I’ve had this router less than 2 weeks and have had some problems for the past few days. Keep in mind I’m just jotting down observations so I’m probably going to jump around a bit. And I’m going to be a bit wordy to describe what I went through.
When I first bought the router, I had no issues. I subscribed to 75x75 fiber internet and speed tests over WiFi were showing fairly close to that, but the tests were inconsistant. As a side-note, when I first installed the router, it immediately and automatically downloaded and installed the latest firmware update. No problem, right?
My first issue appeared when I attempted to disable a setting (I think it was trying to uncheck ‘Turn on Access Control’ in advanced security settings). I would uncheck it but when I hit ‘apply’ it would check it again. Some other settings did this too. I later took a guess that it might be because I didn’t reset the router back to factory settings after the automatic firmware update. I heard that some firmware updates can ‘confuse’ settings that have previously been configured. I ended up doing a ‘revert to factory settings’, reconfigured the router. After that, I was able to uncheck the settings and they would stay that way. Odd that updates automatically install when there could be configuration conflicts between firmware revisions.
On to my main issue. Yesterday, I upgraded my fiber internet speeds. From the WAN port of the router to the ISP, it was seeing a steady and consistent 350x350. The problem was when I connected via WiFi, I could never get over that 75x75 range and in many cases couldn’t get over 40. Also, I noticed that the WiFi signal was inconsistent and the router settings pages seemed to take forever to load and refresh. Nothing I did would correct this. I tried different channels, widths, temporarily disabling security features, disabling AX, disabling 2.4, repositioning the router, resetting to factory settings and starting from scratch. I bet I spent 5 hours trying to correct this. Nothing worked! But then I remembered that there was a setting in ‘Advanced Wireless’ called “Implicit BEAMFORMING” that was said to ‘Boost WiFi speed, reliability & range for all mobile devices’. As a last resort, I disabled this setting. Immediately after disabling this “Implicit BEAMFORMING”, it was as if the router woke up. Router settings pages seemed to come back to life. WiFi Speed tests showed +/- 200x200 consistently. Now I will also add that when I disabled “Implicit BEAMFORMING” the router automatically selected a new channel, so I can’t be sure exactly if disabling this was the only thing that corrected it. But at least now I have a manageable speed that I can live with. Also at times, my WiFi speed tests show +/- 300x300. I never got that before.
If anyone has any comments on what might have caused this and why it was resolved by unchecking “Implicit BEAMFORMING” feel free to chime in. I’d be interested to hear opinions. Honestly, I was ready to return this thing to the store and go with another brand, but for now I can live with it.
On another note, I think the OpenVPN server settings are broken. When I configure the clients, they do not get IP addresses from the router’s server and they show no gateway. There’s all sorts of information out there on this and I haven’t been able to resolve it for me. But my client devices DO connect and have internet service.
Just some notes for thought. I hope someone from Netgear Support reads this and investigates these issues.
Its 2 days later and I decided to re-enable "Implicit BEAMFORMING" and AX just to test things out. For some reason, my WiFi speeds are now really good and consistent with these settings enabled. I'm not sure why. The only thing I can think of is when I was doing my testing a couple of days ago there was some interference or I kept selecting bad channels. So now I'm really happy again with this router! I still have the OpenVPN issues, but I'm hoping those will be addressed in a future firmware update.
I've also been having this same WiFi speed issue with my RAX35 router.
I went through all kinds of troubleshooting, changing settings (including disabling implicit beamforming, AX mode, manually selecting channels, changing to short preamble), re-flashing firmware, factory default, etc. Eventually I worked with Netgear and sent my original router that was purchased in December in for an RMA.
When I first got the new model, I was finally able to get the internet speed wirelessly that I was getting when testing directly at the modem, 300 down / 20 up.
I've had this replacement for two weeks and I'm seeing the same problems creep in. I'm back to100-120 on 5G, 30-40 on 2.4, and my wired clients are still testing at 300.
I'm frustrated because I'm realizing why I was able to get this on sale for $99. It's just NOT a performer in line with what I've come to expect from the Nighthawk brand of products. I'm past the point of being able to return it, so I'm stuck with it for now. Unless a firmware update comes out to fix the speed issues, I will be replacing this as soon as I am able and I will NOT be buying Netgear again.
I haven’t had any issues for quite some time now. I’m beginning to think that my own impatience was part of my frustration because every time I made a change and rebooted, it took quite a bit of time before full speed was recognized.
One thing that made a big difference for me is that someone suggested I should reset to factory settings after the firmware update and then reconfigure everything from scratch. I did this and things seemed to go more smoothly. I’ve never done this on other routers but in this case it helped.
Now that I have identified some of this router’s ‘quirks’, I can definitely tell that its faster and reaches further than our old 5ghz router. In fact, I’ve decided to get another one for the camp
