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I purchased the Netgear Nighthawk R9000 router to replace my older R7000 and began to hard wire certain devices in my house. (TVs, PS4, Office computers...)
I have noticed on the new R9000 router the 2.4Ghz band is Too wide. I have it set to use Channel 11, with 20/40 Mhz Coexistence on. With my Android Wifi Analyzer it reports my R9000 is using channel 11+7 and is broadcasting from Channels 5 through 13. The 2.4 Ghz band is too wide and is overlapping 2 major network channels normally separated in my neighborhood, Channels 6 and 11. My old R7000 router (hardwired, retired to my garage at the back of my property, with the transmitter power turned down to 25% for the garage and workshop only) also has 20/40 Mhz Coexistence turned on and is set on channel 11 and the android wifi analyzer show its 2.4 Ghz band as narrow reaching from Channel 9 to Channel 13. Why is the R9000 router's 2.4 Ghz band so wide? Is the R9000 faulty or is the firmware to blame for not actually enabling the 20/40 Mhz coexistence?
Please advise as I don't want to overlap or cause connectivity problems other neighbors wifi networks with my own.
In your last reply, you meant to say Mbps, not MHz.
Anyway, it may seem like the R9000 is slower, but that's not really the case.
The maximum 2.4 GHz speeds supported by the R9000 (800 Mbps) and R7000 (600 Mbps) use non-standard modulation, 256-QAM. You would need a device that supports 256-QAM. Well, there really isn't any computer or smartphone that supports it. The fastest, standard speeds are really 600 Mbps and 450 Mbps, respectively.
But these are speeds using 40 MHz channels. With 20 MHz channels, these speeds drop to 289 Mbps and 217 Mbps, respectively.
But there is a second requirement to hit those respective speeds. The R9000 requires a device to support 4 streams. The R7000 requires 3 streams. High-end laptops, like Macbook Pros and premium PC laptops, support 3 streams. All smartphones use either 1 or 2 streams. There are only a handful of Wi-Fi adapters that support 4 streams and, AFAIK, they all require a PCI-E slot in a desktop computer. Unless you have one of these rare adapters, your devices are going to use between 1 and 3 streams. The R9000 can obviously handle devices with fewer than 4 streams; it will basically perform that same as the R7000. Yes, that means that the R9000's 4th stream isn't really going to do you much good.
I think you will do well to return the R9000 and hardwire as much as possible. Ethernet is more reliable, has lower latency and is, for the moment, faster than Wi-Fi.
TL;DR Change the 2.4 GHz mode setting to Up to 347 Mbps. This will force the use of 20 MHz channels.
Technically, Wi-Fi standards allow routers to use 40 MHz channels in the 2.4 GHz band when no other nearby Wi-Fi networks are detected. They must drop down to 20 MHz channels, provided that the 20/40 MHz Coexistance setting is enabled. Your R9000 must be failing to detect other nearby networks, or perhaps it has a bug.
Netgear is quirky in that there isn't an obvious way to force the use of 20 MHz channels. It's not the 20/40 MHz Coexistance setting! The way to force 20 MHz channels is to reduce the Wireless mode setting to Up to 347 Mbps. If you live in a neighbor with other active Wi-Fi networks, then I recommend you change this setting. As you probably know, using 40 MHz channels is very un-neighborly.
Thank you for the quick response. I dropped the max speed from 800 Mhz to 347 Mhz as suggested on my R9000 2.4Ghz. Ran a network scan again with my Android Wifi Analyzer and sure enough, the band is now narrower on chans. 9-13.
My R7000 set the same way can reach 2.4 Ghz speeds of 600 Mhz, so the R9000 is actually slower? I bought the R9000 to facilitate faster streaming on wireless devices (R9000 up to 800 Mhz, R7000 up to 600 Mhz.) and now I have to slow it to almost half what I had on the R7000 to keep from overlapping neighboring networks? Am I reading that right? If so, I will return the R9000 and stick with my R7000 and hard wire in as many devices as I can with a 16-port gigabit switch.
In your last reply, you meant to say Mbps, not MHz.
Anyway, it may seem like the R9000 is slower, but that's not really the case.
The maximum 2.4 GHz speeds supported by the R9000 (800 Mbps) and R7000 (600 Mbps) use non-standard modulation, 256-QAM. You would need a device that supports 256-QAM. Well, there really isn't any computer or smartphone that supports it. The fastest, standard speeds are really 600 Mbps and 450 Mbps, respectively.
But these are speeds using 40 MHz channels. With 20 MHz channels, these speeds drop to 289 Mbps and 217 Mbps, respectively.
But there is a second requirement to hit those respective speeds. The R9000 requires a device to support 4 streams. The R7000 requires 3 streams. High-end laptops, like Macbook Pros and premium PC laptops, support 3 streams. All smartphones use either 1 or 2 streams. There are only a handful of Wi-Fi adapters that support 4 streams and, AFAIK, they all require a PCI-E slot in a desktop computer. Unless you have one of these rare adapters, your devices are going to use between 1 and 3 streams. The R9000 can obviously handle devices with fewer than 4 streams; it will basically perform that same as the R7000. Yes, that means that the R9000's 4th stream isn't really going to do you much good.
I think you will do well to return the R9000 and hardwire as much as possible. Ethernet is more reliable, has lower latency and is, for the moment, faster than Wi-Fi.
