RAX200 Homekit issues

[eastern_bloc_gu]

RAX 120 Homekit issues

Hi All,

I changed from an Orbi RAC50 to a Nighthawk RAX200 router to upgrade my home network and since the upgrade I contantly have issues with my Homekit smart devices. I have a big selection of devices homepod, appletv, LIFX light, IKEA tradfry, Tado, Velux and unfortunately the whole Smart home experience with the RAX200 is very bad. Everything worked OK on the Orbi, but with the RAX...

I have the wifi smart connect enabled so I have one single SSID for the 3 Wifi frequencies (5g, 5g 2nd, 2,4G). UPnP is enabled, the Advertisement Period(in minutes) is 1 minute, and the Advertisement Time to Live (in hops) 255, also played around with the placement of the router and the smart hubs. The advertisement period and time settings did improve the situation, but in general I still get loads of issues.

The list of issues:

• The devices in the Homekit app are unavailable at random times
• When devices unavailable cant control them, they dont respond
• Cant control devices with the Homepod/Siri, siri keeps on saying the devices dont respond
• Sometimes the Homepods have connection issues, wont play songs, they dont appear between airplay devices
• Homepods paired in stereo mode stop working in stereo
• Homepod controls are unavailable in the homekit app
• and so on, the list doesnt stop here...

The whole experience is very frustrating. A well working system stopped working due to a router change, needed quicker internet, but in exchange the homekit stopped working. Super frustrating to hear from Siri, "I cant reach some of your devices" or "Some of your devices didnt respond". There was never an issue with the Orbi, but the nighthawk is a nightmare.

I also disabled the Airtime Fairness, tried to enable disable all these Beamforming and MI-MO options, nothing helped. I think simply there is an issue with the RAX FW when dealing with the multiple Wifi frequencies as one. The communication between the different frequencies is simply not well implemented. This worked zero issue with the Orbi. Disabling the Wifi Smart connect is not an option since then I wont be able the control a device connceted to the 2.4Ghz network with a device on the 5Ghz network.

Does anybody have similar issues? Maybe somebody came up with some special setting that worked?

@netgear can we expect a FW update which will solve these probelms?

Cheers!

[eastern_bloc_gu]

Hi All,

I changed from an Orbi RAC50 to a Nighthawk RAX200 router to upgrade my home network and since the upgrade I contantly have issues with my Homekit smart devices. I have a big selection of devices homepod, appletv, LIFX light, IKEA tradfry, Tado, Velux and unfortunately the whole Smart home experience with the RAX200 is very bad. Everything worked OK on the Orbi, but with the RAX...

I have the wifi smart connect enabled so I have one single SSID for the 3 Wifi frequencies (5g, 5g 2nd, 2,4G). UPnP is enabled, the Advertisement Period(in minutes) is 1 minute, and the Advertisement Time to Live (in hops) 255, also played around with the placement of the router and the smart hubs. The advertisement period and time settings did improve the situation, but in general I still get loads of issues.

The list of issues:

• The devices in the Homekit app are unavailable at random times
• When devices unavailable cant control them, they dont respond
• Cant control devices with the Homepod/Siri, siri keeps on saying the devices dont respond
• Sometimes the Homepods have connection issues, wont play songs, they dont appear between airplay devices
• Homepods paired in stereo mode stop working in stereo
• Homepod controls are unavailable in the homekit app
• and so on, the list doesnt stop here...

The whole experience is very frustrating. A well working system stopped working due to a router change, needed quicker internet, but in exchange the homekit stopped working. Super frustrating to hear from Siri, "I cant reach some of your devices" or "Some of your devices didnt respond". There was never an issue with the Orbi, but the nighthawk is a nightmare.

I also disabled the Airtime Fairness, tried to enable disable all these Beamforming and MI-MO options, nothing helped. I think simply there is an issue with the RAX FW when dealing with the multiple Wifi frequencies as one. The communication between the different frequencies is simply not well implemented. This worked zero issue with the Orbi. Disabling the Wifi Smart connect is not an option since then I wont be able the control a device connceted to the 2.4Ghz network with a device on the 5Ghz network.

Does anybody have similar issues? Maybe somebody came up with some special setting that worked?

@netgear can we expect a FW update which will solve these probelms?

Cheers!

[Christian_R]

Hello eastern_bloc_gu,

If you recently purchased the device I would recommend contacting our support team as newly purchased devices are provided with 90 days of complimentary support. You may open a ticket by registering your device using the link below. 

https://www.netgear.com/support/contact.aspx

Christian 

[Nansen]

Had this issue before for previous FW, talked to support and they told me to disable smartconnect.

After the 1.0.4 FW update recently, the issue started again. enable/disable smartconnect won't help anymore. I'll switch to other brand for my next wifi 6E router. 

[eastern_bloc_gu]

I gave up on this router. I tried loads of things to get it work, but all those unresponsive Homekit devices drove me nuts. I decided not to hold on to it based on a vague promise that this might be fixed in a future FW release. When in 3 months or 2 years? So got myself an Asus RT-AX89X,where everything worked out of the box no problem.

[Nansen]

Too late for me 😞 rolled back to previous FW and it’s working without smart connect. glad to hear that Asus works. Will go Asus for next upgrade