Orbi WiFi 7 RBE973
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R7000 2.4ghz not working but 5ghz is fine

jwong84
Aspirant

R7000 2.4ghz not working but 5ghz is fine

Firmware 1.0.4.30 and 1.0.4.28 tried for weeks at a time.

 

Wireless devices connected to 5ghz band are all working perfectly and have been since i purchased this router at the beginning of June 2015.

 

As of 1.5 months ago, 2.4ghz band has been very intermittent, and at this point i was already using firmware 1.0.4.30.  Rebooting the router did not do anything. I do not have any settings on the router except the ssid, password and channels.

 

I tried going back to firmware 1.0.4.28 and that only worked for maybe 2 days, then the disconnects started again. i have been using Wifi Analyzer app on my tablet just to see if there is a transmission signal from the router.  5ghz band has a constant transmission signal however the 2.4ghz band has an off to on time of maybe 3:1 at the best of times. This allows me to SOMETIMES connect to the router while on 2.4ghz band, but usually it will not connect.  I have been forced to connect my desktop via a really long ethernet cable and older devices no longer have internet connections. I am currently still monitoring the off to on time and the worst as of yet is about 10:1.  Basically the 2.4 ghz band is completely dead minus random spikes of it showing up.

 

I've seen a few posts with the 5ghz band issue similarly but no fix either. I used to have a wndr3700 and that worked fine until the range on the router out of nowhere and permanently dropped by about 25% causing me to buy a repeater to get coverage.  Using the repeater solved the distance issue but then i had issues with connection speed (not huge but noticeable).  I figured buying an R7000 would be a no brainer since its a top of the line unit and priced as such.  I am very disappointed as i haven't been able to find a fix anywhere for this.

 

Any help would be greatly appreciated

Message 1 of 426

Accepted Solutions
Nifer
NETGEAR Employee

Re: R7000 2.4ghz not working but 5ghz is fine

Good news! We now have a production version of firmware that should resolve the 2.4 GHz issue, v1.0.5.64. You may download this firmware from our R7000 page here: http://downloadcenter.netgear.com/en/product/R7000#searchResults

 

As IrvSp correctly notes, this version of firmware fixes the 2.4 GHz issue and reinstates the new features, such as Kwilt, Smart Connect, and WiFI Transmit Power Control. It does not support Arlo.  We hope to have a beta version that supports Arlo in the next two weeks.

 

We welcome any feedback you provide on this new firmware, and appreciate your patience as we resolved these issues. Thank you all for supporting the R7000 and NETGEAR!

View solution in original post

Message 375 of 426

All Replies
Babylon5
NETGEAR Employee Retired

Re: R7000 2.4ghz not working but 5ghz is fine

Just to rule out any environmental type issues, could you take the R7000 to a completely different location and check out the WiFi signal there, no Internet connection would be needed?

Message 2 of 426
jwong84
Aspirant

Re: R7000 2.4ghz not working but 5ghz is fine

Sorry i forgot to mention that. i had it at one end of my house and moved it to the other end of my house. no difference.  also i saw on another post that someone changed security setting from aes + tkip to just aes. tried it and it made no difference. originally the router had a desktop connected to it and it fed everything in the house wireless, mostly on 2.4ghz. it currently has nothing connected to it and it is feeding some devices on 5ghz as 2.4 doesn't work.

Message 3 of 426
Babylon5
NETGEAR Employee Retired

Re: R7000 2.4ghz not working but 5ghz is fine

When I say a different location, I mean totally remote e.g. take it to work or a relatives house.

 

There are plenty of devices available that use the 2.4GHz band and can make WiFi networks completely unusable in their presence. In that case I would still expect to see a signal from the router however I can’t be sure how utilities like WiFi analysers and their associated client devices would react (i.e. the loss of signal that you see could be the clients reaction to the same interference).

Message 4 of 426
jwong84
Aspirant

Re: R7000 2.4ghz not working but 5ghz is fine

I'm pretty sure it won't be another device.  I've only lived in this house for 4 months and the first 2 months the device was working perfectly.  there haven't been any changes to the household, not even new furniture.  no new devices. also it seems i'm not the only one with this issue.

 

i'll try to figure out where else i can test it though.

Message 5 of 426
Babylon5
NETGEAR Employee Retired

Re: R7000 2.4ghz not working but 5ghz is fine

The type of devices I’m thinking of are wireless baby monitors, video senders, security cameras etc. and these don’t necessarily have to be in your house to cause issues. I just think it’s worth ruling this possibility out since there’s not much left that would cause your issues other than hardware failure.

 

You could perhaps save your current router settings to a saved configuration file then factory reset the router, manually enter just enough settings to see if the wireless issues are resolved, and then if you need to, restore the rest of the settings from the saved configuration file.

Message 6 of 426
tk
Aspirant
Aspirant

Re: R7000 2.4ghz not working but 5ghz is fine

I'm having the exact same issue.  I have the R7000 and it has worked flawlessly until now. Today, for no apparent reason, I can no longer connect to the 2.4 GHz channel.  The 5GHz is fine.  The router says it is fine but when I try to connect I get a timeout error.

 

please help me!

Message 7 of 426
JamesGL
Master

Re: R7000 2.4ghz not working but 5ghz is fine

Hi @tk,


Welcome to Community!

