I have been running the XR300 since January and have been having no end of speed issues.
Firstly set up router (fixed ip address) and needed settings speed down dropped to 80ish Mb. After call to support, factory resets, rolling back firmware etc etc. they said replace for new. Returned and got 2nd one - basically did the same thing but I discovered that if I turned wifi off and then back on again (from gui not button on box) then it would go back to proper speeds.
Now a few months the speed has dropped again back to 80/100 Mb ish down. Trying the wifi off / on no longer gets the speed back.
This is very poor and makes it's a pointless device.An expensive paper weight. Maybe it does not like the amount of devices attached and it's getting confused. It's a shame as I have been a fan of netgear for years and "upgraded" (may not be the right word) from an older netgear router because despite that one working flawlessly if just could not do more than 250Mb ish throughput.
I have tried loads of tweaks and nothing appears to help, Arrrrrrrgh! Not fit for purpose, sadly
Re: It's Sad but XR300 appear to be bad and slow :(
What are the speeds you pay for/expect from the ISP? Are ALL devices connected to the XR? What do you get when you do a wired speed test? If you disable QoS from the Anti-Bufferbloat menu do you get full speeds?
Re: It's Sad but XR300 appear to be bad and slow :(
The speeds that I am expecting are 500Mb down and 35Mb up.
All devices are connected to my network which connects to the XR300, obviously there are not many ports on the router so with the exception of maybe 15 wifi devices nothing is connected direct (well 3 switches) - except my laptop when testing to eliminate my network
Nothing has changed on my network when I switched over from the old router to the XR300.
I have tried many times turning Qos off as well as lots of Bufferbloat tweaks etc - makes no difference. The speed tests are always on wired accross a 1 gigabit network. (which i have tested and is fine with little to no congestion espically when I have speed testing the router). I have set up a second network into my DMZ on my old router so I can instantly switch over to speed test on that to make sure my isp is not the issue and that maxes out at its 250Mb throughput limit just before and after the speed tests on the XR300. I have also run speed tests with a laptop (wired) from my DMZ and can get the 500/35Mb (often abit above) as a check that the expected service is there.
Re: It's Sad but XR300 appear to be bad and slow :(
In Internet Setup change the MAC address to use the same MAC address as your previous router. Also could you go to the Device Manager table view and let me know what the link speeds are for the ports please?
Re: It's Sad but XR300 appear to be bad and slow :(
The link speeds for the Lan and Wan ports are full duplex 1Gigabit.
I can't change the MAC address at the moment as I need to be able to use the other router to get the faster speeds, but the MAC address should make no difference. As I have said I can set up a new device on the WAN side that has never been seen by the ISP's network and that works fine it's the XR300 which is being slow.
Re: It's Sad but XR300 appear to be bad and slow :(
I have NOT run the setup wizard because there is no way for a wizzard to know what IP address I want it to use.
I have however come accross reference to the XR300 not being able to cope if you change the SSID and in particularly changing the network key. As issues have hinted more and more that the wifi is the route of the issue, So I have changed the SSID and network key back to default (not sure what the guest default was). And I have disabled both the 2.4GHz and 5GHz radios and rebooted the system.
This has now put the speeds to where it should be - finally. As long as I dont ever use the wifi.
BUT as wifi is a big "sales" point of this router it is very very bad that a router at this price point just can't manage decent WAN speed with wifi turned on. I have always been a fan of netgear products but time to start looking at other makes from now on.
Had to smile to myself when I imagined the new strap line "upto 1300Mbs" wifi - then small print saying but that will stuff your internet speeds so enjoy your wifi now 🙂
Re: It's Sad but XR300 appear to be bad and slow :(
I'm not sure I follow the first point, you would have done the wizard when first starting up the router. It will work accessing it this way. I've not heard of that at all, do you have a link to that? If that's the case I'd recommend seeking a replacement from Netgear as it's likely faulty.
Re: It's Sad but XR300 appear to be bad and slow :(
I dont run wizards becuase there is no way that a wizard on a router can "detect" the IP address I wish to give it unless it has a mind reading chip. I just set the settings I require, if I recall this router gave me the option of setting up manually rather than running the wizard (and gave me the are you really really sure), which it did eventually but it did first try and connect to the internet to update itself first but eventually realised it could not as I had to put the settings in yet (a pain but i could live with that).
I dont have a link sorry, I have done hundreds and hundreds of searches all over the place.
