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Re: R7000 Wireless for 2.4 Ghz extremely slow

Momo_Mari
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R7000 Wireless for 2.4 Ghz extremely slow

About a week ago I switched from Time Warner to Verizon FiOS.  A couple of days later I was using my laptop in my bedroom and noticed really slow wifi speeds, like 1 mbps.  My service is 100 mbps up and down.  Hard wired through the router, the speed is 100 so that's fine.  My Nighthawk router is about two years old.  My laptop is pretty old, maybe 5 years.  It only works on 2.4 ghz, but I never had this issue with my old connection.  The speed is ok in the router room, about 25-30 mbps but nowhere close to 100.  Testing on the 5 ghz devices (phones), they seem to be fine all around the house, between 70-90 everywhere.  So the problem seems to be limited to the 2.4 ghz band.  Also, it should be noted that I live in an apartment and my bedroom is maybe 30 feet away from the router.  It's a full signal so it's not a reception issue.  I had the most recent firmware update 1.0.9.18.  I'm currently running the 1.0.9.26_10.2.31 because I read on the forums that people were getting dropped from the wifi, but that was never my problem and it's still the same speed problem.  I also rolled back to older firmware and that didn't seem to work either.

 

I'm really struggling to figure out what the problem it, I think it is the router but not sure what.  The only other thing I think may have affected the router is that when I switched to Verizon, I put the modem under the router and when I noticed the speed issue I checked on it and they were both pretty hot.  Not scorching hot but hot.  But again, the 5 ghz works so, it doesn't seem like overall the router was fried or anything. 

 

Anyone have any suggestions?  This is really frustrating as I'm supposed to be enjoying my new faster internet and it's slower now!

Model: R7000|Nighthawk AC1900 Dual Band WiFi Router
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Re: R7000 Wireless for 2.4 Ghz extremely slow


wrote:

Yes, there are a lot of wifi signals nearby, at least 5 are at full bars.  So that means they're close by and they're pretty strong.  That's probably the reason.

 

It certainly won't help.

 


 

Great idea - yes I'll definitely buy one of those.  This should be a pretty cheap fix and beats me getting a new laptop!

 


Depending on what you do with the laptop, and how much you want to spend, you can get a USB device that balances size versus performance. Small ones are easier to take on the road, but bigger devices may be better at picking up a decent signal.

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Re: R7000 Wireless for 2.4 Ghz extremely slow


wrote:

 

I had the most recent firmware update 1.0.9.18.  I'm currently running the 1.0.9.26_10.2.31 because I read on the forums that people were getting dropped from the wifi, 


That was a different issue for most people, something that Google delivered as an early Christmas present. It has been fixed for most people in newer firmware. (See the many discussions about "Chromecast" around here.)

 

Can you persuade one of your 5 GHz devices to connect at 2.4GHz and see if it is any faster? That would rule out laptop issues.

 

In your experiments with firmware, did you factory reset after installing new firmware? Always worth trying if you have post-flash syndrome.

 

If you are in an apartment, have you tried different wifi bands to rule out local interference from the neighbours?

 

 

 

Message 2 of 6
Momo_Mari
Aspirant

Re: R7000 Wireless for 2.4 Ghz extremely slow

Hi michaelkenward,

 

Thanks so much for the reply.  So I did what you said and I think it worked.  I first tested my phones on the 2.4 ghz band and it was the same issue.  I then played around with the wifi bands on the 2.4 ghz band, and it was bad to worse.  Top speeds were 15-25 down, and a lot of the channels were 1-5 mbps. 

 

I did a factory reset and it seems to have done the trick.  I'm currently getting (on my laptop) 34 up and 16 down in the same room, and about 25 down in the nearby rooms.  I'm getting higher speeds on my phone on the 2.4 band so I guess part of the problem is my computer.  Curiously, I don't know how this happened but the router had the newest version of the firmware.  I didn't update it and when it was on the firmware update page when I first booted the router, it was busy working and I manually refreshed it, and it looked like I skipped that step.  But maybe it automatically updated?  I wanted to try it out without the updated firmware but I couldn't.

 

At this point I shouldn't be complaining, but if anyone knows, is this type of speed downgrade normal?  If I'm at 100 hard wired, shouldn't I be getting closer to that even on the 2.4 ghz band?  Or is that just not possible?  I'd be curious to know, then going forward it might not even be worth it to pay for this speed. 

Model: R7000|Nighthawk AC1900 Dual Band WiFi Router
Message 3 of 6

Re: R7000 Wireless for 2.4 Ghz extremely slow


 

At this point I shouldn't be complaining, but if anyone knows, is this type of speed downgrade normal?  If I'm at 100 hard wired, shouldn't I be getting closer to that even on the 2.4 ghz band?  Or is that just not possible?  I'd be curious to know, then going forward it might not even be worth it to pay for this speed. 

 


Yes, you should get much nearer to 100 Mbps on wifi. Go won't get all of that, but if I can get as much as 55 Mbps with wifi from ~76 Mbps internet, you should get at least that much, depending in the receivers.

 

You say "Hard wired through the router, the speed is 100 ...." I assume that this is when plugged directly into the R7000.  This suggests that you don't see the slowdown between modem and router that hits some people.

 

So, again it points the finger at the wifi clients.

 

It is surprising that changing wifi channels gave such odd results. It does hint at interference nearby. Can your wifi devices see any SSIDs from the neighbours?

 

One advantage of 5 GHz wifi is that it has a shorter distance, which means that there's less chance of interference from sources further away.

 

Do you take the laptop on the road? If so, what speeds do you see then?

 

You could look into getting a small USB wifi dongle that operates at 5 GHz. They don't cost much and might be a better job than the built-in thing.

 

These are pretty inexpensive:

 

A6100 | WiFi Adapters | Networking | Home | NETGEAR

 

It does 5 GHz.

 

Other makes might be a lot cheaper.

 

Message 4 of 6
Momo_Mari
Aspirant

Re: R7000 Wireless for 2.4 Ghz extremely slow

Yes, there are a lot of wifi signals nearby, at least 5 are at full bars.  So that means they're close by and they're pretty strong.  That's probably the reason.

 

Great idea - yes I'll definitely buy one of those.  This should be a pretty cheap fix and beats me getting a new laptop!

 

Thanks so much!

Model: R7000|Nighthawk AC1900 Dual Band WiFi Router
Message 5 of 6

Re: R7000 Wireless for 2.4 Ghz extremely slow


wrote:

Yes, there are a lot of wifi signals nearby, at least 5 are at full bars.  So that means they're close by and they're pretty strong.  That's probably the reason.

 

It certainly won't help.

 


 

Great idea - yes I'll definitely buy one of those.  This should be a pretty cheap fix and beats me getting a new laptop!

 


Depending on what you do with the laptop, and how much you want to spend, you can get a USB device that balances size versus performance. Small ones are easier to take on the road, but bigger devices may be better at picking up a decent signal.

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