Re: RBR50 Download Speeds Diminish Over Time

hughindublin · ‎2021-08-11

RBR50 w/single satellite

firmware: v2.7.3.22

Greetings!

I have been enjoying my RBR50 for sometime now and it performs quite well. My home seems to sprout new devices daily that require internet access, and my ORBI just keeps right on chugging. I particularly enjoy the iPhone app that lets me know when my son is adding devices I don't know about 🙂

I have been tracking an odd experience with the router: my download speeds seem to degrade over time. I don't mean the speed of an individual download. I mean that Monday I will get 400Mb download rating from Spectrum.net (my provider). Tuesday I'll get 300Mb. Weds I'll get 200Mb. So, over the course of a week or more, the spectrum download rating goes down and stays down. It gets as low as 40Mb.

I have run the tests on several devices (laptops, deskops, phones, iPads), and the results are the same, so I am fairly confident that the issue is not in the receiver/device.

What is surprising AND repeatable, is that the download speeds immediately rebound to the promised 400Mb when I reboot the ORBI. Then, gradually, over a few days, it will degrade again.

Another interesting observation is that the speedtest in the iPhone app always performs well; 350-400Mb all the time. I don't understand why the app does not experience what the other wireless devices do, but there it is.

This is a great router; I just would love to avoid the weekly rebooting I have to do to make sure I am getting the bandwidth I am paying for. That, and I am tired of my kids beating me up about how bad his internet is.

Any ideas are welcome!

plemans · ‎2021-08-11

"The speedtest in the Iphone app"

which app are you using? The netgear orbi app and testing in the app?
Or the actual speedtest app?

That's kind of the key.

CrimpOn · ‎2021-08-11

@hughindublin wrote:

I have been tracking an odd experience with the router: my download speeds seem to degrade over time. I don't mean the speed of an individual download. I mean that Monday I will get 400Mb download rating from Spectrum.net (my provider). Tuesday I'll get 300Mb. Weds I'll get 200Mb. So, over the course of a week or more, the spectrum download rating goes down and stays down. It gets as low as 40Mb.

I have a distinct memory of seeing posts very similar to this in the past, but cannot remember if any of them were actually resolved.

So far, my attempts to find these posts by searching the forum (upper left of the page) have not been successful. Have to remember exactly which words were in the post, but cannot.

Many consumer electronics have a setting to reboot once a week (my security cameras do. Orbi does not..)

My pathetic 200mb Spectrum feed never changes. I pay for 200mb and routinely get 230mb, day after day after day.

Hard to propose a solution when the problem cannot be reproduced.

fmalloy · ‎2021-08-12

This happened to me on my RBR20. The 40Mbit bottom speed was the same as mine (my full speed is 200Mbit) which stayed until a reboot. It might take a week for the slowdown to start, but once it does, I was stuck at 40-45Mbit until a reboot.

Here was the cause in my situation - long story, but -

I have a NETGEAR (ironically) Wi-Fi dongle that is connected to my satellite TV receiver. The dongle allows downloading the program schedule. In configuring the dongle, it showed TWO duplicate network names for 5Ghz, and TWO for 2.4GHz. I suspect that the connection was to the backhaul and not the proper network. Again, they both had the same network name. This is done thru the satellite receiver, which probably gets confused when it sees a mesh network. This is a >10 year old, old-school DISH Network receiver.

I changed to the other 5GHz network (again, duplicate name) and since then the problem has disappeared. I consider this a bug in the router.

So, for your case, I'd go thru all your Wi-Fi connected devices and try to see which one may be causing the slowdown.

hughindublin · ‎2021-08-13

This is an excellent suggestion, as I have many devices like that, including an extender in the basement. I'll have to start the lllllooooooonnnggg process of elimination.

Thank you for that idea!!

FURRYe38 · ‎2021-08-13

I would start with disabling the extender in the basement. See what happens.

What is the brand and model# of this extender?

@hughindublin wrote:

This is an excellent suggestion, as I have many devices like that, including an extender in the basement. I'll have to start the lllllooooooonnnggg process of elimination.

Thank you for that idea!!