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the wifi connection for my macbook pro (2016) is too slow, slower than my iphone 6

pantasma
Aspirant

the wifi connection for my macbook pro (2016) is too slow, slower than my iphone 6

Hi, 

 

I replaced airport express with nighthawk x8. The wifi speed of my macbook pro dropped off significantly. The innate download speed from modem is around 100mbps, now I am getting less than 10mbps with my laptop vs My iphone 6 is getting 50mbps download speed. 

It appears that netgear is not most compatible with apple products. If someone had experienced the same issues before, I will appreciate any tips. 

 

Thanks 

Model: R8500|Nighthawk X8 Tri-Band AC5300 WiFi Router
Message 1 of 19

Accepted Solutions
pantasma
Aspirant

Re: the wifi connection for my macbook pro (2016) is too slow, slower than my iphone 6

My issue was actually all my apple products (iphone and macbook pro) were slow. I finally contacted Netgear support and the staff was great help. 

I am posting the method here to help others who encountered the same issue. 

 

I changed the numbers of channels to 48 for 5GHz-1 and 157 for 5GHz-2 and also changed MTU size to 1492. 

 

everyhing is working as it should now. cannot be happier. 

 

I acknowledge Kyna L. who provided tremendous help to resolve this issue. 

 

Thank you.

 

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Message 3 of 19

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pantasma
Aspirant

Re: the wifi connection for my macbook pro (2016) is too slow, slower than my iphone 6

Can I ask why? as far as the specs go, R8500 should be better than R7800? No particular reason for R8500, but I need to pay extra for shipping to return it. 

 

 

 

Message 2 of 19
pantasma
Aspirant

Re: the wifi connection for my macbook pro (2016) is too slow, slower than my iphone 6

My issue was actually all my apple products (iphone and macbook pro) were slow. I finally contacted Netgear support and the staff was great help. 

I am posting the method here to help others who encountered the same issue. 

 

I changed the numbers of channels to 48 for 5GHz-1 and 157 for 5GHz-2 and also changed MTU size to 1492. 

 

everyhing is working as it should now. cannot be happier. 

 

I acknowledge Kyna L. who provided tremendous help to resolve this issue. 

 

Thank you.

 

Message 3 of 19
xnsys
Luminary

Re: the wifi connection for my macbook pro (2016) is too slow, slower than my iphone 6


@Case850 wrote:

Look at the forums, the R7800 is the most reliable of all the Nighthawk routers. It is more mainstream and hence better supported.

 

Be careful when you read Router Wi-Fi specifications, look at the QAM support your devices need to achieve those speeds.

 

https://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wireless/wireless-reviews/32958-netgear-r7800-nighthawk-x4s-smart-wi...

 

 

 


 Will you stop bradcasting your crap about the R7800 being superior than everything else - just because you're in love with it and KY it all the time doesn't mean it's the right one for everybody else - it has it's flaws like all other NetGear products - and unlike you I can say from experience not just from what I want to believe - I guess love truely is blind...

 

 

Unfortunatley, the fix you have is a get out of jail free card for NetGear...

 

Netgear know the real fix, and have known the fix for months but are useless and haven't applied it yet.

 

See this...

 

https://community.netgear.com/t5/Nighthawk-WiFi-Routers/R9000-Firmware-V1-0-4-2-wifi-dropouts/m-p/15...

 

The issue is that because the routers are not broadcasting the correct country code, apple (and some Dell, HP and IBM) devices will switch the card to the lowest regulations as not to breach FCC guidelines  - so if you are in the US and using channels 147+ - you will only be connecting at GB (for example) performance which is 10% of what's allowed in the US.

 

Adding the country code lines ensures that the EUC device knows the correct signal strength level to communicate back to the router.

Message 4 of 19
pantasma
Aspirant

Re: the wifi connection for my macbook pro (2016) is too slow, slower than my iphone 6

Thank you so much. You are awesome. I figured that other apple devices connected to channel 157 are very slow while the other channel is working well. I am not familiar with command lines. Would you mind teaching me how to add country code in firmware? And what is country code for US?

