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RS500 — Nighthawk BE12000 WiFi 7 Tri-Band Router Protection Engine Problems
Hi, Unfortunately, I'm 2 weeks past the measly 90 days of support for my RS500 - Nighthawk BE12000 router, so I'm posting here instead, trying to prompt Netgear to actually create firmware that works reliably. So, the current problem: It keeps dropping connections on both of our new iPhones, Ting sensor, Roomba, a Dell laptop, and an iPad Pro, in addition to most of our SmartHome devices at one time or another. Most of the time, it's an authentication problem, even though I know the password is correct. Unfortunately, several devices don't say the exact cause of the problem. When this happens, it's impossible to reconnect the devices to the WiFi without rebooting the router, and even then, it's still iffy. The 3 Ethernet connections being used don't seem to have a problem. We have fiber cable to the modem, and the connection between that and the router is using the cable that came with the router. Can't blame anything on the connections. Here's the information regarding my router: Hardware Version - RS500 Firmware Version - V1.0.5.12 GUI Language Version - V1.0.0.454 Protection Engine Version - 2.2.214.4/1.0.0.2124 Operation Mode - Router CPU Load - CPU1: 10.89% CPU2: 11.11% CPU3: 9.00% CPU4: 16.16% Memory Usage (Used/Total) - 633MB/2018MB Flash Usage (Used/Total) - 430MB/512MB System Uptime - 04:59:59 LAN Port - MAC Address - xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx IP Address - xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx DHCP Server - On IP Subnet Mask - 255.255.255.0 DHCP Lease Time - 24 Hours I tried turning off the 6 GHz radio, but that didn't help. Next, I changed Security from WPA2-Personal(AES) + WPA3-Personal to WPA2-Personal(AES) on both the 2.4 GHz and the 5 GHz networks. That didn't help either. In researching on the Internet, I read that a LOT of people have the exact same problems that I'm having, and the Protection Engine is the most likely culprit. I disabled it, and all of a sudden, everything is working as expected. After the first 24 hours, I re-enabled WPA2-Personal(AES) + WPA3-Personal security on both the 2.4 GHZ and 5 GHz networks. Still no problems. A day later, I re-enabled the 6 GHz network, and everything is still working OK. Therefore, using a bit of deductive reasoning, I have concluded that the Netgear Protection Engine is not working properly. I do NOT want to leave this feature disabled for security reasons and I paid for it and expect it to work, but we need to have fast, RELIABLE, WiFi available throughout our home at all times. Unfortunately, this Netgear product is NOT providing reliable WiFi connections when the Protection Engine is enabled. This is just the latest issue. Originally, when I purchased this router, it upgraded itself to firmware v.1.0.1.90. Using the web based interface, I immediately noticed that NO Devices showed up on the Devices page. After spending over 20 hours working with Netgear to find a solution, I tried downgrading to v.1.0.1.74. Netgear did absolutely NOTHING to troubleshoot this problem, and I did it all on my own. They had me try all sorts of BS things even though they could have easily duplicated the problem themselves. I told them what I found regarding the firmware downgrade, but they didn't seem to care. Netgear eventually wanted my configuration file. NOT!!! It contains information regarding our entire network including the router password. They closed the case without a resolution. So, v.1.0.1.74 is humming along just fine for a while, and then all of a sudden, the WAN uplink speed was only 100 Mbps, confirmed by my Internet provider. Not even close to acceptable!! Turns out that Netgear new about it, and already had a fix via v.1.0.5.12. I installed it, and it appeared to work fine for a while, and then all of a sudden, devices kept disconnecting and wouldn't reconnect. That's the latest issue, as described above. Can Netgear ever make a firmware version that doesn't have bugs in its basic functionality!?!?! I've never seen such a POS router before in my life!! The hardware may be good, but the firmware totally sucks! In less than 3 months, I've had 3 different firmware versions, and all 3 had a different problem that affected its usefulness. I used to use LinkSys routers, and they always just worked without any issues; ever. Why can't Netgear do the same?? So, does anyone have any useful suggestions other than hoping Netgear creates a new firmware version that accidentally fixes this problem and doesn't create a totally new problem? Maybe a version that actually works this time? Perhaps I should sell this overly priced Netgear paperweight really cheap and use the money to buy a new TP-Link router that actually works as expected! Thanks!!Did update now router keeps dropping wifi
My Nighthawk BE12000 WiFi 7 Tri-Band Router (RS500) is about only 5 months old. It had been working great not any full issues well now it has started dropping randomly and my fiber link box shows i still have internet and it reconnects and does fine after rebooting but i have to reboot it well i did a full factory reset incase something didnt download right from the last update (still currently up to date) and it is still dropping out. the version its on is Firmware Version 1.0.5.12 even trying to check on the update on my computer it just keeps failing and corrupting.Slow AX200 (WiFi 6) connection to RS500 - but with a partial solution
Thought I would share an issue I was running into with my RS500 on firmware 1.0.1.90 that caused me hours of searching trying to fix and how I was able to resolve the issue. Let me describe. My wife's computer is built around an itx board that has the WiFi from a little module attached to the motherboard (not a regular pcie slot, at least in the standard user sense). The WiFi chipset is Intel AX200 which is WiFi 6. The issue was that this wifi card was only connecting to the RS500 5 GHz channel at Wireless N (aka WiFi 4) speeds. By pulling up the Win 11 wifi info, that meant that it was theoretically capped at 300 Mbps but, by using speedtest, I was seeing real connections of something like 210 Mbps. That's just not good enough these days. I tried lots of the usual things like upgrading drivers, etc. and nothing made any difference... until I tried one tweak on the RS500. When I changed the top 5 GHz transfer speed on the RS500 from 5.8 Gbps down to 2.9 Gbps, voila! the AX200 chipset was connecting at full WiFi 6. The Win11 wifi diagnostics reports it as 817/432 (down/up) Mbps which is more what I would expect from that card. With Speedtest I'm seeing download rates in the 500+ Mbps range which is more in the ballpark of what I would expect. So it's a solution... kind of. The downside is my own desktop computer has a WiFi 7 card in it and, by making this tweak to the RS500 for my wife's computer, I'm not getting as fast of downloads as I did before the shift from 5.8 Gbps down to 2.9 Gbps. Honestly, it's probably chopping off 100-150 Mbps from my WiFi 7 download rate (was getting 750-800 Mbps before and now is more like 650 Mbps). For now, I'm ok with that sacrifice and resolving the slow connection rate for my wife's rig. I'm hoping that this is just some kind compatibility/handshaking issue between the RS500 and the Intel AX200 chipset that can be resolved by a firmware update at some point. Bottom line, AX200 with 5GHz channel set at 5.8 Gbps results in it falling back to some sort of compatibility connection at wireless N speeds. Set the RS500 to max out at 2.9 Gbps on the 5 GHz channel and the AX200 will connect at wireless AX (aka WiFi 6) speeds.
