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So I use my Mac's Wireless Diagnostics WiFi scanner tool to find the best 2.4G and 5G wifi channles to use, then enter my two selected channels into the Wireless Settings page of the Netgear Orbi web console. When I apply the changes, I get the following scary message:
"Per Wi-Fi Alliance guidelines for 40 Mhz and 20 Mhz coexistence, even if you select 'Up to 400Mbps' mode, your product’s service rate might drop to 20 Mhz. This typically corresponds to 192 Mbps performance."
I have no idea what this means or what it is attempting to convey. Does anyone know? Nothing mentioned on the forums and nothing shows up when I google it. It says the same thing no matter what channels I use, as soon as I hit Apply. Does this mean setting specific (least 'chatty') channles may worsen my wifi speed?
hi , the 2.4 gig wifi world is saturated with users and so as to ensure that this doesnt continue to happen the wifi alliance set a rule that forces the 2.4 gig down to 20mhz in areas where the 2.4 gig is congested and to avoid further congestion , its also called neighbor friendly wifi
so if you disable this setting and force it to run at 40mhz you are just being rude to your neighbors and pretty much giving them the bird
so you can be nice and leave it enabled and everyone will get a bit of bandwidth without too much congestion or you can be a prick and disable it and say screw you to your neighbors
thats your choice
your older 2.4 gig devices will work regardless of if its running at 20mhz or 40mhz
here is a link to help you understand why its there and what it does
So apparently, on the Advanced Wireless Settings page, there is an option called "Enable 20/40 MHz Coexistence". And the help info at the bottom says:
"Enable 20/40 MHz Coexistence - Disabling this option allows your 2.4GHz wireless to stay in supporting the max speed. Enabling this option may reduce the max speed of your 2.4GHz wireless to the half when there is another wireless network detected in your environment; this is to avoid inteference between wireless networks and to get along with other wireless networks in the environment."
Great. Of course I have some older devices that support only 2.4G, so I guess that means I need to leave this option enabled for them to work, but it will also cripple its max speed. Kinda sucks. That's the whole reason I'm selecting specific channels...to "avoid interference".
I wan't both my 2.4G and 5G Orbi radios active AND running at max speed. What do others recommend for this setting?
hi , the 2.4 gig wifi world is saturated with users and so as to ensure that this doesnt continue to happen the wifi alliance set a rule that forces the 2.4 gig down to 20mhz in areas where the 2.4 gig is congested and to avoid further congestion , its also called neighbor friendly wifi
so if you disable this setting and force it to run at 40mhz you are just being rude to your neighbors and pretty much giving them the bird
so you can be nice and leave it enabled and everyone will get a bit of bandwidth without too much congestion or you can be a prick and disable it and say screw you to your neighbors
thats your choice
your older 2.4 gig devices will work regardless of if its running at 20mhz or 40mhz
here is a link to help you understand why its there and what it does
Would be nice if we could adjust radio power and turn off unwanted radio altogether used to be able to it got removed last Firmware. Now like a selfish neighbor blasting away radio signals in all directions at full strength and nothing I can do about it anymore more. I have zero use for 2.4GHz but can't adjust power nor turn it off...brilliant design wifi for the future!!
Thanks for the info. With that, and a bit more research, I was able to understand better why the feature exits to drop to a 20MHz wide signal from the legacy 40MHz one, whenever other broadcasters in that range exist.
However, it must be said that the popup message is quite confusingly written. And it also seems to be misplaced--it would make more sense to appeared in the other settings area which actually has the enable/disable option, NOT the channel selection page. Also, this message pops up whenever you "Apply" ANY change on that page, even if it is totally unrelated to the 20/40 frequency thing.
I left the defaut setting on, which unfortunately means (in my congested suburban neighborhood) I will never see even half of the Orbi-advertized maximum of 400Mbs for the 2.4G spectrum, as there will always be interference from others around me. And... apparently there are a lot of "pricks" in my neighborhood using 40MHz wide bonded channels for their printers and older wifi routers, not to mention some schlub who has one of their devices broadcasting on channel 8 and bleeding across everyone else's bands and causing worse interference.
the simple answer is to move or buy new devices that have 5 gig , and just leave things that dont have any demand on 2.4 gig , eg i have my wemo light switches on 2.4 gig as thats all they have and they dont use a lot of bandwidth at all , same with my wifi printer , everything else here has been ether updated to 5 gig or replaced with 5 gig devices
Ideally, yes. And most of my important wifi devices do run at 5G (or are at least capable of it). However, since I have kids, they still have devices such as Nintendo DS that know nothing about 5G speeds, etc. So I need to leave it enabled for the odd times they want to fire those devices up.
Here's a good question:
Why doesn't the Netgear console report what SPEED each of the connected devices are using?
Clearly, the router knows this information, since it negotiated the connection for each wifi device. This would be a fantastic bit of troubleshooting information, yet its not available in either the basic or advanced Devices sections of the admin console. And since Orbi uses a single SSID (which is great) it also obscurs what speed each of the devices are using. Previously, we knew the connected speed for each device implicitly by its associated SSID, which was always associated with a specific frequency. That's all changed/hidden now. But if I could confirm that ALL my current wifi devices were operating at 5G speeds, I might feel more comfortable disabling the 2.4G speed completely until and if it is actually needed. But at this point, I have no idea if my Orbi is spreading all my devices across both its 2.4G and 5G radios to maximize parallel throughput or not. It's a black box right now.
hi , the 2.4 gig wifi world is saturated with users and so as to ensure that this doesnt continue to happen the wifi alliance set a rule that forces the 2.4 gig down to 20mhz in areas where the 2.4 gig is congested and to avoid further congestion , its also called neighbor friendly wifi
so if you disable this setting and force it to run at 40mhz you are just being rude to your neighbors and pretty much giving them the bird
so you can be nice and leave it enabled and everyone will get a bit of bandwidth without too much congestion or you can be a **bleep** and disable it and say screw you to your neighbors
thats your choice
your older 2.4 gig devices will work regardless of if its running at 20mhz or 40mhz
here is a link to help you understand why its there and what it does
There should be an faq section with explanations about the effects of various settings with the same level of clarity as the one above. Many settings are left up to the user to 'play with' and according to Darren many of them could solve problems some users are having. An explanation of the options on the debug page is also needed. Details about how the backhaul orks would also be helpful and help the users more intelligently troubleshoot their systems.
Can someone explain what this means in laymans terms? Also, some of my devices do not support 5G but I want the ones that do support it to use it obviously, but when I set my laptop and iPhone to use 5G my netgear apps no longer show the devices on the 2G network and I lose wifi access to the printers that use 2G. Is there a fix for this?
What model system do you have and FW are you using?
@INTOTHEWILDwrote: Can someone explain what this means in laymans terms? Also, some of my devices do not support 5G but I want the ones that do support it to use it obviously, but when I set my laptop and iPhone to use 5G my netgear apps no longer show the devices on the 2G network and I lose wifi access to the printers that use 2G. Is there a fix for this?
