RAX120 Slow Wifi Speeds

[welchyboy]

Hello I am needing some help! I have the RAX120 Nighthawk router and I have having super slow wifi speeds. For the one computer that I have hard wired the speed test shows around 39-48Mbps download we pay for 50Mbps. I run a speed test straight from the nighthawk app and also have speeds close to what we are paying for. However running on a laptop or a Galaxy S10 phone the speeds can be as low as 1mb. I have lots of light switches and other devices that use wifi so I want to make sure it is performing at its best. I have read through and tried changing many of the recommended settings with no success. This morning I did a speed test on my phone and it was at 20mb which is much better than last night at 1mb. However even 20mb is more than half the speed of what we are paying for. I have the latest firmware v1.0.1.114 and like I said I have tried many things but I am open to working through the issue with whoever has experience to get this right. We stream everything and I even recently increased our internet speed from 25 to 50mb due to the slowness. But now I am thinkink it was the router the whole time. 

Please any advice would be greatly appreciated!

[Christian_R]

Hello welchyboy, 

We are currently running a beta firmware in our private beta community that may help resolve your issues. If you're interested, please send me a private message with your serial number. 

Thanks,

Christian 

[LeeH]

 I have a Gig connection that provides 940Mbps download from the internet.  The first 3 months with my router I got 900Mbps wireless using AX.  I am now getting only 600 Mbps and at least once a day the speed slows down to less than 7Mbps.  To fix the sub 7Mbps slow down I turn off Wi-Fi for a few seconds and turn it back on to get my 600 Mbps speed back.  This is happening with 3 fairly new MSI laptops and a 4 year old ASUS laptop.  Two of the MSI laptops came with a Killer AX Wi-Fi card installed.  The other two laptops were upgraded to Intel AX cards.

I paid for premium support and worked with the techs for 4 days.  They finally RMA'ed my router and sent me a brand new one.  Still have the same problem.  I contacted Killer support and the only thing they found was that the Netgear techs had changed my 5G channel to a non-DFS channel.  In order to get a 2.4 Gbps link between the router and the client you must use a DFS channel.  I was only getting a 1.2 Gbps link on a non-DFS channel but am once again getting a 2.4 Gbps link using a DFS channel.  The Netgear techs did not know this when I kept asking them about only getting a 1.2 Gbps link.

None of the actions taken have fixed the problems.  I also have tried turning off all 5G emitters except for one laptop and the router.  No fix yet and Netgear closed the case when they replaced the router.  I don't know how to get this elevated to engineering for a firmware fix (if needed).

[welchyboy]

This is just crazy! I have never had so many issues. I was able to get things working a little smoother...reset my router a few times and left everything default. Speeds seemed much better. However there was a recent update and now everyday for some reason my internet or wifi connections completely quit and I have to reboot the router in order for it to work again. Then it would work for a day without too many issues. 

[LeeH]

I have tried everything that Netgear, MSI, and Rivet Networks (Killer WiFi card) have recommended.  Here is what fixed it for me. 

After so much toubleshooting and changes made to the laptop I decided to wipe the active partions and use the recovery partion to rebuild the system.  I tried every new firmware on the router working my way back to FW 108.  It is working much better now but it still hardly ever hits 900Mbps on a speed test even though I can get 940Mbps consistently using a wired connection from the router.  I usually see 740~750Mbps wireless.  The spec on the RAX120 says maximum of 2.4Gbps link between the router and the client.  I sometimes see 2.4 with FW 108 but mostly get 1.7  when using FW 108.  I get unstable links that vary from 1.7Gbps to 960Mbps when using newer FW.  Something like this happened when the R7000 came out and I bought one right after it was released.  I hope that Netgear will continue to release new FW at least until we get a good stable high performance FW.

I think the RAX120 is a better solution than the RAX200 because I only have five 5G clients and it makes morsense to use only one 5G band router with a 5Gbe port instead of the 2.5Gbe port on the RAX200.  I have a R7900 and never needed more than a single 5G band.

[kyleh22]

I am having the same issues described in this thread. I'm on FW1.0.1.118. I thought something was wrong with my router so I returned it and replaced it with another unit. The new device has the same issues. I called netgear to figure out when new firmware would be released but they weren't able to give me a date.

I'm going to try to roll back the FW, does anyone know the most recent firmware that supports high link speeds that do not randomly drop to 1-2Mbps? 

[dammann]

Good speed with 5gh, getting my modem connection speed of 400, 2.4 getting 30. Already had the router replaced

[Topology]

Dammann, have you confirmed that WMM is enabled on the RAX120 (ADVANCED | Setup | QoS Setup | Enable WMM settings (2.4GHz))?

[dammann]

Yes, WMM is enabled for both 2.4 and 5.

[Asphyxiant]

Also running a RAX 120 w/ V1.0.1.118.

