RAXE450 5GHz band averaging 750-950 Mbps

[isaaccoo]

I have a Dell equipped with an Intel Killer Wireless 1650 Wi-Fi Card which supports up to 2.4 Gbps @ 160Mhz on the 5GHz ax band. I regularly use this laptop and get 1400-1600 Mbps in the office and other places. I also have a Samsung S22 Ultra, which supports Wi-Fi 6E and can get into the similar speeds, and sometimes a bit faster.

A week ago, Comcast xfinity brought their xFi Advanced Gateway (XB7) to setup my connection, which is Wi-Fi 6 with a 5 GHz band available. We confirmed the speeds with Wi-Fi speeds on my laptop and phone hitting the 1375-1475 Mbps for my laptop and phone. The same day, my Nighthawk CM2000 modem and Nighthawk RAXE450 router arrived for me to setup.  I used the Ookla speed test app on the mobile and the OOkla speed test app from the Windows Store for the testing to ensure no overhead browser chatter in the background, and also ran the speedtest.xfinity.com within the browser, just because that was the ISP recommendation. The OOkla apps and the xFinity speed tests were consistent with a 2-3% margin for error. I did all my testing this way, throughout.

For the setup, I first hooked up the CM2000 with the Comcast 10ft coax and confirmed speeds of 1375-1475 Mbps directly from the modem directly to the PC with a 10ft CAT8 cable. The firmware was the latest, so didn't need to upgrade either. All good to go.

After that, I connected this to the RAXE450's 2.5 Gbps WAN port with a 10ft CAT8 ethernet cable, and power cycled the modem. I then used the nighthawk app to connect the router, updated the firmware, power cycled, and was up and running. I purchased the 2-year Pro Support from Netgear.com, as well. Went into the router settings and made sure the WAN was the 2.5 GB port and rebooted.

Once we started testing the laptop, we were only running at max 750-950 Mbps and the phone was 650-750 Mbps. This is with the router 1 inch away from the devices, so this was an odd situation.

I've been on the phone with ProSupport since that day, and we haven't been able to resolve this issue as of yet and seems we need to replace the device. So, today, I went on Costco to return this one and get another. After the return. Problem is Costco.com and Costco Warehouses are all out of stock with no future shipments anywhere in sight. 

I looked around for an alternative and found the RAXE500 as a very close match, just costs A LOT more. It costs more than the CM2000 and RAXE450, combined, and would still need to get another modem. So, after hyperventilating due to sticker shock, now I'm trying to salvage the RAXE450 and see if anyone else ran into a similar issue and may have resolved it.

Clearly, the RAXE450 in the 5GHz band is not producing anything close to the 3.84Gbps capacity. I barely care of the fact that the 6GHz band is producing such a low connection with my phone, but my primary concern is the 5 GHz band, as it's what I use to connect to my laptop.

The last thing I want to do is return the CM2000 and RAXE450, for the xFi Advanced Gateway (XB7), but here we are.

Any luck with this scenario, anyone?

[plemans]

A couple things. 

1. did you check to see if the wan port was connecting at the 2.5gig connection? 

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

2. Even though the router has a 2.5gig port, it only has 1x. So if you're modem is using the 2.5gig port, the other hardwired devices are using the 1gig ports (unless your using lan port aggregation). So those hardwired devices will max out at the 1 gig

3. when speedtesting wireless, did you try other channels on the 5/6ghz? Plus you need to be close to it as those speeds will drop off quickly. 

4. what firmware is on the RAXE450? 

[isaaccoo]

1

[isaaccoo]

1. Yes. Connected and enabled via Basic / Internet Setup / WAN Preference, and selected "Multi-Gig Port (2.5/1 Gbps)".

2. Yeah, it was useless. Hardwired test to PC could not confirm, as the LANs max out at 1 Gbps and even with that I was maxing out at 940-950 Mbps.

