So, it seems the range is a little lacking. Using one Linksys Velop node placed in the same location would give me 5ghz and of course 2.4ghz to my outdoor camera. with the RAX80, I get zero signal. I have a 2800sq wood frame home (2 story).
Grertings, Your post is one of the first I've seen in regards to the RAX80. There's not a lot of real world feedback on these boxes yet as they just started shipping.
Have seen a couple of the famous drops issue, but is the first I have seen about range. Sure not what this is advertised as.
Camera is about 60ft from router (straight line), 1 interior wall and 1 extertior wall. 5ghz is not strong enough for a connection, 2.4ghz is off and on, no solid connection. I tried DFS channels, made good speed increase, but not range. My Samsung Smart tv's also would not connect to DFS channels, so had to stop using them.
What are the walls made of as that can be an issue. As example my interior walls are wet plaster over metal lath so going through two layers of that and outer walls brick again going through the interior wall of plaster and metal lath. They definitely effect my signal reach.
Wood and drywall for the interior. The exterior is stucco so im sure there is some metal in there, but what is Linksys velop doing to make it's signal able to penetrate?
That’s odd my home is also mostly wood/drywall interior (~2,600 sqft), with the router on the second floor I get close to full bandwidth one floor below and pretty close to that even in the basement (5Ghz) infact I even get 5Ghz signal in my driveway. It’s not much different than the R7800 in the range aspect. HT160 mode nets me a full 1,120 Mbps even one floor below when doing transfers to the connected Samsung T5 drive when doing transfers to my laptop with a 9260ac WiFi adapter.
Honestly it’s should be outperforming any mesh device by far, especially in range (comparing single unit without satellites), that inclues the Velop.
Lastly make sure it’s updated to the 1.0.1.36 firmware.
Don't forget physics. While design can make a difference, there's a physical limitation on how much range you can squeeze out. Vendors love advertising "awesome or extreme range" but in reality physics beats them every time
@avtella wrote: That’s odd my home is also mostly wood/drywall interior (~2,600 sqft), with the router on the second floor I get close to full bandwidth one floor below and pretty close to that even in the basement (5Ghz) infact I even get 5Ghz signal in my driveway. It’s not much different than the R7800 in the range aspect. HT160 mode nets me a full 1,120 Mbps even one floor below when doing transfers to the connected Samsung T5 drive when doing transfers to my laptop with a 9260ac WiFi adapter.
Honestly it’s should be outperforming any mesh device by far, especially in range (comparing single unit without satellites), that inclues the Velop.
Lastly make sure it’s updated to the 1.0.1.36 firmware.
My router is also on the second floor, but it's not possible to center it in the home. The camera is the oposite end of the router and when I stand at the corner where the camera is outside the home I get zero signal. I have used many routers and this the only one I have come across with zero signal in this area. Maybe there is outside interfearance. In that area is my smart electric meter and also the Celluar for my solar panals. But it does not seem to affect other routers. Maybe the antenna arrangement? Though with my other routers if they had external antennas I always kept them straight up.
I agree that if the Velop can do it the RAX80 should. Are you using same wireless channel? Just in case something is funky there.
I would suggest opening a case with tech support, yes a pain to do. I guess since it seems like the wireless is weak it could be a defective device.
Not sure what channels the Velop was using because I left it on Auto. The RAX80 does not seem to have auto for 5ghz.I wish it did, with a toggle to either include or exclude DFS and maybe use DFS only.
People DON'T buy any AX wifi-6 router at this time. They are all full of bugs and your the beta tester for future purchases by others. These AX's were tested and believe it or not the R7800 out preformed them. This is new tech that will take a year or two to perfect in the real world. The latest and greatest are not the greatest and not worth anything for there current price tag. You gain nothing but a major headache.
Plus looking at Netgears recent track record with faulty broken firmware i would stay far away from giving them any of your hard earned cash.
People DON'T buy any AX wifi-6 router at this time. They are all full of bugs and your the beta tester for future purchases by others. These AX's were tested and believe it or not the R7800 out preformed them. This is new tech that will take a year or two to perfect in the real world. The latest and greatest are not the greatest and not worth anything for there current price tag. You gain nothing but a major headache.
Plus looking at Netgears recent track record with faulty broken firmware i would stay far away from giving them any of your hard earned cash.
I think even non AX routers have bugs. I have yet to find a router I am 100% happy with and I have tried many. I also keep in mind it's designed to work with AX clients of which there are non. It's really just working in backwards compatibility mode at this time.
I only partially agree. There are no ax clients till the Intel AX200/201 WiFi cards release in Jan/Feb and the standard won’t be finalized till mid next year, so these are draft units, missing things like uplink direction MU-MiMO and WPA3 . So essentially it’s an ac router till next year by which time final revision WiFi 6 routers will be released anyway.
