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As a new user to the community, I thought I would offer a comment and small question related to Orbi AX4200 on a Fiber vs Cable connection. I know most people are fortunate to even have one option for Gig speed internet. We are lucky enough in my neighborhood to now have two options with AT&T Fiber coming in. You might think that once the connection is made to the modem, it’s all the same, but that’s not what I found. I have the Xfinity Xfi Gateway and got the Orbi back in April to upgrade wifi connections. Results were fantastic. 950+ Mbps down and 40+ up hardwired to the Orbi router; around 500 down and 40 up on wifi about 40 ft away and downstairs from the router (Mac mini found main router closer), and as much as 600 down and 40 up on an iMac hardwired into the Satellite in a different location. Whole house coverage never less than 150 down on iphone. All great results! Only reason I switched to fiber is #1 – half the cost (yay competition!) and #2 with increased work from home videoconferencing, I could have up to 4 users on various video calls at once. Never actually an issue but I figured the symmetrical upload would be more comfortable (since my cable is capped at 40 Mbps upload). The AT&T tech installed the Arris BGW210 and the Orbi was plug and play (thank you to all the previous comments about properly setting up pass through and different IP address pools!). Sure enough, I immediately got 950+ up and down at the router. However, as I started checking all the devices, I noticed consistently lower Wifi download speeds even though upload was symmetrical. The Mac mini downstairs now gets about 400 max up and down instead of 500 down on cable. The iMac hardwired to the satellite gets about 450-500 up and down instead of 600 down on cable. Using iphone tests, it seems the Wifi download speeds decline over distance at a faster rate when connected to Fiber. I actually still have cable for a couple days until I disconnect so this is a true apples to apples comparison - same environment, same devices, multiple tests with Speedtest app. For me, this result is fine. All of these speeds are more than enough to meet my needs but I think it is worth noting that if you don’t care about upload speeds you may want to take the difference into consideration. Especially if you have devices connected at the edge of the Orbi range, they may have been fine on cable but a 20-25% decrease in download speed could make or break the experience. Now for the question. Does anyone know why this is? Does the Orbi manage wifi connections differently when it’s given more upload bandwidth to work with? Is there a setting that could optimize for fiber vs cable? In my current set up I have disabled armor, traffic meter and access control. Maybe that’s an idea for Netgear. Symmetrical speed is awesome but maybe overkill for some people. I would gladly throttle upload at say 100 Mbps if it meant getting more download speed at long range.
The cable modem was an XFi Advanced Gateway that comes from Xfinity. Yes, the Fiber modem WiFi is turned off. I wouldn't say I have an issue with the modem fortunately since the Orbi is getting full strength at the source with no problem and I should mention WiFi speeds are equally strong right next to the router. Its just that I get slightly less download from the Arris/Fiber as I get farther away from either the main router or Satellite. At long range the gap is around 20-25% difference. There actually may not be anything wrong at all if its true that the Orbi logic is just handling things differently in an attempt to optimize both up and down speeds.
In theory, at least, there should be absolutely no difference in performance between the two configurations with the exception of the fiber setup achieving better upload speeds.
Are you on the same firmware on the Orbi system that you were on when they were connected to the Xfinity gateway? There have been recent updates, so a change in the firmware could explain the differences.
Also, do you know what your CTS/RTS thresholds are set at? They should be at the high end, which if I recall correctly is 2347.
