× Introducing the Orbi 970 Series Mesh System with WiFi 7 technology. For more information visit the NETGEAR Press Room.
Orbi WiFi 7 RBE973
Reply

RAX200 connectivity issues

JJJ-
Initiate

RAX200 connectivity issues

I'm curious if anyone has had a similar experience with this router and more importantly with the customer support provided by NetGear. I purchased this router directly from Netgear a week ago. Set it up and it asked to update the firmware, which I did and completed setting up my 3 band SSID's and passwords. Some of my devices could not recognize the 5Ghz bands and defaulted to 2.4Ghz. Shortly thereafter the 5Ghz SSID's stopped being recognized all together. I called support and we went through a barrage of things to get this corrected. It worked for about an hour and started doing the same thing. I called back the next day and went through a series of troubleshooting with an advanced technical support person. It worked and I was told not to change any settings and let the router settle in. Two hours later I had no 5Ghz bands at all. I called back and did this for the next 3 days even after I asked for a replacement. I'm now on my 5th day with support and can't seem to get an RMA generated to return this defective unit. Oh and I must pay $30 if I want this new unit shipped overnight or $17 for 3-5 Business Days! When I asked for this to be escalated and a supervisor ro override the shipping charge, no one was ever available or in a meeting. Today, I called their support team 4 times trying to get this resolved. I was told a supervisor would call me back which they never did. I'm at a loss as to next steps. When I call the reps they are all sympathetic to my situation but I can't get a replacement sent at no cost to me. Is this crazy or what? This router cost over $600 and I thought I was getting the best and I have a router with just one 2.4Ghz band working. 

Model: RAX200|Nighthawk Tri-band AX12 12-Stream Wi-Fi 6 Router
Message 1 of 11
Jan_F
Tutor

Betreff: RAX200 connectivity issues

Had this router since yesterday and had quite a few problems already.

 

Im on the latest firmware - 1.0.3 - 

 

Tried to name my devices via the PC (Wired Connection - over the Routers-Interface)

every 2-5.th device the interface became unresponsive (was not able to do anything about it, waiting did not help, 192.168.1.1 deliverd no more response / App did no work - only solution - restart the router)

 

After 2 hours of restarting and changing the devices names (22 devices connected) i was done (was almost 3 in the morning)

Now - after only about 11 hours of uptime - it started to drop devices - only 1 out of 7 Alexas were still connected, my Phone (Samsung s10+) was not able to connect to the Wifi anymore - (Problem with the Auth.) - My wired PC had NO INTERNET and was not able to log into the Router-Interface... i'm at a loss - such an expensive device and it simply isnt working.

 

Support was not able to help so far, they try to escalte it with LVL 2 - will wait for their response - depending on the response and the next few days - will either keep/send it back.

 

Had / still have a XR500 - never had problems like that - Don't know if AX is worth the hassle.

Model: RAX200|Nighthawk Tri-band AX12 12-Stream Wi-Fi 6 Router
Message 2 of 11
ricozamora
Tutor

Betreff: RAX200 connectivity issues

My biggest issues has been constant disconnects for the past 3 months and have seen everything from them adding new firmware to them actually removing the latest firmware and downgrading it to the previous one.  As of late with the current version of firmware I'm having the same as you with it dropping devices which didn't happen as much on the previous version of firmware.  I can honestly say they don't seem to know what they are doing and sadly I should've known better the second I started having issues.  As for giving up on the AX technology, I'll let you know once I get the very much less expensive Tplink AX router I just purchased in the mail!  As for this VERY overpriced paper weight it's going into a box in my closet and MAYBE coming back out once Netgear get's their "stuff" together!  Best of luck and if you still can,


@Jan_F wrote:

Had this router since yesterday and had quite a few problems already.

 

Im on the latest firmware - 1.0.3 - 

 

Tried to name my devices via the PC (Wired Connection - over the Routers-Interface)

every 2-5.th device the interface became unresponsive (was not able to do anything about it, waiting did not help, 192.168.1.1 deliverd no more response / App did no work - only solution - restart the router)

 

After 2 hours of restarting and changing the devices names (22 devices connected) i was done (was almost 3 in the morning)

Now - after only about 11 hours of uptime - it started to drop devices - only 1 out of 7 Alexas were still connected, my Phone (Samsung s10+) was not able to connect to the Wifi anymore - (Problem with the Auth.) - My wired PC had NO INTERNET and was not able to log into the Router-Interface... i'm at a loss - such an expensive device and it simply isnt working.

