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Hi Everyone, New here. I've been trying to learn as much as I can about the RAX-120 and why it keeps losing it's network connection.
I have been on the phone with Netgear support and escalated to tier 2 without luck. Here is my setup.
Spectrum Gigabit
Netgear CM1200 Modem
Netgear RAX120
On initial setup, I was getting gigabit speed on my ethernet connection and 500-600 MBs on the wifi. The router would randomly drop all connections and reboot. I had already updated the firmware and am at 1.0.1.108.
Spectrum says it is the router and after reading all of the problems.
So far I have tried the following with Netgear on the phone.
reflashing firmware
hard restart
changing channels multiple times
changing MTU size
Turning off and on QOS
Turning off and on AX mode
Turning off and on OFDMA
Using smart connect
Reflash firmware again
reset modem
So now, I am still getting gigabit ethernet, but my wifi is at 20MBs. They have no idea why.
I don't know if it is going to lose connection, but I didn't buy this router for 20BMs speed.
Level 2 tech is supposed to call me back... within 24hours.
Is it me, or is the firmware just a piece of junk? How can they not have a fix for this yet?
Should I just return it and get a different product from a different company?
For what it’s worth... after 7 phone calls, three case numbers and three times that the escalated support was supposed to call me but didn’t, on the advice of an IT friend I bought the new AMPLIFI alien router.
Can I tell you what a different experience it is. I followed the instructions and guess what? It just works. The on screen info is great. The app is simple and allowed me to do a firmware update. It connected my wireless (22 connections) at 840 MBs and my 31 Ethernet items (2 gigabit switches) without a problem. To add range I added a second one on the Ethernet backbone and now my whole yard is getting 800+ MBs.
I didn’t need to call for support. Didn’t need to reinstall firmware. Didn’t need to change radio channels and install a monitor program.
I’m done with Netgear. The router and mesh access point are getting returned. This is how it is supposed to work.
You're beta testing firmware which still has a lot of issues. This is what you get when "hurr, durr I need the latest & greatest", a product not mature enough both on HW and FW level
I guess if it was clear when I bought it that it was unstable and I was beta testing for them, I would be ok with it. But now where in their specs, advertisements and reviews did they state that this was a very unstable release.
If I buy a product and install a beta software, I know what I am getting into. I bought a complete up to date product. It should just work. And for there to be no known solution means that it shouldn’t have been released yet.
You're not wrong. But with all state-of-the-art devices (not just from NG but other brands as well) if you rush to get one, you'll most likely have issues with all of them. AX needs at least a year to mature and bugs to be squashed, and it's better to get a v2 version as current silicon doesn't support some important features (like full OFDMA for example)
Not necessarily true. I've got two Asus Wifi6 routers that both work without any of the issues the
RAX routers have. If Asus can put out not one but two rock solid routers then Netgear is incompetent at best and downright fraudulent at worst. This BS that it's new and under development and wait for v2 hasn't stopped other manufacturers from putting out a stable, working product.
I don't understand all this enthusiasm for Asus routers, which have a GUI with more options, but rt-ax88u and gt-ax11000 are full of bugs and Broadcom's AX radio chipsets have a ridiculous transmission speed already at medium distances.
At the same time you will have those that will never want Asus due to some issue, it’s a back and forth thing.
Also Asus does not have any Qualcomm chipset based routers, some of these issues need to be fixed by the chipset manufacturers, but overall Qualcomm usually ends up having a more stable and better performing platform in my experience.
Broadcom had its own major issues on both Asus/Netgear routers some of which were only recently resolved. The AX88U is a Broadcom unit, it’s had it’s fair share of issues and drops till recently.
MU-MIMO for example on Broadcom routers till the recent models regardless of Asus or Netgear would drop would perform worse than without MU enabled. Also Broadcom clients like the Galaxy S9 and others would drop to single antenna mode with MU enabled. That for example was never fixed in their AC chipsets....
Lesson here is regardless of brand wait at least till a year or so when a new WiFi spec is out or at least 6 months in general for a settled spec model for truly stable device in general, regardless of Asus, Netgear etc...
