NETGEAR is aware of a growing number of phone and online scams. To learn how to stay safe click here.
R8000 QoS — I replaced the software, and the old behavior came back
I want to share something with other R8000 owners because I spent years assuming this router had simply gotten old. It hadn't. I bought my Nighthawk X6 R8000 years ago, and for roughly the first half of its life its QoS worked extremely well for my household. At some point after NETGEAR firmware updates, that behavior changed. Device priorities stopped giving me the results I remembered, and eventually I replaced the router with newer, more powerful hardware. The newer router still never behaved the way this R8000 originally did under heavy network contention. So I decided to turn the old R8000 into a development project. We preserved the hardware-specific pieces the router actually needs—bootloader, board identity, radio calibration, hardware support, etc.—but replaced the higher-level appliance software with a stripped-down Linux-based system we're calling Router Guy OS. The important part for this discussion is the traffic management. Instead of NETGEAR Dynamic QoS, Router Guy currently uses a very simple four-level priority model: Profile 1 = highest priority Profile 2 Profile 3 Profile 4 = lowest priority There are no fixed per-device bandwidth caps. The system is work-conserving: a Profile 4 device is allowed to use essentially all available bandwidth when nobody else needs it. When higher-priority traffic appears, the lower-priority traffic yields. Under the hood we're shaping the actual WAN bottleneck and using Linux traffic control with HTB/prio and fq_codel, with packet classification maintained through nftables/connection tracking so download traffic can still be assigned back to the correct device. And here is why I'm posting this: It actually works. I have tested this in my real home network, not just with synthetic benchmarks. I can put my Xbox in Profile 4 and have it download roughly 130–160 GB of game data while trying to consume essentially the entire available Internet connection. At the same time, I can have two Apple TVs running at Profile 3. I can also have my PC downloading World of Warcraft data. The televisions continue working. The Xbox continues downloading. The PC continues downloading. The lower-priority Xbox gets the bandwidth that is available, but when the higher-priority television traffic needs capacity, the TVs get serviced first. That is exactly how I remember this R8000 behaving years ago. What surprised me is that the old hardware is handling it beautifully. This has changed my opinion of the R8000. I don't think the hardware simply became obsolete. I think a lot of what people experienced over the years may have been software, QoS policy, queue management, acceleration/offload decisions, or interactions between increasingly complicated firmware features. I'm not claiming I have identified the exact NETGEAR firmware release that changed my particular router. I haven't proven that. But I *have* proven something much more interesting on my own unit: **The same old R8000 hardware can still manage a heavily contended household connection extremely well when the traffic-management software is designed correctly.** We're now taking that idea further. Router Guy's philosophy is becoming: **See what is happening. Act directly on what you see. Restart only what actually needs restarting. Verify the result.** We're working toward a one-page management console where I can see every device, current traffic, IP/reservation state, QoS priority and access state, then interact with that device directly instead of hunting through seven different router menus. This is still development software on an old piece of hardware, so I'm not posting a firmware image and telling people to flash their routers. Replacing firmware on this hardware without proper recovery preparation can absolutely leave you with a bad day. I'm posting because I think the R8000 community deserves to know this: **There is still a hell of a router hiding inside this old box.** If other longtime R8000 owners remember Dynamic QoS working significantly better earlier in the router's life, I'd genuinely like to hear what firmware era you remember and what changed for you. mber and what changed for you.X6 AC3200 R8000 as a Wi-Fi mesh extender
I've been trying to set up my Nighthawk router as a mesh extender for some time now, well ever since Frontier went from the Arris router to the eero router. Definitely no joy there. I have jumped ship from Frontier to Spectrum and am still unable to set the Nighthawk up as a mesh extender. The lack of joy continues! I have followed every bit of instruction I have been able to find to connect to the router via wired connection (laptop) and wireless connection (iPhone using the Nighthawk app and connected to the routers wi-fi signal ) and neither have worked as I continue to get the error message that the server has failed or stopped responding when accessing the following url's / web addresses. 92.168.1.250 192.168.0.1 192.168.1.1 10.0.0.1 mywifiext.com my_wifi_ext_.net In case anybody is curious or wants to ask, the entire house is pretty much a dead zone and is why I am willing to continue to use the Spectrum Wi-Fi router and set the X6 as an extender in order to be able to carry the signal throughout the house. Any assistance and suggestions on how to get the router set up as a mesh extender are greatly appreciated.R8000 380Mbs max download unless manually set Internet Bandwidth, but reverts to slow after reboot
Further to Nighthawk X6 R8000 not getting gigabit speeds | NETGEAR Communities - "https://community.netgear.com/discussions/home-wifi-routers-nighthawk/nighthawk-x6-r8000-not-getting-gigabit-speeds/1859023" . Since moving to fiber to the premises, I have 500/50 internet connection, but I can't get these speeds unless I manually: 1. enable QOS 2. disable QOS 3. "I want to define my Internet Bandwidth": <Set to your ISP's connection Download and Upload settings that you are paying for> After my router is rebooted though it seems to revert back to slow speeds. Netgear can you fix this for us please?