I will see the connection start w/ 2.4G connectivity, and slowly degrade to 280Mb over time.  This firmware has serious problems.

Netgear when will you be addressing this?  We need a stable firmware that offers consistent speeds.

[Asphyxiant]

After 3 router resets today, device is back in the box and going back to Best Buy. Good luck guys.

[dammann]

I'm in the same boat, on the second router, same problem. Plus I bought two AX8 extenders. They're going back to.

[Asphyxiant]

Changed over to an Asus GT-AX11000, maintaining a constant 2.4Gb connection for what its worth.

[kyleh22]

The newest FW (V1.0.1.122) did not solve the problem...This means at least another 1-3 months with this issue. The only solution I have found is toggleing wifi off than on. This is only a temp fix though unfortunately...

[NordicBastrd]

Yeah, pretty sure this router can't actually do 802.11 ax.  I've tried 5 different firmwares (and 1 RMA) and my router connects with good speeds on ax for like 30 minutes and then it'll slow down to 2-6 mbps and is basically unusable.  802.11 ac is fine basically but having paid to get better speeds on ax and not being able to use ax at all really makes this thing kind of a big waste of money.  Really really dissappointed.

[kyleh22]

Is it possible to disable AX so it doesn’t go into this limo mode? It’s extremely frustrating when the speed drops. I much rather have AC speed consistently than unreliable AX speed.

[kyleh22]

Limp* mode.

[Asphyxiant]

One thing I tried before returning it was disabling ofdma for both the 2 & 5ghz networks. If that doesn’t work, you can disable AX.

I think that’s under advanced -> wireless

[EngElem]

Spent eight hours on hold with Netgear support a few days ago without getting anywhere.

It used to take a few hours for speeds to degrade to an unuseable level, now it appears to take only minutes.

To whom at Netgear do I send my invoices for time lost due to work being corrupted due to degrading wifi speeds?

[Christian_R]

Hi EngElem, 

I can assist with support following up on your case. If you wish to be contacted, please send me a private message with your contact info and case number(s).

Thanks,

Christian 

[EngElem]

Hi Christian, we've given up on Netgear.

Arranged with our supplier to have the unit returned as defective, which it clearly is. Replacing with an ASUS wifi6 router.

Reading the above posts it looks like you will be of little assistance given you have only provided input once and that clearly was of no help.

If you can forward the details of the person we send our invoices to that would be helpful.

Cheers...

[DrowsyJungle]

Same issue happening to me. RAX120, I'm getting 900mbps upload on clients with only maybe a maxium of 100mps download via 5Ghz. Over wired connection I'm getting 960mbps. I'm not sure what's going on here. I've tried everything.

[mordekai]

Sadly, I'm not sure Netgear is going to determine what the problem is. I had to buy another router to get a stable connection back, since my RAX120 was beyond the return window before I realized how bad this would be. I've been watching for almost 7 months now and testing each firmware and all solutions I find listed in the forums even including ideas people came up with for fixing RAX80 issues. Nothing has had any impact at all on the issue of AX Wi-Fi adapters slowing down randomly between ~5 minutes and ~24 hours when connected to the RAX120, up to and including disabling AX on both the router and the adapters. The issue does not affect any of the non-AX adapters or devices I own, but affects both completely independent systems when using either of my AX200 adapters. It doesn't affect either of those devices when using a different non-AX Wi-Fi adapter.

I've spent around 40-60 hours working with this particular unit including working with Netgear tech support hoping to find the root cause. Unfortunately Netgear doesn't seem interested in determining the source of the problem. The main response is pretending that another several hours of going through level one scripts will somehow work this time, and failing that the response is dismissal as something I must have done or be doing wrong, everything from "maybe your microwave is running" to "your signal must be bad". If they had any real interest in resolving the problem, they'd have engineers, not level one support, working with me or one of the dozens plus other people with the problem, and gather detailed debug logs to be reviewed.

If any Netgear engineers actually read this forum, feel free to reach out to me directly if you want to bypass your tech support, who have been stonewalling anyone trying to get to the backend teams, and work towards an actual root-cause analysis on the issue.

[BenBoosted]

Looks like I'm in the same boat.  I'm rebooting the router 1-2x/day currently until either there's a fix or a replacement (considering going with an Amplifi Alien).

FWIW I'm on 1.0.1.122 firmware, WMM is enabled for 2.4G and 5G.

[michail71]

I've had it two days now.  It sounds similar to my problem.  I'm getting amazing results on 802.11 AX (near 900 Mbps) and on 802.11 AC I'm getting around 1 Mbps  with frequent drops. I've tried nearly every combination of settings and restarts.  After a restart I mat be able to pull 150 Mbs on 802.11 AC for a minute tops.  Using 2.4 Ghz on AC is still slugish but not as unstable. 

My Comast AP is still up and on the same system, same location,  I can get 300-600 Mbps on 802.11 AC 5GHz.