RAX80 - slow speeds

Move on. If you're in the return period for a while still, you can wait and see what happens. I ended up just returning mine, I'll just hold off until the next wave of 6/6E releases by Netgear.

Like I said, every 1st gen product has issues. Go look up Netgear's R6300, plenty of issues right off the bat. Should it have been released? Of course not, but it obviously was. Problem is, everyones setup is different. This router may work fine for a lot of people, you just need to remember that the people with issues are always the vocal minority. 

I FINALLY  got someone at Netgear to give me an RMA on the RAX80-Lemon I recieved in December. THey assured me that it will not have any of the problems my ordiginal one does. (This one must really have some flaky chips in it. - Last night, the 5 Ghz channel kept going off and on again.)

Forgive me in advance if what I am about to say sounds unreasonable or uncivilised, but it is necessary to stand up for one's rights these days, even in the area of very electric and dangerous things like computer equipment.

When I make a computer hardware purchase, I know that there will inevitably be some little glitch in it somewhere. In the case of this RAX80, I didn't need to look very hard to find it; it found me. However, if it becomes necessary to turn off some major advertised functionality, (like QOS) in order to get it to operate correctly, I will insist it be fixed or they will never hear the end of it. - I will also not accept a succession of band-aid fixes from the front-line tech support people. - The number of time I was asked to change the MTU value to something else and then back to default and then something else by various Netgear techs was amazing; especially since it didn't actually work. - The most successful solution that any of the first-line techs came up with was to power the system down and back up again. (And the system will never malfunction if it is turned off.)

According to their policies, refunds or upgrades for equipment purchases are not refundable, as is the cost of the extended tech support. (The last item appears to be a policy they just instituted.)

I expect (hope) the new unit will work better than this one did. Speding $375.00 for a doorstop is not my idea of a good buy.

Wish me luck.

They are replacing mine with a one. And just in time, too.

Last night the 2 Ghz Wi-Fi throughput slowed down to 2 Mbs. I powered it down and restarted it. This time it didn't boot. I waited for about a minute and.. nothing. I powered it off for a minute and reconnected the power and it did boot up. But the 5 Ghz signal is now non-existant. This must be a chip failure, but now I'm thinking the chips are getting hammered by a bad power power supply. A bad PSU can be a very expensive problem, especially if it appears to be working correctly and is overlooked as a problem. (Unfortunately, I've been there more than once.  It is a frustrating, bummer of a problem.)

Good/bad software programming or issues stemming from hardware design are certainly important, but there is no way to make judgement on any of this if the power supply is causing everything else to sputter and misfire. - In a way, I'm glad the bad power supply showed itself.

During the relatively short periods that this RAX80 was running well, I was very impressed with it. The problem was that it wouldn't stay that way for very long. Now I know why. (At least, I hope/think I do...)

And so I am hoping to blissfully place the replacement on the shelf in my wiring closet and plug it in.  If it sits there and quietly does its job, I will be a happy camper. - I am keeping my fingers crossed.

The (non-Netgear) replacement for my RAX80 should arrive on Tuesday. However, since it is the middle of the night and no one else is using out Wi-Fi, I thought I'd attempt yet another reconfiguration of the RAX80 as a sanity check. - Note: these results still occur whether the unit is configured for this house or the factory default settings... I also turned much touted AX functionality off to see if that made a difference; it did not.

The same problems I've been commenting on in several places on the various RAX80 Community threads still occur, namely 5 GHz band not running at the advertised max speed, (4800 Mbps,) as per the on-line specifications. When set to that speed, the 5 GHz signal appears and disappears periodically on a signal scanner, but won't connect to any device in the house, including a newly purchased Intel-based AX adapter card for my Intel desktop system. I also turned much touted AX functionality off and on. but it made no difference. - Since the system was rebooted only moments ago, I haven't seen whether it goes into comatose mode, but I expect to see that bug manifest itself again after the unit has been running a while.

My sanity check also included a visit to the Netgear Store's RAX80 product web page. In there, it specifies the 4800 Mbps 5 GHz speed several times, as well as a few other niceties that don't appear to work as they should. I also scrolled down to the user reviews at the bottom and discovered that all of the reviews included there were rave reviews; which was a big factor for my decision to buy the RAX80 in the first place.

Bottom line: After using my original RAX80 and the two replacement units they sent, these problems still exist. - It should be noted that during the first 30 days after the original purchase, I created a case requesting a fix for the problems, or give me a refund. The defect saga continues. Honestly, I cannot remember when I purchased a device that was as unsatisfactory as the RAX80 has been. The reseller has agreed to take it back and refund my purchase price; I will be glad to finally be rid of it.