Infact Small Netbuilder which does detailed reviews found the RAX120 actually performed better and actually performed as expected for the most part unlike the Broadcom counterparts with AX in general. Also note the reason it takes time for Asus/Netgear/Linksys etc to get issues fixed is because not everyone has the same issues and certain issues come with certain scenarios/clients so they fix them as they encounter the issues which may not be seen in lab/beta testing.
While they may have issues, all router do, from experience they have a much better stable product that works while Netgear is still fumbling around trying to put out a product that maybe works or has more problems than people care to deal with.
Enthusiasm goes with the territory, you don't hear much in here do you?
Nobody is on here screaming from the rooftops that Netgear AX routers are anything to write home about, quite the contrary.
I'm sorry but I use real world experiences instead of benchmarks and not second hand advice of products I've actually used. That being said I have two routers from Asus.
One with stock firmware and one running merlin firmware. Both are solid, features work, speeds as advertised with no issues.
My point is that if Asus and a guy on the internet can both put out stable useable firmware why is Netgear after almost a year still fumbling around trying to get it right?
I was a whisker away from returning my RAX120. I was experiencing ALL of the issues everyone else was on this forum. I was very disappointed and could not believe Netgear would put out a product this flawed/defective.
Installing the latest version of the firmware (v1.0.1.108) brought stability, for several weeks now. Admittedly, my rated ISP speed is just a measly 200Mbps down, not the 1Gbps others are entitled to. But, all 31 of my devices (every type imaginable) now stay connected without any drops and the throughput is around 238Mbps on the 5GHz radio. My experience may be different if I had Gbps speeds (or even 500Mbps) from my ISP.
When upgrading the firmware, contrary to popular convention/wisdom, I did not follow up with a factory reset. I just upgraded via the iPhone app and it's been working ever since.
How is this possible? How could folks still have basic connectivity issues on the same firmware and I now have none? Are we not on the exact same hardware running the exact same firmware? Is it possible that the factory reset mechanism itself is somehow corrupting the firmware? I'm certainly NOT going to try and find out anytime soon.
Also, I'm surrounded by other homes with dozens of SSIDs broadcasting according to InSSIDer. It was miserable before. Now it's fine. Go figure.
For what it’s worth... after 7 phone calls, three case numbers and three times that the escalated support was supposed to call me but didn’t, on the advice of an IT friend I bought the new AMPLIFI alien router.
Can I tell you what a different experience it is. I followed the instructions and guess what? It just works. The on screen info is great. The app is simple and allowed me to do a firmware update. It connected my wireless (22 connections) at 840 MBs and my 31 Ethernet items (2 gigabit switches) without a problem. To add range I added a second one on the Ethernet backbone and now my whole yard is getting 800+ MBs.
I didn’t need to call for support. Didn’t need to reinstall firmware. Didn’t need to change radio channels and install a monitor program.
I’m done with Netgear. The router and mesh access point are getting returned. This is how it is supposed to work.
I have been having same issues with the random dropping of the WiFi and it is ridiculous. I paid a lot of money for a good router and this has made me so mad. Has anyone ever got a straight answer on how to fix it ?
@WhiteKnight75 wrote: Has anyone ever got a straight answer on how to fix it ?
No. Netgear probably knows but is not saying because of liability issues. If they acknowledge the problem, then there's a recall/refunds/lawsuits etc., nasty business.
I've been through the trenches with this RAX120. For me, it finally started working with the upgrade to the v.1.0.1.108 firmware. I did nothing special. This has not been the case for others. That's the puzzling part.
One speculation that I have is that there's a problem with one or more of the following...
Factory reset
Boot
Re-Boot
Firmware upgrade
Firmware downgrade
Something on the implementation side is not fully taking. My guess is that there's some magical combination of the 5 items above that fixes things. No one, to my knowledge, has found that universal magical combination. (For me, I never did a factory reset after the firmware upgrade.)
The router was up and fine for around a month before I saw some degredation in the download speed. I went from 238Mbps to around 130Mbps. (Still there were no disconnects.) I kept the same speed test site and tried several times with some delay in between each test. Still the speed was degraded. I waited a day. Still degraded. Then, via the app, I just rebooted the router and instantly my speed was back to 238Mbps, the very next test.
This could also be a resource (e.g. memory leak). This is why I only see the effects after a few weeks of operation. These leaks, embedded deep in the code, are tough to find and plug.