Thank you so much again. By the way, the netgear staff was useless this time. She just told me that the router is defective and need to be returned. Well, it can be true though.
Model: R8500|Nighthawk X8 Tri-Band AC5300 WiFi Router
Message 5 of 19
xnsys
Luminary

Re: the wifi connection for my macbook pro (2016) is too slow, slower than my iphone 6

Netgear are absolutely usless beyond belief - they have so many half-baked products it's unreal.

 

 

You have two choices, you can either install the CountryIE firmware that's kicking about (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Kgp2rb15uWKaJqtxBmHJPypdJ3fQNuBR/view?usp=sharing) and that will do it for you or...

 

What you will need to do is ensure you are running the 10.4.2 firmware at least - I've not tested it with previous but this one seems to work.

 

Go to the router debug page (http://routerlogin.net/debug.htm) and enable telnet.

 

Then you will need to telnet to the router IP address and login using the admin password and then issue the commands (set for US)

 

/bin/config set qca_wireless_region=us

/bin/config set wl_endis_country_ie=1

/bin/config set wla_endis_country_ie=1

/bin/config commit

 

You can thank Voxel for his help in all this, the guy knows more about these products than the whole of Netgear...

Message 6 of 19
pantasma
Aspirant

Re: the wifi connection for my macbook pro (2016) is too slow, slower than my iphone 6

I think there was a misunderstanding. my router is R8500 not R9000. Can i still use the firmware that you shared?

i tried to use telnet anf succeeded to connect to router. but the command seems different. especially there was no "commit" command. is it possibble that my router is using different language from R9000? the name of the program shown was busybox v1.7.2. 

 

I will appreciate your guidance. 

 

Thank you. 

Message 7 of 19
pantasma
Aspirant

Re: the wifi connection for my macbook pro (2016) is too slow, slower than my iphone 6

I have not resolved the issue yet. However, @xnsys is right about the apple products having channel number issue as only 5Ghz-2 band has this trouble. it is just that i do not know how to use telenet properly. 

 

 

Message 8 of 19
xnsys
Luminary

Re: the wifi connection for my macbook pro (2016) is too slow, slower than my iphone 6


@Case850 wrote:

@pantasma

So the solution did not come form @xnsys and his rant about the country code?

 

Good to see you have a working solution, all the best.

 

 


Yes, the solution is to use globally similar channels, as in where EU and the US have the same signal strength allowed...Not really a working solution more of a fudge to get netgear out of trouble - temporarily.

 

If you re-read the thread you'll see - oh and for the record the R7800, your belovid, has exactly the same issues when in the US, but you're not so you wouldn't know.

 

The real issues is that channels which are allowed in the US are performing to EU requirements, which is the lowest denominator and therefore slow as a result, that is until you have the device broadcaase 802.11d.

Message 9 of 19
xnsys
Luminary

Re: the wifi connection for my macbook pro (2016) is too slow, slower than my iphone 6


@pantasma wrote:

I think there was a misunderstanding. my router is R8500 not R9000. Can i still use the firmware that you shared?

i tried to use telnet anf succeeded to connect to router. but the command seems different. especially there was no "commit" command. is it possibble that my router is using different language from R9000? the name of the program shown was busybox v1.7.2. 

 

I will appreciate your guidance. 

 

Thank you. 


That's my fault - I for some reason assumed incorrectly that you had a R9000 - I've not looked aft the R8500.

 

if you run "/bin/config/". What commands do you have available?

 

And if you do a /bin/config show" does it come back with loads of list.of.function=vaule?

Message 10 of 19
pantasma
Aspirant

Re: the wifi connection for my macbook pro (2016) is too slow, slower than my iphone 6

If I run"/bin/config/" or "/bin/config show", it gives me "-sh: /bin/config: not found".

 

I attached the pic of error msgs and available commands to this thread. 

 

Thank you.

 

 

 

Message 11 of 19
xnsys
Luminary

Re: the wifi connection for my macbook pro (2016) is too slow, slower than my iphone 6

Let me see if I can do some digging the R8500 is one that I don't have here to test at the moment - but will see if I can get the supplier to provide a demonstration one next week.

Message 12 of 19
xnsys
Luminary

Re: the wifi connection for my macbook pro (2016) is too slow, slower than my iphone 6


@xnsys

For the record, Netgear don't sell the R7800 in AUS, the modem-router I had was the D7800. I have indicated this before but it does not seem to register with you.


So why do you keep advising people to go with the R7800 when you have had no personal experience of it? 

