Nighthawk AC2300 - R7000P - Extremely slow speeds on an iPhone X

[Wiedmann]

Hi,

I setup a new R7000P router, and I seem to be having a significant problem with the connection/speed on my iPhone X.  As seen in the attached screenshot phone_link_rate_marked.PNG from the Nighthawk app it shows a Link Rate of only 6 Mbps.  In the same app when I check my HP Windows laptop I'm getting a Link Rate of 585 Mbps (I have a screenshot of this too, but only one image is allowed in this post).  With the same Nighthawk app when I measure the network speed it says I have 117.7 Mbps down and 6.0 Mbps up (again can't share the screenshot).  I also measured the speed with SpeedOf.Me on both the phone and laptop, and I get 130 Mbps down and 6 Mbps up on the laptop; however, on my phone I only get 1.63 Mbps down and 0.17 Mbps up.  I ran both tests with the all other devices off on the network (i.e. the laptop was turned off when I measured the speed with my phone).

The speed on my phone is so bad that the connection itself goes off and on, and I am not able to transfer files wireless between my phone and my laptop which I was able to do with an old ASUS router over a week ago.  I have never had this connection problem with my iPhone on any other WiFi network (my old home network, work, public, ...).

This has been going on for a week now since I setup this new router last weekend.  I have reset the router and modem a number of times now.

Here is all the other information of importance:

Firmware - V1.3.1.64_10.1.36
Dynamic QoS disabled

Modem model - Netgear CM700

ISP - Comcast

It looks like other users have reported slow speeds with iPhones too:
Nighthawk R7000P speeds extremely slow

Mobile devices slow on Nighthawk R7900

I have also expereneced this issue at least once this past week, but I'm not sure if this is related:

R7000P - Every day WiFi gets unstable and slow, after restart back to normal until the next day

I'm looking forward to getting this issue resolved, so let me know what steps I should take next.

Thank you

[Wiedmann · Accepted solution]

Great news!  Everything is now working at top speed for both my iPhone and my laptop with Smart Connect enabled.

After resetting the router 5-10 times and switching on/off Smart Connect 3 times over a period of a month, it seems like the router has learned to maximize bandwidth for both my computer and phone.

Based on these other posts with similar smart phone issues: Nighthawk R7000P speeds extremely slow and Mobile devices slow on Nighthawk R7900 which seemed to eventually be resolved later, I'm thinking there is probably some bug with the router upon initial installation in relation to smart phone bandwidth, but after things are reset and switched around enough it gets into a normal state.

Either way it is fixed now, so I'm happy!

[plemans]

Are you using smart connect? 

Because it shows you connected to the 2.4ghz band. Its more sensitive to interference. have you been able to connect the iphone to the 5ghz band? 

[Wiedmann]

Thanks for the reply plemans.

That's a good question.  Indeed I am using Smart Connect and my HP laptop was automatically connected to 5GHz while the iPhone was connected to 2.4GHz.  I figured this wasn't the issue since I assumed the way Smart Connect should work it should automatically flip to the faster frequency band, correct?

I went ahead and disabled Smart Connect and manually connected the phone to the 5GHz network, and indeed now I get the top speed.

However, this doesn't seem to be the whole story since I also manually connected my HP laptop to the 2.4GHz network with Smart Connect disabled and while I didn't get the top speed it still clocked in at 25.47 Mbps down (20% of top) and 6.56 Mbps up (full speed) which is still an order of magnitude faster than what I am getting on my phone on 2.4GHz.  Maybe this is just explained by a weaker wireless network card in the phone vs the laptop?

Long story short, with Smart Connect enabled why would the iPhone not automatically switch to the 5GHz network if this frequency band has less interference?

Thanks

[plemans]

So the auto switching isn't right away. It might switch right when it notices the demand but from my experience its more based on user history. My devices I constantly stream on, it learns to place on the 5ghz. my lower bandwidth devices will stay on 2.4ghz until they've been repeatedly using a lot of bandwidth. It makes sense if you think about it. When a device requests data from the router, it sends the most it can handle. If it had to take into account this fact, every device would be getting put on the 5ghz because it'd be maxing out the signal right away. so it has to figure out a rough average of how much data a device uses and not peak data useage. 

have you tried changing 2.4ghz channels on the router to see if it'd help the phone? 