 

Support was not able to help so far, they try to escalte it with LVL 2 - will wait for their response - depending on the response and the next few days - will either keep/send it back.

 

Had / still have a XR500 - never had problems like that - Don't know if AX is worth the hassle.



I would recommend returing this router and finding something that you can rely on.

Model: RAX200|Nighthawk Tri-band AX12 12-Stream Wi-Fi 6 Router
Message 3 of 11
Jan_F
Tutor

Betreff: RAX200 connectivity issues

Amazon is thankfully pretty generous with returns, the windows ends on January 31.th 2021 - today a few more bugs surfaced -

 

Had to disable the Armor feature - otherwise my TV wouldnt display 4k Youtube properly - endless buffering and stuttering - Buffer health ran to 0 all the time - took control with my Laptop / Phone - was able to gett the same resolution without stutters.

 

After disabling "Armor" the TV worked fine again (could be a coincident)

 

Now later today - same thing happened to my other LG 4k TV in the living room - Youtube 4k plays a while ... until i get the buffer symbol and it stops... 2 times now and those stops lasted for 30-60 seconds.   (TV lost the WiFi as well -> while starting the Youtube App, had to retry to get connection back up and running)

 

I was really looking forward to this product - but i'm already tired of all those issues.

 

 

Got an E-Mail from lvl-2 Tech-support - asking questions about my setup ... wanted to answer them - but well, "

 

Page Unavailable

Sorry, but the requested page is unavailable due to a server issue.

Our engineers are working on it, please check back later."

 

Is what i'm getting while trying to send my answer... getting comically 

This should not happen to the flagship product and shouldnt happen to their Site - but i guess thats normal - Was reflashing the latest Firmware and doing a factory reset and their Site gave me 20-40kb/s dl-speed on the latest firmware 71MB - had to wait over 25 mins for that file.

 

Really struggling with myself, I'm used to Netgear - all my previous network equipment came from them and up until now i was quite happy (except for a few things like the EX7700 repeater - which i tried to buy to give my XR500 a bit more life - sadly it lost connection and gave me "PW wrong" errors while repeating from my Xr500)

 

Model: RAX200|Nighthawk Tri-band AX12 12-Stream Wi-Fi 6 Router
Message 4 of 11
Jan_F
Tutor

Betreff: RAX200 connectivity issues

You are completely right, will send it back.

 

Today's straw broke the Camels back - wanted to Type-define a new Phone (Galaxy S10) in the App - Hit "Save" and got no response - after a few moments the whole router crashed, no Internet no connection... nothing.

 

Had to restart the thing - after the restart - i noticed a few devices wouldnt connect anymore - turns out one of the 5G bands was missing (Had split them up and deactivated Smart-Connect to get the thing working properly -> support said so anyway) 

 

This issue persisted - was not fixable over reboots / power cycling the Router - LED's were still happy blinking white (as always) and Interface / App told me that everything was fine.

 

Well im done -will send it back and a router from a differnt company.

Model: RAX200|Nighthawk Tri-band AX12 12-Stream Wi-Fi 6 Router
Message 5 of 11
JJJ-
Initiate

Re: RAX200 connectivity issues

Thanks everyone for replying .. I finally was able to get through to their Customer care team through a totally different number I got off the web. The person was very helpful and processed my return/refund right then and there. Probably the best experience I had so far but I'm glad to return this and try a different company/router. What an experience!