 

When I give advice on here is not guess work but based on personal experiences as to help others - by guess work you could be leading people in the wrong direction - which you quite often do with the recommendation of another declasse product, namely the R7800.

 

There are people in life that will try to help others by giving information that they can validate, and then there are the bull'ers - don't be the latter.

 

And if you read reply number 5 - it's quite obvious what the solution is, the OP has changed the channels to one that is universally the same signal strength, namely channel 48.

 

Message 13 of 19
pantasma
Aspirant

Re: the wifi connection for my macbook pro (2016) is too slow, slower than my iphone 6

I apologize for the confusion. It was my fault. When I changed the setting as the staff suggested, it seemed to work initially. So I posted the method in this thread and selected as the solution. However, later I found that iphones of my wife and in-laws are getting slow speed. So I contacted Netgear support again for help. They suggested to flush the firmware and downgrade it. I followed the instruction, but had no luck. Then, the staff told me that the router is defective and needs to be returned to the seller. At that time, I read the thread about the channel issue from @xnsys and see what band was used for the slow apple devices and figured that all slow devices were connected to 5Ghz-2 using a channel number higher than 147. Once I close the band, and make all devices connected to 5Ghz-1 with channel number 48, all devices were having good speed. 

 

I hope it clarifies the situation. I am sorry again for the confusion about this thread. 

Message 14 of 19
pantasma
Aspirant

Re: the wifi connection for my macbook pro (2016) is too slow, slower than my iphone 6

Thank you so much for your hard work and effort to help people like me. As I indicated, I ended up diable 5Ghz-2 band as it seems to cause trouble. But absolutely, I want to use smart connection function if I could. Otherwise, it was such a waste ot purchase a triple-band router. I will appreciate any tips or advice to fix this issue. 

 

Thank you. 

 

Message 15 of 19
xnsys
Luminary

Re: the wifi connection for my macbook pro (2016) is too slow, slower than my iphone 6

It's annoying to me that they haven't added the 802.11d to all of their routers - as this fixes this poor performance issue that we all experience.

 

When it's there, the routers work wonderfully - just look at the stats below for example..

 

Screen Shot 2018-06-30 at 9.13.48 AM.png

 

And the best bit....I'm about 15m away from the router and get that level of performance.

 

Copying a file from a NAS is great too - goes between 80MB and 101MB...at 15m away - can't argue with that...

 

Screen Shot 2018-06-30 at 9.20.55 AM.png

 

There is no reason that the R8500 shouldn't be able to perform like this once the proper due diligence has been done and the engineers have done things properly.

Message 16 of 19
pantasma
Aspirant

Re: the wifi connection for my macbook pro (2016) is too slow, slower than my iphone 6

I have been trying to "un-tick" the solution, but nothing seems to work. Can you tell me how?

 

 

 

Message 17 of 19
xnsys
Luminary

Re: the wifi connection for my macbook pro (2016) is too slow, slower than my iphone 6


@Case850 wrote:


Read Message 2 & 4

 

Given your problem is not solved, I would suggest you get it un-ticked to stop any confusion.


Once again you are recommending the R7800, a device that you haven't actually tested so cannot personally say if it does have the same issues or not...

 

BUT I CAN - and going by experience and having one here to test I can safely say that it is NO DIFFERENT to the R9000 or the R8000 - I just used the R9000 more as it was given to us and it found it's way to my home for further testing and a bit of fun, where the others were returned to the supplier.

 

The R7800 has the same issues with the 5GHz-2 band - so what you're actually advising will not fix any issues, but cause people to spend more money on a product that will give them identical issues...very sensible...

 

May I make a suggestion that you start offering advise that is not hear-say, but on actual facts and not an article that is years old, things have changed a lot since that was written.

Message 18 of 19
pantasma
Aspirant

Re: the wifi connection for my macbook pro (2016) is too slow, slower than my iphone 6

I just decided to continue using the router as I do not think it is defective hardware. I guess it is more related to firmware, which will not be resolved by replacing the device. I am just using 1 band of 5Ghz with channel number 48 and closed off the others. it handles all connected deviced fine so far. I am hoping that @xnsys or someone else will find a solution soon. 😉

 

Thank you, and I appreciate your suggestions. 

 

 

 

Message 19 of 19
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