Been in a similar boat since late last year. I was able to get it stable for about two months in the middle, but after a power outage and the router rebooting I'm right back to somewhere between 10 minutes and 24 hours before I drop from 700Mbps throughput to ~5Mbps throughput. It only affects AX chips in my house, of which I have three. They're not all affected at the same time though, and each adapter can be disabled/enabled and function again for a time independent of any impact on the others.

For my part I can't figure out if the issue is the AX200 chip from Intel (the only AX chip I'm aware of still) or the RAX80. My understanding is that adapters based on the AX200 chip do work fine with other AX routers, just not Netgear's. I had hoped turning off/on the QOS would have made a difference, but out of several dozen attempts to fix the issue including the QOS fix, nothing has permanently fixed the issue.

In any case, if anyone does ever see this problem addressed, please update here. And if you're reading this Netgear support staff, please help your management understand that this is not a user issue, and that it is widespread. I've seen this particular issue generate negative reviews for the RAX series, and my guess is more will keep coming in until this is properly addressed.

I have the same WAN speed problem

i get 360 --= >> QOS off  >> goes to 500 mbps, than QOS ON >> goes 940 mbps > 1-2h later >> goes down to 360 MBPS!!! 

IT'S NOT MY MODEM - I get 940 ALL DAY ALL NIGHT -- direclty connecting the modem to the PC

I think netgear knows of this problem, but not many people have 1 gig conneciton, or technical enough to pin point the issue to the router.

I have 4 netgear high end routers which i purchased in 2 years for different locations.

My main house has AX8 or RAX80 - only place with 940 mbps WAN .

WAN side on NETGEAR is problamatic.

netgear FIX this or else you will lose customers and you will have bad rep, as more customer will go on GBPS internet provider.

netgear DO NOT tell me contact your useless Technical support.

I want a solution to this problem, i don't wanna spend another 500$ on a different router

This has been a problem since the beginning of the RAX80.  I bought one initially and had to return it for the same lack of speed issues.  Got another router that works great and is not Netgear. Might want to do the same.  I see that they have now introduced another model that's supposed to be even faster.  Something is worng with this Netgear picture. Get a new canvas.

Dustin_V  What do i need to do to get my router fixed replaced or refunded? 

Thank you,

Forget about being fixed - I think they would have found one by now.  Replace?  You really want to replace this with another RAX considering?  Refunded - depends where your bought it from.  Best buy refunded my entire purchase. Good luck.

Stupid me - I intailly blamed by ISP .. didn't return in within the 30 day period.

NOW --- I'm stuck with the god dam router.. I can't return to best buy

Going through this forum, there is MANY MANY router reporting the same issues WAN limited to 500 MBPS

https://community.netgear.com/t5/Nighthawk-WiFi-Routers/8500-WAN-speed-lt-500mbps-why-why-why/td-p/1004535

https://community.netgear.com/t5/Nighthawk-WiFi-Routers/R7000-Nighawk-Internet-speed-limited/td-p/1463663

Can someone at netgear wake the hell up .. 

here is example 

If you bought it at BB then you might want to try to return it by telling them the whole story and see if they would refund it.  Worth a try.  Depending on how long ago you got it might also want to check with our CC company to try.

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phoyte wrote:

If you bought it at BB then you might want to try to return it by telling them the whole story and see if they would refund it.  Worth a try.  Depending on how long ago you got it might also want to check with our CC company to try.

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I don't think best buy should not be losing money, and take back the device, there is something WRONG with the product. the manufacture needs to own up.. and find a solutions.

I purchased it in Dec 2019

I am way past 30 days, wasting to much time hoping for a solution.

Got mine at Costco, I will see if they will take this one back.  I already sent the first one back, so they should understand this product is garbage.

I finally fixed my problem :)

Final Results, I'm getting FULL 940 to 985 MBPS download (From Internet & Internal NAS Drive) - both in wired and wifi mode.

PLEASE NOTE** All my clients are wired or AC or AX devices.

Step 1 - Get the latestest firmware 

Step 2 - Turn OFF QOS

Step 3 - Turn OFF Traffic Meter

Step 4 - Turn OFF Access Control

Step 5 - Test you MTU from a wired connection > https://kb.netgear.com/19863/Ping-Test-to-determine-Optimal-MTU-Size-on-Router

Step 6 - Adjust your MTU settings >> https://kb.netgear.com/24015/How-do-I-change-the-MTU-size-on-my-Nighthawk-router

Step 7 - Use WiFI Analizer - FIND THE BEST CH for WiFI - I put AUTO for 2.4 and CH36 for 5ghz 

Step 8 - ENABLE BEAMFORMING > DISABLE MUMIMO > ENABLE AX

- So there is couple of other things i did, like use non netgear NTP server.. not sure if that even matters

Just wanted to chime in for any lurkers, this solution WORKS. The issues seem to be tied to steps 2-4. Everything was back up to about 1000/1000 after I changed these settings. 

Thank you for the solution mayeen12