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MK63 has less speed than XR500 and drops devices
I have a 3700sqft home that I wanted to cure some dead spots.
I've been running the XR500 since it very first came out, and although I'm not a fan of DumaOS, it provided pretty good area coverage, just not quite enough.
I have TDS cable at 1Gbps/20Mbps and consistently get real close to rated speeds for any devices that are plugged in, and over 700mbps wireless to most devices that are in good range.
I just purchased the Netgear Mesh AX1800 MK63 3-piece system with the router and 2 satellites, set it all up in hopes of ditching the XR500 and covering the dead spots better, but I have found that I consistently get between 300 and 400 mpbs less FROM THE SAME WIRELESS DEVICES, and it drops devices randomly.
MK63is running firmware V1.0.6.110_2.0.49
I have unplugged the XR500 and ensured that the MK63 is broadcasting on the least congested frequencies. In fact, I've gone through and checked every setting via the webUI as well as the Nighthawk app, and everything is set up exactly as it was on the XR500, but the XR500 consistently puts out significantly higher speeds than my new Mesh even when I'm right next to the MR60 router or the satellites, and by higher speeds, I'm talking about 300-400mbps higher.
Plus, to add to all of this, the MK63 drops connections to various devices randomly. Cameras, laptops, phones, tvs, anything that's connected to it wirelessly will cycle off and on every once in a while, whereas the XR500 never dropped a connection.
Why? There are no new connections, no new devices, everything is literally exactly as it was with the XR500.
My hope was to retire the XR500 (mostly due to my dislike of DumaOS and how unresponsive it is) and use a pfsense build I purpose built for this, and use the Mesh for the access points. So far, I've not set up pfsense nor hooked anything to that unit yet, I wanted to test the Mesh and it's coverage first and that's when I discovered the speed anomaly and the devices drops. There's no way I'm going to allow speeds of ~300mpbs LESS, let alone the wireless devices dropping signal.
What are my options? What do you think is going on?
Psychlone wrote:
Thank you for this info plemans
This is info I failed to take into account. I didn't even realize the throughput was so different between them.
So you mention using the mesh as access points for the XR500, does that mean setting the MR60 in access point mode? ---yes, you'd use the mk62's in access piont mode. Because I'm not clear on how this works.
I do understand the concept where the XR500 would act as the router and the mesh would just be additional access points for it, but where can I read how to set that up properly?----the manual goes over how to setup access point mode on the mk 62 system.
And, is there any advantage to doing it this way over using pfsense as the router, and having the XR500 AND the MR60 as AP's?---see bottom
Just trying to decide if I want to box it all back up or try to use it to compliment the system I have or the system I can build around pfsense.---I've heard great things about using pfsense but I've never personally used it so can't attest to how well it compares to an XR500
Thanks again.You could use the pfsense as the router with the xr500 and the mk62 systems as access points. Its possible. The only downfall is half the reason for the XR500 is its gaming features aka reduced ping times and ability to choose game server locations. If you don't use those aspects, then you're not out anything to use the xr500 as an access point.
4 Replies
Problem is you're not comparing apples to apples.
The XR500 is an AC2600 device. (800mbps link in 2.4ghz and 1733mbps in ac using a 4x4 antenna setup)
The MK system is a AX1800. (600mbps in 2.4ghz and 1200mbps in 5ghz AX using a 2x2 antenna setup).
Problem is, the AC system is higher speed, better antenna configuration, and probably a better cpu. If the device you're testing with aren't AX, the won't connect at the ax link rates. So the AX system's link rates be even lower.
Plus its a base model dual band mesh system. Meaning it has to share bandwidth to supply the mesh nodes. Versus the XR500 doesn't.
And the XR500 is a great AC router. Basically a top end AC router versus a base model mesh system.
If you want a faster system than the XR500, you'd need to move to something like the triband orbi AX system. But even that might be close because it'd need AX devices to connect with to hit max speeds.
Or you can go with the XR500 as the primary router and use the MK system as a wireless access points to add to coverage on the peripheral.
- Thank you for this info plemans
This is info I failed to take into account. I didn't even realize the throughput was so different between them.
So you mention using the mesh as access points for the XR500, does that mean setting the MR60 in access point mode? Because I'm not clear on how this works.
I do understand the concept where the XR500 would act as the router and the mesh would just be additional access points for it, but where can I read how to set that up properly?
And, is there any advantage to doing it this way over using pfsense as the router, and having the XR500 AND the MR60 as AP's?
Just trying to decide if I want to box it all back up or try to use it to compliment the system I have or the system I can build around pfsense.
Thanks again.
Psychlone wrote:
Thank you for this info plemans
This is info I failed to take into account. I didn't even realize the throughput was so different between them.
So you mention using the mesh as access points for the XR500, does that mean setting the MR60 in access point mode? ---yes, you'd use the mk62's in access piont mode. Because I'm not clear on how this works.
I do understand the concept where the XR500 would act as the router and the mesh would just be additional access points for it, but where can I read how to set that up properly?----the manual goes over how to setup access point mode on the mk 62 system.
And, is there any advantage to doing it this way over using pfsense as the router, and having the XR500 AND the MR60 as AP's?---see bottom
Just trying to decide if I want to box it all back up or try to use it to compliment the system I have or the system I can build around pfsense.---I've heard great things about using pfsense but I've never personally used it so can't attest to how well it compares to an XR500
Thanks again.You could use the pfsense as the router with the xr500 and the mk62 systems as access points. Its possible. The only downfall is half the reason for the XR500 is its gaming features aka reduced ping times and ability to choose game server locations. If you don't use those aspects, then you're not out anything to use the xr500 as an access point.