 

Try changing the channel of your wireless network and also make sure you have the latest firmware.

 

Regards,

 

JamesGL
Community Team

Message 8 of 426
jwong84
Aspirant

Re: R7000 2.4ghz not working but 5ghz is fine

Finally got around to testing it at another location. It didn't make a difference.  Although the 2.4 band did stay stable a little longer, it still does the on:off about 1:4 now.

Message 9 of 426
jwong84
Aspirant

Re: R7000 2.4ghz not working but 5ghz is fine

I've also tried numerous channels.

Message 10 of 426
Babylon5
NETGEAR Employee Retired

Re: R7000 2.4ghz not working but 5ghz is fine

Well testing at another location with very similar results would tend to rule out environmental issues, so I would suggest that a factory reset might be worth a try, you might want to save your current router configuration first if you try that.

Message 11 of 426
ikalatch
Aspirant

Re: R7000 2.4ghz not working but 5ghz is fine

Same issue here - 2.4 Ghz band has been behaving erratically recently (dropping all conections and refusing to connect devices until the router is restarted). Died completely today - the LED on the front panel is lit and all the settings on the admin page of the router suggest that the 2.4Ghz network should be working but it is not visible anymore. Been on the latest firmware for a while, so no changes there. Seems like a H/W problem - a dead radio...

Message 12 of 426
JamesGL
Master

Re: R7000 2.4ghz not working but 5ghz is fine

Hi @ikalatch,

 

If you have not tried resetting the router to factory default, please try it and check if it will continue to have the same behaviour. After resetting, manually configure the router instead of using the back up.

 

Regards,

 

JamesGL
Community Team

Message 13 of 426
ikalatch
Aspirant

Re: R7000 2.4ghz not working but 5ghz is fine

Thanks, James, yep, I did that last night after reading up a bit more and it seems to have fixed it. Wanted to wait a bit more and see if the fix holds but from what I've seen so far after 20 or so hours - seems to be OK.

I'd have bet good money that this was a hardware problem, nice to be able to resolve it with a reset!

Message 14 of 426
ignition100
Aspirant

Re: R7000 2.4ghz not working but 5ghz is fine

I have the exact same issue

Message 15 of 426
JamesGL
Master

Re: R7000 2.4ghz not working but 5ghz is fine

Hi ignition100,

 

What is the firmware version of your router?

How many wireless devices experiencing this issue?

Message 16 of 426
myselfandi
Aspirant

Re: R7000 2.4ghz not working but 5ghz is fine

I also had the exact same issue of 2.4GHz WiFi not working but 5GHz was fine after loading

the latest FW V1.0.6.28_1.1.83

Had to go back to factory defaults and enter all config manually, because

loading a previous config also corrupted it enough so that 2.4GHz was not working.

Message 17 of 426
bjtech
Tutor

Re: R7000 2.4ghz not working but 5ghz is fine

Same problem as others.  I think something in Netgear's recent firmware updates is causing issues with certain configurations.  I guess I will factory reset.  It will be very unfortunate if I have to rebuild the router configuration since I have a bunch of DHCP Reservations and Port forwards configured.  Up until this point, I was very pleased with this router.

Message 18 of 426
david-net
Aspirant

Re: R7000 2.4ghz not working but 5ghz is fine

Same problem here... 1.0.6.28 fw
Message 19 of 426
david-net
Aspirant

Re: R7000 2.4ghz not working but 5ghz is fine

PS: I ve noticed that this issue occurs only when i set region to US, if I set region to EU 2.4ghz band works fine.
Message 20 of 426
daywood
Tutor

Re: R7000 2.4ghz not working but 5ghz is fine

I'm having the same problem. It has been working like a champ for a couple of years and suddenly yesterday it started dropping wireless connections and losing connection with my ISP. I tried the factory reset that was suggested in another reply and then restored the settings. Now everything but the primary 2.4 GHz network is working OK. The guest 2.4 GHz network seems to be fine, so it's not an all or nothing thing for 2.4 GHz for me.. None of the devices I have can authenticate with that primary network anymore. My devices either tell me they can't connect or they tell me the password is incorrect. I tried changing the name and the password for that network but that didn't help. Anybody else seeing this variation of the problem or have any other ideas?

Message 21 of 426
ikalatch
Aspirant

Re: R7000 2.4ghz not working but 5ghz is fine

Has anybody tried loading the open source firmware variants of WRT? Supposedly this router supports DD-WRT and other variants. I wonder if using some WRT flavor as a firmware would be a better fix for this issue...

Message 22 of 426
david-net
Aspirant

Re: R7000 2.4ghz not working but 5ghz is fine

I tried tomato v132, it seems 2.4 ghz was fine. (but poor signal for me)
Message 23 of 426
JamesGL
Master

Re: R7000 2.4ghz not working but 5ghz is fine

Hi myselfandi,

 

Please check your inbox.

Message 24 of 426
BN_f
Aspirant

Re: R7000 2.4ghz not working but 5ghz is fine

Hi, Same here. After updating to new firmware (1.0.6.28_1.1.83) I have lost all connection to the 2.4 Ghz. It's a great problem because my children all have phone's that only can use that band.

I've tried to change the channel without succes.

 

Any sugetions?

Message 25 of 426
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