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So I'm having some speed issues that I was hoping someone could help me with. This is not an issue with Internet speed, but LAN speed. Let me explain my configuration first.
I just bought three R6400's yesterday and connected one on each floor of my house. My ISP is Verizon and I'm using all the the Netgear routers as access points rather than routers. The main router is the one from FIOS and I have disabled wireless on that router, but it still acts as the main router.
Anyway, when transferring data from my NAS to my computer (located on another floor), the data goes from the NAS to the N6400 router down to my FIOS router and back up to another N6400 router. Everything is connected via Ethernet cable. Before I installed the N6400 routers, I had switches in these locations and my data transfer speed was around 110 MBps, which is really close to the max for gigabit Ethernet.
When I connected these routers and use them instead of the switches, the speed drops down to 60 MBps and won't budge past that!!! This is maddending since these are brand new, have the latest firmware installed and should be giving me gigabit speeds.
The problem is that I can't change many settings on the Netgear routers right now because they are in Access Point mode, which disables a lot of stuff.
Anyone have any idea why this is happening or will I have to return them!? If anything was not clear, just let me know and I'll try to clarfiy.
You are probably running into the fact that AP Mode disables the hardware accelerated traffic processing between the Internet and LAN ports. This forces the CPU to handle packets. Unfortunately, the CPU can't forward at Gigabit rates.
Fortunately, there's a workaround, which is to set up the router as an Access Point using the old school method. Start off by disabling AP Mode. Make sure the Internet port is not configured with any static IP address. Go to LAN Setup and configure an IP address in the same subnet as your main router, but make sure to use an address outside of the DHCP range managed by the main router. Otherwise, you run the risk of an IP address conflict. Adjust the DHCP range on the main router to free up 3 IP addresses, if necessary. Manually disable the DHCP Server. Save the changes. Finally, connect the R6400 to your Ethernet backbone via a LAN port. Leave the Internet port disconnected. You won't be using it. You'll only be using the built-in Ethernet and WLAN ports as a switch. You should be able to achieve near Gigabit rates with this setup.
You are probably running into the fact that AP Mode disables the hardware accelerated traffic processing between the Internet and LAN ports. This forces the CPU to handle packets. Unfortunately, the CPU can't forward at Gigabit rates.
Fortunately, there's a workaround, which is to set up the router as an Access Point using the old school method. Start off by disabling AP Mode. Make sure the Internet port is not configured with any static IP address. Go to LAN Setup and configure an IP address in the same subnet as your main router, but make sure to use an address outside of the DHCP range managed by the main router. Otherwise, you run the risk of an IP address conflict. Adjust the DHCP range on the main router to free up 3 IP addresses, if necessary. Manually disable the DHCP Server. Save the changes. Finally, connect the R6400 to your Ethernet backbone via a LAN port. Leave the Internet port disconnected. You won't be using it. You'll only be using the built-in Ethernet and WLAN ports as a switch. You should be able to achieve near Gigabit rates with this setup.
Wow, that was right on the money! Thanks for the excellent info, but I did find a slightly faster solution. Instead of disabling AP mode and manually adjusting all the settings, I just conneted the everything to the LAN ports and left Internet port empty. That increased the speed back up to 110 Mbps.
I also checked that I can still access the Internet using that router by manually connecting to that one and the Internet worked also. Would you see any advantage to disabling Access Point mode if this is working?
Also, why does it disable hardware accelerated traffic just becuase you're using it as an Access Point? What's the logic? Does every brand do this or just Netgear?
Yeah, that should work, too. Do you have it set up to obtain an address dynamically? If so, I'm not sure it will acquire one if the Internet port is unused. You may be unable to log in. You can try switching it to a static IP address.
I'm not deeply familiar with Netgear's router architecture. All I know is that ene of the ports on the Broadcom switch can be designated as a WAN port, in which case all traffic is forwarded through the CPU. Evidentally, Netgear chose to do this with AP Mode.
I went in and changed the IP addresses on each R6400 to a static IP address. I first logged into the FIOS router and blocked out 192.168.1.1 to .10 from DHCP, so that it doesn't try to assign those to any device.
All is working well now, just wish they didn't forward the traffic in AP mode, but oh well.