It seams statically unlikely that I would get 2 brand new routers that both suffer the same issue.
Re: It's Sad but XR300 appear to be bad and slow :(
The setup wizards and router will always use 192.168.1.1 for the LAN side. The router will get what ever IP address is given to it for the WAN side. The setup wizard is meant for you to set up the router initially and complete it. If you desire to change the LAN side IP address, you can do this after the setup wizard completes. It would be good to know if the setup wizard sees the higher speeds or not. If there slow as what you describe, then you'll need to contact NG support about this as suggested.
I have NOT run the setup wizard because there is no way for a wizzard to know what IP address I want it to use.
I have however come accross reference to the XR300 not being able to cope if you change the SSID and in particularly changing the network key. As issues have hinted more and more that the wifi is the route of the issue, So I have changed the SSID and network key back to default (not sure what the guest default was). And I have disabled both the 2.4GHz and 5GHz radios and rebooted the system.
This has now put the speeds to where it should be - finally. As long as I dont ever use the wifi.
BUT as wifi is a big "sales" point of this router it is very very bad that a router at this price point just can't manage decent WAN speed with wifi turned on. I have always been a fan of netgear products but time to start looking at other makes from now on.
Had to smile to myself when I imagined the new strap line "upto 1300Mbs" wifi - then small print saying but that will stuff your internet speeds so enjoy your wifi now 🙂
Re: It's Sad but XR300 appear to be bad and slow :(
As you already have a connection it is no problem, it's just to get to the speed test as that will show us what speed the router is actually getting and can narrow down the issue.
Re: It's Sad but XR300 appear to be bad and slow :(
Are they assigning you an IP address any or is it Dynamic?
DOCSIS is Cable ISP services. FIber would be an ONT device. PPPoE or DHCP would be a protocol used over Cable or ONT. Mostly DHCP. Doesn't Virgin automatically assigned or let routers get WAN IP address or are they using a PPPoE user name and account? I suppose of the wizard doesn't allow one to enter in any user name and PW for this, then this would be a problem. Some routers allow users to select DHCP or PPPoE and use a username and PW for this protocol.
Re: It's Sad but XR300 appear to be bad and slow :(
I just tried it myself, I did the wizard from the Settings menu, it tries to detect a connection - as you're running it yourself when you have the normal details input already then it should just move on to the next step which is the speed test. The internet stays up the whole time, if not just input the details quickly. Virgin Media in the UK?
Re: It's Sad but XR300 appear to be bad and slow :(
UK, yes. Fibre is to premisis but then if converts to 'cable' for last 5 metres, hence DOCSIS. I am on multiple IP address so I have to tell the router what IP address I want it to be.
The virgin router has a signon in it that allows it to pick up its IP address but I am pretty sure that the xr300 can't see it untill I give it a valid IP.
Re: It's Sad but XR300 appear to be bad and slow :(
Can this not be done by entering the manual details in the setup then? You have to bypass this to go to internet setup? I don't think it'll cut off the connection just by starting the wizard - as long as you haven't factory reset as the connection should be sustained.
Re: It's Sad but XR300 appear to be bad and slow :(
Well that was a really BAD idea I ran the wizard despite by better judgement - wizard said it knew what it was doing and found the internet then started checking for updates where it dropped the internet connection and sat there spinning - until after 20mins I went in and stopped it. Lucky I was able to open a different connection to the router and change the WAN IP from the private number it had chosen and gave it the correct IP, subnet and gateway.
Re: It's Sad but XR300 appear to be bad and slow :(
Sorry, don't know what smart connect is (cant's find it in the ui) and also the problem with the router is it's wired speed so connecting via wifi seams strange, or am I missing something here?
Re: It's Sad but XR300 appear to be bad and slow :(
That's my mistake, not included in the XR300. You mentioned about the WiFi changes that increased the speeds so I thought that may have affected it. I can't think what it could be other than the connection method being used, what other settings do you change after a reset and could you provide a screenshot of the Internet Setup page please?
Re: It's Sad but XR300 appear to be bad and slow :(
As there is very little info on the setup page I will write it below - I dont want to post my IP addresses or MAC address on the internet and easier to just type info rather then hidding them on an image.
Internet logon - NO
Static IP - yes with relevent subnet and gateway.
DNS - currently 1.0.0.1 and 8.8.8.8, as these have been testing well lately from here - but nothing really uses these as I run a DNS server on my network.
MAC address - Default
Not sure what you meant by "what other settings do you change after a reset"
