R7000P drops WIFI connections frequently

[Blaubmania]

Did someone have the Problem, when deactivate MIMO, the wifi speed is very slow. With MIMO 40MB/s, without 8MB/s?

[Blaubmania]

Speed Problem, resolved after reset again the Router. What a crab...

Deactivate again MIMO, now everything works fine, no wifi drop anymore. It will be nice if Netgear fix the MIMO Problem.

[joejoeinc]

The problem really isn't netgear as such but all manufactures implemented their own standards for MIMO and most of them don't play nice together... MIMO was overrated anyway. 

[kiloandgizmo]

Thanks for the info so far so good.i also disabled guests WiFi and loaded the new hot fix beta file from Netgear.

[monkeymagik]

Yep. I have exactly the same problem with the same router (R7000P). Wired connections seem stable, but every now and then wifi drops for all devices on the network. Weirdly enough if I disable wifi on one of those devices for a moment and re-enable, everything springs back to life.

I've disabled dynamic QoS, which seemed to help a bit... but it was a feature I'd like to use.

I've considered disabling Smart Wifi and/or MU-MIMO... but they're also features I'd like to keep. Particularly the Smart Wifi, other wise I would have gotten a mesh kit. It would be nice if the features on the box worked. Parental controls are handy, but also a bit buggy.

The router I got was a repack in the store... seems someone else had the same issue with the same router. If I was to return I'd get a different router (not Netgear).

[joejoeinc]

Just try disabling the MIMO feature.. .you'll find all the other issues go away and you'll be able to use all the other features you're talking about. 

[w0203j]

Will try disasbling MIMO and see what happends for a while.

[srfnmnk]

Same here. Got a new razr blade 15 and realized that every time I turned it on, I had about 10-15 minutes of wifi and then all wifi connected devices would drop. After a little research I found that the cpu i this razr blade 15 laptop, Intel Core i7-8750H, has this great new "feature". Googling around I found this post and disabled MU-MIMO, boom, problem solved.

Thank you so much for posting this and doing all the troubleshooting. So glad you were able to reproduce the issue as I was not directly other than just using my laptop for a few minutes waiting for all wireless devices to lose connection. Incredible.

P.S. I got excited when I saw that there were logs on the router...then I looked at them and realized...they were zero help.

[Capn_Prat]

Just incase anyone is wondering, this is apparently STILL an issue. Thank you so much for the workaround. MU-MIMO was one of the reasons I went with this router, but oh well, I guess?

[joejoeinc]

Agreed MIMO still an issue. But it'll never find a solution (not with netgear). The only reason a firmware was released about 6 months ago was beause netgear broke 'Attached Devices' with a previous firmware update and then had to release a newer firmware update to fix the previously broken update. After that last update nothing at all. 

I wouldn't get your hopes up of a fix for MIMO as this will be up to individual manfacturers to fix each implimentation of MIMO. 

[nyclewis]

I installed the last stable build of dd-wrt and it's been 100% better. Previously had been doing the nightly betas but the unpredictable bugs got to me.

[mc-lemons]

Does Smart Connect also have to de disabled for the workaround to work? I uncheck "Enable MU-MIMO" in Advanced Setup > Wireless Settings. The check box was located below the  "WPS Settings" section which says next to it "(disabled when Smart Connect is enabled)" So since I've always had Smart Connect enabled, wouldn't MU-MIMO have been disabled?

[climbzona]

Thanks, I have unchecked the Enable MU-MIMO option and this has kept the connection from dropping.

I'll point out that it wasn't just wifi connectivity in my situiation but all my wired connections as well. Appreciate you sharing your troubleshooting and solution to this.

[joejoeinc]

Does Smart Connect also have to de disabled for the workaround to work?
I don't think so.. but I have smart connect disable because I don't want my clients jumping and switching between 2.4G and 5G every 5 seconds

[BigOdawa]

just bought this R7000P expecting good things and this wifi keep dropping thing really soured my experience.  read this forum and I turned off my MU-MIMO and everything works good now... I work in telecom and know how MIMO is supposed to work and seen this feature on the router and expected good things... not wifi connetion issues...

