Yesterday I received the GS305 1Gbps switch and placed it between the CM1000 and the R7000P. Unfortunately it did not fix this issue. This evening as suggested I downgraded the R7000P firmware to 1.3.0.20, did a hard factory reset, manually configured and examined the WAN port. It was still at 100Mbps speed. I then upgraded to firmware 1.3.1.64 and retested. Same results. To date I have swapped out all of the CAT6 cables, inserted a 1Gbps switch, performed hard factory resets and still there is nothing I can do to get the R7000P WAN port to auto-detect a 1000Mbps speed. I have taken pictures that document the results of each test. I've attached a PNG file that shows the Show Statistics screen along with the final negotiation state with and without the GS305 switch. My final conclusion is that I have a defective R7000P. Contacting Netgear support didn't do anything to resolve this issue because my hardware warranty expired 9 weeks ago. The event that led me to this discovery was my cable provider installing fiber-optic cable, which encouraged me to pay for upgrading my throughput speed. Sadly if that had happened three months earlier, I would have discovered this problem while the R7000P was still under waranty. I am left with a defective product and my only recourse is to replace this router to be able to attain throughput greater than 100Mbps.
