Low speeds over wifi vs wired Nighthawk AC1900 (R6900P)
I'm having some issues with low speeds via wifi through my Nighthawk AC1900 (R6900P). I think it has been going on for quite some time and I just never realized it.
I have gigabit internet with AT&T. My desktop is wired through the router and it regularly sees speeds over 500 Mbps and up. My wireless devices all seem to be running much slower--averaging around 100 Mbps (plus or minus). I've tried it with multiple speed test sites and used a few different wireless devices: two laptops (which are maybe 5 years old?) and two phones (which are both under 2 years old). Oh, and this is using the 5 GHz band. (2.4 tends to be a bit slower)
The speed test via the Nighthawk app seems to be somewhere in the middle... I've never seen it running nearly as high as the desktop, but I have seen it get up to nearly 250 Mbps. I thought that this test is run directly from the router so it seems odd to me that it's slower than the speeds the desktop computer is reporting, with the desktop wired to it.
Parental controls are off and I don't think I have any security software on the router. The "traffic meter" on the app is turned on. I do have maybe two dozen wireless devices connected to the router, though most of them are just smart home devices (light switches, bulbs, garag door, Google Homes, etc.). I've done speed tests while other devices aren't using any significant amount of data.
did you put your att modem in passthrough/modem only mode?
Or put your netgear in AP (access point) mode?
Or put the netgears IP address into the att device's DMZ?
any of those would fix the double nat.
what gateway do you have from att?
Also, another thing you can try is to factory reset the R6900P and during the install, make sure to leave access controls, qos, traffic monitoring, and parental controls disabled.
lastly, don't trust the built in speedtest from the nighthawk app. It rarely picks the best servers.
Re: Low speeds over wifi vs wired Nighthawk AC1900 (R6900P)
Hmmm, thanks for your help. I'll have to look into some of this as I'm not familiar with some of it. But tech savvy enough to figure it out I think.
My ATT modem IS a modem/router combo and I never put it in a passthrough/modem only mode. Also never put Netgear router in AP mode or put the IP address in the ATT modem's DMZ.
I guess it seems strange to me that this would matter? The desktop computer is wired to the Netgear router, so why wouldn't it be getting the same speeds as wirelessly connected devices? Granted, I can accept it if the answer is simply "technology is weird sometimes--it's complicated". 🙂