Model: RAX200|Nighthawk Tri-band AX12 12-Stream Wi-Fi 6 Router
Message 6 of 11
MGHA
Aspirant

Re: RAX200 connectivity issues


@JJJ- wrote:

I'm curious if anyone has had a similar experience with this router and more importantly with the customer support provided by NetGear. I purchased this router directly from Netgear a week ago. Set it up and it asked to update the firmware, which I did and completed setting up my 3 band SSID's and passwords. Some of my devices could not recognize the 5Ghz bands and defaulted to 2.4Ghz. Shortly thereafter the 5Ghz SSID's stopped being recognized all together. I called support and we went through a barrage of things to get this corrected. It worked for about an hour and started doing the same thing. I called back the next day and went through a series of troubleshooting with an advanced technical support person. It worked and I was told not to change any settings and let the router settle in. Two hours later I had no 5Ghz bands at all. I called back and did this for the next 3 days even after I asked for a replacement. I'm now on my 5th day with support and can't seem to get an RMA generated to return this defective unit. Oh and I must pay $30 if I want this new unit shipped overnight or $17 for 3-5 Business Days! When I asked for this to be escalated and a supervisor ro override the shipping charge, no one was ever available or in a meeting. Today, I called their support team 4 times trying to get this resolved. I was told a supervisor would call me back which they never did. I'm at a loss as to next steps. When I call the reps they are all sympathetic to my situation but I can't get a replacement sent at no cost to me. Is this crazy or what? This router cost over $600 and I thought I was getting the best and I have a router with just one 2.4Ghz band working. 


I have same connectivity issues.  

When I upgrade firmware, I did lose to accesses to my router with browser (192.168.1.1). And When I logon to my NETGEAR account, ask me to pay money to fix the issue!!?? I did not change my password and any configuration and I do not want buy extended warranty. Am I able to use my expensive router? I think pushing customer to pay for customer support, and disconnected them to accesses to their device is not good idea for NETGEAR company.

Please fix this issue and let me accesses to my router againe.  

Thanks

Model: RAX200|Nighthawk Tri-band AX12 12-Stream Wi-Fi 6 Router
Message 7 of 11
Amp175
Aspirant

Re: RAX200 connectivity issues

I still have issues. These updates prevent auto update. It worked great when I bought it new. It seems like if 1 device connects it wipes out the rest of the connection for other devices. It is painfully slow on the UI. Tech support is not helpful. They say unplug it and plug it back in. And it works for the day. It's now a daily routine now.
Message 8 of 11
pvhaver
Aspirant

Re: RAX200 connectivity issues

wow, well i have had a veru stressy 24 hrs.

 

I think my main issue is that the "smart connect" is far from smart and stops a lot of devices working. But then after switching back to non-smart mode  i spend half a day rebooring and back to factory settings until eventually it seems to work again. I have been in IT over 30 years and like to think i have soem experience but this was very annoying and timely. a lot of my smart home plugs stopped working. my sonor speakers stopped working and at times it would just not allow me to connect to wifi at all. Most frsurating thing is that i have no clue what the frigging thing is doing most of the time. anyway it seems to work now for an hr or so and i am gettign on with work. I like the idea of the smart-connect as i would have one ssid and the rouiter would work it out. but it seems flawed. anyone else found this? 

Model: RAX200|Nighthawk Tri-band AX12 12-Stream Wi-Fi 6 Router
Message 9 of 11
Cool41
Aspirant

Re: RAX200 connectivity issues

Ik heb zeker een paar keer in de week ook verbindingsproblemen.
Het weg vallen van het internet op de 5ghz.
Meestal komt het door ddos aanvallen.
De router is vrij Instabiel op de 5ghz , dat voor een router voor een flinke prijs.
En ik ga hem zeker niet op ap zetten(accespoint , want daar heb ik hem niet voor gekocht).
Ik hoop dat netgear dit oplost met een update , anders is dit de laatste netgear router geweest.



Message 10 of 11
gsmith1701
Aspirant

Re: RAX200 connectivity issues

Bought RAX 200 Dec 20 and it never worked. I finally got a refurbished replacement today and it doesn't work either. I've been running my whole house network..think 138 items connected on my N600 Netgear for 14 days without problems. The support is terrible and unhelpful. I'm gonna ask for a refund I think. After 10 months, I've had enough
Message 11 of 11
Top Contributors
Discussion stats
  • 10 replies
  • 3761 views
  • 10 kudos
  • 8 in conversation
Announcements

Orbi WiFi 7