3. Yes. I even had a Dell Business support rep run across the channels and adjust the Wi-Fi card settings (hoping it was just a Wi-Fi card config issue). Eventually, he reverted back to the original settings as that was the best channels for the band and resulting in the best results. The tests were run with laptop and router on the same desk. And the last few tests (before i fell into depression) were done with hem about 1 inch away. AT one point, I even planted the router on the keyboard of my laptop and ran tests - shockingly the bandwidth dropped to less than half in those tests. Interesting, yet disturbing.

4. Firmware Version V1.0.10.82_2.0.39. Also did test with default factory reset version with manual firmware update with Netgear ProSupport L2 rep. 

For a bit more context, I had no other devices connected but the laptop and the phone and only used one at a time with everything closed, but the speed tests.

[Razor512]

For the WiFi client devices, what was the PHY rate of their connection?

If in the same room and on the 5GHz band with the AX features turned on, it should look like this.

On your specific WiFi adapter, it should give you around 1.8Gbps real world throughput from a 2402Mbps PHY rate, though there are exceptions. If extremely close to the router, e.g., within around 8 or so inches, speeds can drop due to receiver overload leading to corrupt frames, thus the router will get a ton of overhead from frame re-transmissions, common on any AP that uses attempts to use a full watt of transmit power, though if using DFS channels, due to extreme FCC restrictions, they get forced down to 250mW which can be used at closer distances.

Outside of that, also head to the router page, and click on the "Advanced" tab, and then click on "Show Statistics".

Make sure the 2.5GbE port is showing a status of "2500M/Full"

[isaaccoo]

For the PHY, I got:

• Protocol: Wi-FI 6 (802.11ax)
• Security type: WPA2-Personal
• Network band: 5 GHz
• Network Channel: 44
• Link speed (Receive/transmit): 1922/1470 (Mbps)
• Manufacturer: Intel Corporation
• Description: Killer(R) Wi-Fi 6 AX1650s 160MHz Wireless Network Adapter (201D2W)
• Driver version: 22.160.3.2

In the router, went to Advanced / Advanced Home / Internet Port / WAN Preference = Multi-Gig Port (2.5/1 Gbps).

I tested this router at many ranges, mainly:10ft, 6ft, 3ft, 1ft. 1in, and when  i planted it on the laptop.

Anything else I can provide to help with this?

[CD_router_888]

This is my Speddtest test results on my RAXE450

@isaaccoo did you limit your speed on QoS page ? 

5G

6G

[isaaccoo]

I don't see any limits set.

Here's the QoS settings with speed test results:

Here's the speed test from my PC:

Here are the Wifi Settings on my PC:

Protocol: Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax)
Security type: WPA2-Personal
Manufacturer: Intel Corporation
Description: Killer(R) Wi-Fi 6 AX1650s 160MHz Wireless Network Adapter (201D2W)
Driver version: 22.160.3.2
Network band: 5 GHz
Network channel: 44
Link speed (Receive/Transmit): 1922/1441 (Mbps)

[FURRYe38]

Killer branded adapters have there own QoS features I believe. Something you might look into and see if any of these features can be disabled. 

Try a different wifi AX adapter to compare results.

[isaaccoo]

I've been trying to sort this out a few ways. I went out and bagged a Nighthawk Dual-Band USB 3.0 Adapter (A7000) to see if that fixed the problem.. That even performed worse, hitting 425-625 Mbps, when its advertised as: "This AC1900 USB 3.0 adapter wirelessly connects your laptop or desktop computer with WiFi speeds up to 1.9Gbps". Tests were done with clear line of sight, at 3 and 6 feet fromt he router.

Then I gave up on the router, returned it, and got a new RAXE500. With the RAXE500, My Killer wireless speeds on the Killer Wireless card, on the lower end, jumped to 850 Mbps, but still maxing out t around 950 Mbps, The internet speed from CM2000 to RAXE500 is averaging about 1400-1475 Mbps. The A7000 adapter is still choking at 425-625 Mbps.

All these results are similar from the second PC, as well.

So far, seems the only Netgear product not giving any issues has been the CM2000.

Any ideas of where we can go from here, before I return everything?