[climbzona]

Ok in an update to my earlier reply, I'm still having issues w dropped connection but so far much less frequient than before. It was literally 2-3 times a day requiring a reboot. After disabling MIMO as recommended I've had a single instance that also required a reboot. I don't know that it's related and will do a bit of research. Though want to update that at least connectivity is much more stable after unchecking the setting.

[Renaldo123]

I'm also quite disappointed with this router. I bought it a couple of days ago, and I'm experiencing multiple drop out issues, and the router is literally 2 meters away from all the devices that need wifi. I've submitted a support ticket, will see what they say.

So far I've disabled all the options for the Guest Network, turned off MU-MIMO, I'm also using Smart Connect. All of these things together seem to help a little bit but devices still continue to drop out once or twice every couple of hours. 

[climbzona]

quick update, support had me flash the fw manually (download and install vs update within the portal). My connection dropped again over night and required a reboot in the morning but has held up since then.

[Retired_Member]

I replaced my 2 month old Linksys EA8300 which stopped broadcasting all of a sudden last night with R7000P. I have only used it for 3 hours or so. 7 drops within 3 hours. All of my devices drop signal. It is probably not only Netgear. All the electronics we buy today are genuinely garbage because companies' motto changed from selling reliable and sturdy products to making garbage products with a appealing design that will only last 7 months. Real children acting theri age and wanting the cereal with the sparliest box, we, mature "children" for electronics, want the "best of the best" looking but garbage interior products. Result; crap like this end up in our homes and offices.

[joejoeinc]

Did you disable the MIMO feature?

[climbzona]

I have unchecked MIMO and while it appeared to help I am still dropping connections. Support had me reapply the latest update and drops occur 1-2 times a day which is an improvement but still not a working answer.

[Renaldo123]

I had to resort to the following:

- Did a factory reset

- Downloaded the firmware update to my laptop, and re-uploaded the update by connecting to the router via ethernet cable

- Powered off and then powered on the router

Most times, I have 4 devices connected - 2 laptops and 2 iphones. For some reason, two devices have no issues connecting, but the other two will get kicked out throughout the day.

It's disappointing/ridiculous that the Huawei HG659 router my ISP gave me is much more reliable. Devices connected via wifi were never kicked out, and the need for a reset was maybe once a month or two, if at all.

After making the changes described above, the Windows laptop doesn't drop out very often, maybe once a day. The macbook always has issues connecting (it just 'tries' to connect until the laptop is restarted). The iphone 7 connects fine, but the iphone 11 drops out. It is worth pointing out that none of these issues, in any of the devices, were ever experienced with the more basic HG659 router.

Will continue to monitor.

[Retired_Member]

I have a router that I paid $159 yesterday. It comes with a 90 day complimentary technical support. Very problematic out of the box. As a customer I resort to online counseling, that did not solve the problem. Then I called technical support which I paid for. I was 2nd in line when I called, then 1st after a 15 minute wait. Another 10 minutes passes, I am expecting to speak with an support staff. Then the teleprompter tells me, I got dropped to 19 in line. NINETEEN!!!This is a defective product and the company drops you to 19 in line. That means give up on this and the company as well. Farewell netgear.

[Chriswarren]

Same issue here.  I disabled MuMimo andthatdidnot help at all.  If this is the maximum life I get from a netgear product,certainly won't replace it with another Netgear product.  Just under 2 years old.  I have the orbi mesh at another residence that works fine.  If that goes out,another lost customer who has been a loyal customer for many years.

[Renaldo123]

Update on this piece of **** router.

Despite doing all the steps I've mentioned previously, I still experienced the following:

- Devices would get kicked out of the wifi network randomly

- My Playstation in particular would encounter this issue: the PS4 would only get turned on early evenings, with say an average 18+ hours where it was turned off. Every single time I would turn on the machine, it would say that it couldn't reconnect to the wifi. Sometimes I'd be able to solve the issue by setting up the wifi from scratch on the PS4, other times I'd have to reboot the router. 

The changes I had made previously (described in earlier posts) had helped me have a bit more consistency with connectivity on SOME laptops and SOME iphones, however, the PS4 had the connection issue every day.

I then decided to reserve IP addresses to each device. This appears to have solved the problem. I've gone 48 hours now with no random disconnections and the PS4 does not require me to reconfigure the internet every day.

Will keep you posted on results.