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I have a WNR2000v5 wired to a Surfboard 6141 cable modem, with high speed service from Wide Open West, here in Michigan. I have the fastest service available from WOW, 110Mbps. A WOW technician was over the house earlier today, and with his equipment plugged into the modem, he was pulling 124 Mbps down. When we re-plugged the WNR back into the modem and he plugged his equipment into the WNR, he was pulling down 90 Mbps.
The problem is the wireless speeds. Its rare, but I'll see 67Mbps on my girlfriend's iPad. Most of the time, we get a max of about 33 Mbps across our devices, including iPhones, iPads, Androids and my laptop. As I type this on my laptop, WOW's speedtest page tells me I am getting approx 22Mbps to my laptop.
I need assistance. I don't know what to do in order to increase these speeds, which are unacceptable with both my girlfriend and I are trying to stream things to our devices.
No, that doesn't make a difference. The key things that the EX6100 are missing are NAT, a DHCP server and a firewall. You need NAT in order to share the one public IP address that your ISP has given you among all of your devices. You need a DHCP server in order to assign IP addresses to all of your devices. And you need a firewall to protect your devices from hackers. A router provides all of these crucial functions.
No one sells routers without at least one Ethernet port. You may not need to hard wire anything now, but in the future you may. Hard wiring is much more reliable than Wi-Fi. You should hard wire when you can and when it's convenient.
Before we even consider wireless, you are already losing bandwidth because the WNR2000v5 only has Fast Ethernet ports (100 Mbps). If you want to make full use of your 110 Mbps Internet Service, you will need to upgrade to a router with Gigabit Ethernet ports.
The problem with wireless speeds could be due to a combination of congestion and poor signal strength. Congestion can be caused by other neighboring Wi-Fi networks. Experiment with changing the Wi-Fi channel. There are tools, like Netgear's own desktop Genie program (link), or free ones like Vistumbler (link) and Acrylic Wi-Fi (link), that can help you pick the least congested channel. Poor signal strength can be caused by being too far away from the router, having too many walls in the way and disruption by cordless telephones, baby monitors and microwave ovens that operate in the same radio frequencies. Moving the router closer and eliminating troublesome radio noise makers can help improve wireless speeds.
You may also consider upgrading to a dual-band router that operates in both the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz frequencies. 5 GHz Wi-Fi is much faster and much less congested.
I have 2 other wireless broadcast options here at the home, ready to implement. The first is a Netgear EX6100. The second is a Netgear WGR614v10, which is older, and I'm pretty sure isn't dual band like the EX6100. I was doing testing Friday night before my inital post, and found that the bottom light (the link light) on the SurfBoard 6141 blinks red with the current setup, and it was blue when I installed the EX6100 instead of the original, and current router that you discussed. I'm going to take the original router out of the loop and install the EX6100 as an access point and see if that helps at all. Of course, your input here is much valued and appreciated.
I downloaded the Genie app for my iPad, but cannot find the screen where I can see the channel traffic.
I have the EX6100 configured as an access point, and am getting full speed on the 5Ghz band. I'm having some issues with 5G connections in the back bedroom, but I think that is either range or firmware related (small home, less than 1000 sq ft, and the modem is wired into the office, which is far across the home from the back bedroom). I did read a couple of posts where it was suggested to downgrade the firmware on the 6100 being a solution for the 5G connection issue, and I just 5 minutes ago did that, and I'll take the day and see how the connection reacts.
TheEther, what would you suggest I do to solve this? What products are you seeing in going through threads that are working for people?
With only a EX6100, only one device is going to have Internet access. In order for multiple devices to access the Internet, you need a router. Netgear has plenty of dual band routers. Pick one that suits your budget, the Wi-Fi capabilities of your devices or your desire for future proofing your investment and the range that it needs to operate at.
I forgot to state that every device in the home is wireless. I don't have the need to hard wire anything. Does this make a difference with my current situation, just to be clear?
No, that doesn't make a difference. The key things that the EX6100 are missing are NAT, a DHCP server and a firewall. You need NAT in order to share the one public IP address that your ISP has given you among all of your devices. You need a DHCP server in order to assign IP addresses to all of your devices. And you need a firewall to protect your devices from hackers. A router provides all of these crucial functions.
No one sells routers without at least one Ethernet port. You may not need to hard wire anything now, but in the future you may. Hard wiring is much more reliable than Wi-Fi. You should hard wire when you can and when it's convenient.