[Wiedmann]

I have not tried changing the channels; I just have it set to the default of Auto for the 2.4Ghz.  Shouldn't this setting automatically select the best channel and automatically change if needed?

For a manual test like your suggesting are there certain channels you suggest I try, or it doesn't matter and it is just the luck of the draw which ones might be better than others?

Thanks again for the response.

[plemans]

for the 2.4ghz, I'd keep it on auto.

For the 5ghz, you can actually download a free scanner app and scan to see whats broadcasting on the 5ghz. i usually use inssider or acrylic. Once you can see what channels are least congested, just choose those from the channels available. 

[Wiedmann]

Cool, good to know that Auto is the correct selection for the 2.4GHz.  Thanks for the suggestion regarding the scanner for the 5GHz; however, I don't think I need to do this because the 5GHz band is not the issue; instead the 2.4GHz band is the problem, correct?  When I force my phone to connect to the 5GHz band then I get the full speed in a speed test (100x faster than with Smart Connect enabled and it automatically choosing the 2.4GHz band).  As a side note I left the 5GHz channel selection at default which happens to be channel 153.  Minor question, is there is a reason the 5GHz Channel options don't include a Auto selection?

It seems to me that there is now two issues:

1. Why is Smart Connect not working on my iPhone to automatically switch to the 5GHz band if it clearly has less interference?  Note that I had my iPhone connected in this state for over a week, and it didn't seem to work during any of that time.
2. Why is the Auto Channel selection for the 2.4GHz band not working on my iPhone to get compariable bandwidth to my laptop on the 2.4GHz band?

Thanks

[plemans]

---

It seems to me that there is now two issues:

1. Why is Smart Connect not working on my iPhone to automatically switch to the 5GHz band if it clearly has less interference?  Note that I had my iPhone connected in this state for over a week, and it didn't seem to work during any of that time.
2. Why is the Auto Channel selection for the 2.4GHz band not working on my iPhone to get compariable bandwidth to my laptop on the 2.4GHz band?

Thanks

---

Not sure why there isn't an auto select for 5ghz. 

1.smart connect doesn't just take into account which band is faster. If for some reason a device isn't maximizing its 2.4ghz connection, smart connects going to think that its a lower bandwidth device. So it won't switch it over. Maybe its indicative of the phone only being able to pull that speed. Or if a device is further away, its going to place it on 2.4ghz because 2.4ghz broadcasts further and through more materials. 

2. Again, I'm not sure. Whenever we have an issue that is isolated to 1 device (aka the iphone x) and everything else works fine, its usually an issue of that specific device. You can try turning off auto selection and seeing if any of the channels work better for the iphone. You can check to see if 20/40hz coexistence is enabled. 

You could also even test to see if it is a firmware issue. Netgear added Armor in version 1.3.1.44 and it caused some issues with devices. You could always try installing version 1.3.0.20, factory resetting, and manually re-installing the router. 

[Wiedmann]

OK, sounds like I need to reach out directly to Netgear Support, so I'll do that.  Yeah I'm fairly ceratin it is not my phone since I get full speed on the phone at 5GHz.  I have had the phone for a year and a half now, and I've never had an issue like this until I installed this new Netgear router two weeks ago.  The phone works fine with my previous router, work network, friend's and family's house networks, public networks, etc; it has only been an issue with this router.

Thanks again for all your help; I appreciate it!

[Wiedmann · Accepted solution]

Great news!  Everything is now working at top speed for both my iPhone and my laptop with Smart Connect enabled.

After resetting the router 5-10 times and switching on/off Smart Connect 3 times over a period of a month, it seems like the router has learned to maximize bandwidth for both my computer and phone.

Based on these other posts with similar smart phone issues: Nighthawk R7000P speeds extremely slow and Mobile devices slow on Nighthawk R7900 which seemed to eventually be resolved later, I'm thinking there is probably some bug with the router upon initial installation in relation to smart phone bandwidth, but after things are reset and switched around enough it gets into a normal state.

Either way it is fixed now, so I'm happy!