes!

[plemans]

try factory resetting the R6050. during the reinstall, leave it in its default configuration. Its one of the most base model gigabit device netgear makes. anything that analyzes traffic is going to cause issues. 

also, make sure ipv6 is enabled

[John-Smith]

In response to @plemans suggestion of hard reset:

I tried a hard reset to factory default settings; however, even with only the 1 Gigabit device and the cable modem connected, it still gave the same results.

The other observation is that the R6050 does not appear to have IPV6 addressing anywhere, only IPv4.  Am I missing something in this router's capabilities?

As mentioned, this is a base gigabit router; perhaps, it is time to simply upgrade.  The question now is to what?

[plemans]

If its available it'll be under the browser gui and advanced---advanced settings----ipv6

make sure to leave qos, access control, traffic monitoring, parental controls

[John-Smith]

In response to @plemans regarding IPv6:

Thanks again for sticking with this issue; however, the closest that my router can present through the GUI that matches your suggestion is:   "Advanced" -> "Advanced Setup" and then from there it is a dead-end in finding any mention of IPv6... which I admit is odd in itself.  There is no option anywhere in the GUI for enabling/disabling IPv6 explicitly.

The firmware version is v1.0.1.26_1.0.1.  Letting the GUI check for further updates yields no available updates.

It appears that either I have a defective firmware or the router does not configure IPv6 options which, again, is odd.  There are other "rabbit holes" that I can chase, but I think, currently, the best solution is to get a new and better router.

[plemans]

If you've got 300mbps service, I'd highly recommend it. 

That route is a base model device. I was even surprised that it had gigabit as most of the models in that series don't.