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Forum Discussion
It's Sad but XR300 appear to be bad and slow :(
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...
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.
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.
As I have said the router will not be given an IP address on the WAN side, I have to set that - so it has NO internet connection from a wizard
So you have PPPoE ISP services or something specific from the ISP?
Who is your ISP?
DOCSIS - Virgin Fibre
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.
- 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?
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.
- 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.
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.
- Speed test should have been the next step, not checking for updates, did you get to the speed test part?
Nope, No speed tests came up.
- Are you using Smart Connect for WiFi? If so disable that and connect to 2.4 or 5GHz manually and see if it performs better then.
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?
- 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?
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 - NOStatic 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 - DefaultNot sure what you meant by "what other settings do you change after a reset"
- Thanks for that information. After a factory reset, what settings do you change?
Here is my typical setup
Admin:Set password
Internet Setup: Static IP, subnet, gateway, DNS servers
Lan: IP and subnet, No DHCP
Static route: Setup a static route for a range of private subnets out of range of LAN to route to a vpn box.
Wireless configure wifi, new SSIDs and network key.
UPNP: Turn Off
LED control on X300 - omg its got bad lights - turn as much off as possible.Backup settings, Reboot.
Would then tweak qos if needed etc after tests and monitoring etc
I think that is about it, may not be 'typical' but nothing out of the ordinary.
- Are you setting reserved IPs in LAN Settings or on the devices themselves? If the devices could you mirror the one you use for testing speed in LAN Settings please. If you're not using UPnP what are you using to allow ports to be opened for devices?
UPNP - don't trust it as it's a security liability - if i need a port opened i will set it up - very rarely need it tbh. Yea I am that paranoid.
The IP addresses accross my network are controlled by my DHCP Server with adresses reserved on it for router IP address and a few other devices - so they can't be used elsewhere. I run speed tests on multiple devices not just a single ip address.
Changing the router LAN IP would be a complete pain and I dont see how / why that could cause the issues I am facing.
Just remembered another setting I change - I change the MTU size to 1462 as that is the best MTU to use - after running mltiplr tests across multiple machines. But I have tried default incase it was effecting speed, it did not appear to.- My thinking is that without port 80/443 being routed properly this could impact your speed. If you're worried about security could you put a router ahead of the XR in router mode and then factory reset the XR (make a backup of your settings) and then don't change anything for a few days and see if the speed still drops?
The speed is fine as long as the wifi is turned off.
Routing ports 80 and 443 is pretty basic for a router to be able to route.
If I had another router that could hadle the throughput I would be using that instead of trying to understand the issue with the XR300.
Maybe it's time to decide if I just keep this and accept it's trash but will work with no wifi and learn a lesson from my brand loyalty. This is the first major issue I have had after about 15 routers from netgear I guess times change and we need to move with them.Thanks for all you thoughts and ideas, I feel we are just clutching at straws now.
- Sorry to hear that, I'd recommend signing up for the beta firmware here so you can get into it sooner and it will hopefully be resolved on that.
http://www.netgearinnovation.com/dumaos-beta/index.html