However in terms of comparing with the R7800 the RAX80 actually is giving slightly better performance on HT80 and on HT160 it outperforms it. Connecting a Samsung T5 SSD to the router I get 1120 Mbps in transfer rates to my laptop with an Intel 9260ac and that’s one floor below the router.
Additionally both storage and also VPN performance is night and day as the RAX80s chipset has proper crypto acceleration compared to the R7800.
The review you speak of by SmallNetbuilder was just a prelim not a true review. It was flawed because thiggins was getting very low speeds in his upload tests which I haven’t seen in my tests, also download tests seemed a bit off. As I said it was just a preview not his full fledged review.
I totally disagree with the part about not buying at this time. I bought mine just over a month ago on 12/18/18, and have had no problems at all. The only nitpick I would have is that I wish the top side port numbers were directly over the actual ports.
The DFS channels in the U.S. are limited to a maximum power of 250 mw vs 1 w on the non-DFS channels. Consequently, you do not want to use DFS channels for long range applications unless interference on the non-DFS channels is bad.
The DFS channels in the U.S. are limited to a maximum power of 250 mw vs 1 w on the non-DFS channels. Consequently, you do not want to use DFS channels for long range applications unless interference on the non-DFS channels is bad.
Mine stopped connecting to the internet yesterday. After the usual modem/router reboot, still nothing. Called my ISP and everything was good on their end including my CM1000 modem. Then did a factory reset and a different cat6 wire from the modem to router and still no internet. Called NG tech support as I'm still within the 90 day warranty period and tech support said she hasn't been trained on the RAX80 yet and to hold while she gets level 2 support. She came back and said no one there is trained either and someone will call me in 48 hours. Boxed it up and took it back and swapped it out for a new one. So far so good. Had it 5 weeks and it had the current firmware.
Considering I belive these routers are based on Draft 3 of wifi 6 I would wait till its been ratified and any changes in silicon made for full compatibility. Right now something like the R7800 will do just fine, and you are not futurerproofing by buying draft ax routers that have no complete and irrefutable guarantee they will be fully compatible with the final draft, which I think will be released between September and November 2019. In fact if you can wait it out with the box you have unless its dead/dies it may be a good time not to buy at all untill late 2019, early 2020. wifi 5 will still be around for a while and R7800/XR500 etc which have HT160 if you need that feature on hardware and firmware which is more mature than current draft ax routers.
Looking at the wifi 6 routers growing pains from Asus it may be a bumpy ride for a while for all makes and backwards compatabilty with wifi 5 clients right now really important, so its probably best to wait a while. Its not like an ax router will magically make your current wifi network better untill you have ax clients really. The gains to be made are small for the price and pains of operating what is really beta firmware and hardware.
Returned a Nighthawk X10 AD7200 to Best Buy yesterday for reboots. Best Buy no longer carries the 7200. they had the RAX80 which I purchased. I live in a 3000 sqft home. All my smart devices including the rings doorbells on the front and back of the home are working fine. I have noticed an uptick in download speed through Comcast. Its still early but that's my experience after 24 hrs
For me RAX80 has been a reasonably pleasant experience. Speed is great, and coverage is not worse than my other routers. VPN has been speedy and reliable. Noticed some speed degradations over time but reboot has fixed them. Not fond of the GUI and wish firmware development would have been speedier. Other than that, its been a great experience.
I need a bit of help on my RAX80 setup. I heard that HT 80 and HT160 may give better range or performance. On my 7800 you could see where you could enable Ht160. On the RAX80 I cannot find that option.
Firmware Version V1.0.1.40_1.0.22
I've turned on QoS.
2.4Ghz
Auto and 1,000 Mbps
No coexist between 20 and 40 Mhz
Security at AES only
5Ghz
Its set at Mode 1,000 Mbps and Channel auto. FOund out you cant set Auto on higher Mode settings
The setting is in the Advanced Wireless settings just like with the R7800. At the bottom section of that page.
Also note the you need to use lower numbered channels for HT160 to work. It needs contiguous channels which are only available in that channel section as non contiguous 80+80 split bonding required for HT160 in the higher numbered channels isn’t supported by many devices, ie not even the Intel 9260ac aka Killer 1550 seen in many new laptops.
Understand that unless you have client devices (phones/laptops) that support the HT160 feature it won’t really help, as the Intel card mentioned above is the only one I know in terms of laptop cards that support it. HT160 can actually lead to more interference and reduced range depending on how many nearby APs and their signal strength. Additionally it uses DFS channels so things like weather radars and other priority public/military utilities using that spectrum will cause the router to fall back to HT80 when detected. Overall I saw a ~120 MB/s (960 Mbps) transfer rate with HT160 when doing transfers between my laptop with an Intel 9260ac and my Samsung T5 SSD connected to the router vs 75-80 MB/s (640 Mbps) in HT80.
Unless you have a NAS or something that you do massive transfers to or really use gigabit ISP speeds, leave it on HT80 for greater stability. Doesn’t make much difference with phones and tablets even if those support HT160 as you would never need that much speed on those.