My r8000 will not let me put in a login name
My r8000 will not let me put in a login name. That field will not take focus. I reset the box. It took 45 seconds before the power light would flash. I input the default so there would be no confusion. I filled in the questions but on the last answer, the page would not progress, it just hung there. After a while, the page turned to checking for firmware update. After several minutes, it stated it was updated. It took me back to the page for inputting the login and password. It would not let me select questions without inputting a login and pswrd. But it would not get past the last question and then start over again with firmware update. I have tried this directly connecting to the router with Ethernet from PC and with genie on my cell. When I attempt to access the router with my cell, it states I need to go to a website to get the app. I go to that site and it says I have to go to the site to get the web app. I am only getting circles. How might I break out of this?I need to forward multiple TCP ports to a single internal port on a single host
This is an older thread, but I want to do the same thing. I need to forward multiple TCP ports to a single internal port on a single host. This router won't let me. For example: External (TCP ports 8080, 8100, 8200) -> R8000 -> Internal Host (TCP port 443). This seems like a basic router feature to me. It should also pass through the FQDN that it arrives with. The reason for this is having an NGINX Proxy Gateway that can then send the correct traffic to the correct Docker containers. Would this be possible with the Firewall instead maybe?R8000 Guest Network Needs Separated Wireless Isolation and Local Network Access
Guest Network now combined the 2 functions "Wireless Isolation" and "Local Network Access" as a single option. In the old days, they are separate options. My Chromecast does NOT work on Guest Network because it needs to see other devices. I cannot select "Let devices see each other and allow access to my local network", it will defeat the purpose of using the Guest Network. My guests cannot use the Chromecast now because of this. I need this fix very badly. I have been waiting for a long time for the fix to come, but it did not happen. Especially this is nothing new, it used to be there before. I didn't know why it was changed. I am sure I am not the only one who needed this. It just makes sense to have them separated.R8000 Firmware
Per NetGear social media, we are supposed to suggest the below idea here. My idea, as crazy as it sounds, is that Netgear continue to support their R8000 devices. I know, sounds insane but hear me out. People spent hundreds of dollars on a product featuring the "latest tri-band wifi" technology. Now instead of leaving them hanging with a big security exploit for two months, device issues and a feature release stall, Netgear should develop a new robust firmware. Ideally it would be one that wouldn't encourage them to go out and try questionable 3rd party firmwares. That means, it should be competitive (feature wise) with those 3rd parties while fixing ongoing issues highlighted in the forums. Benefits: 1. Happy customers who don't feel like they wasted money and are not stranded with a reletively up to date tech, that lacks manufacture support, features and security. 2. See #1 above. I think it deserves reiteration. Facts 1. product saw less than 18 months of firmware releases and developer support. 2. Nearly 9 months have past since the last firmware update (as of 8/31/2016). 3. June 2016: security notice suggested disabling of features due to security exploit. 4. 2 month later, June 2016 security exploit is still unpatched, leaving customers exposed. 5. There are no Nighthawk products listed on the NetGear EoL page, including the R8000. 6. The product is still available through online and big-box retailers.