Nighthawk Router Slow Download Speeds |WORK|
Ellyn Brener
My router is a Netgear R6080 AC1000 Dual Band WiFi Router (Link to spec sheet). It is advertising WiFi speeds up to 300+700Mbps. It has five 10/100Mbps (1 WAN and 4 LAN) Fast Ethernet ports which indicate a 100Mbps limitation over Ethernet. But shouldn't the WiFi be able to handle speeds up to 400Mbps? I am unsure if my router is throttling my connection or if I haven't set it up correctly.
That the WiFi hardware in the router is capable of up to 700Mbit/s speeds can still make sense though, you can utilize those speeds on your LAN, internally, you just cannot get Internet speeds in excess of 100Mbit/s because of the limitations on the WAN port.
Ok so I have FIOS 500/500 plan. The modem is installed in my garage. From there the main internet line is in my office connected to my netgear x6s router.Key: 500mbps = 59.6 MB/second download speedsWhen I download games I get 25-30MB/second, which seemed off. So I unplugged my netgear router and tried the default router they gave me when they installed my service. All of sudden 50-60MB/seconds on BattleNet. Unplugged and replugged both router and did the test 3 times and same result. So went to the store bought and $300 netgear router (returned it today) and same result, slow speeds. So what the heck is going on?
4) Depending on the router there can be limits on how much actual LAN -> WAN and WAN -> LAN throughput it can handle since most of this is done, on a lot of consumer routers, in CPU (maybe a low end ASIC, depends) so they might not be able to handle a large number of connections or do a lot of NATing and thus will bottleneck by the CPU the throughput. I, however, don't believe the router you have is hitting this limit and you should easily be getting your advertised speeds.
That is actually a common thing that unfortunately nobody actually reviews or makes comparative lists about, but most "gigabit" home routers that usually advertise even faster speeds on wifi actually aren't able to route traffic anywhere that fast. All they quote is the interface speed standard, but nothing about actual performance and how they can make use of those interfaces.
my setup is Nighthawk Cax80 cable modem (modem mode), Google Nest Wifi router and 2 Nest wifi access points. The Nighthawk is set to modem mode and the nest router is wired into the modem within 2 feet of each other. The 2 access points are within a rooms distance of the of the router. I pay for 400mbps per month and with a speed test of the wired router via the Google Home app, I receive 400+ mbps download consistently. However, when I test the wifi its drops to the kbps. I talked to google support and they had me restart modem, router and points and it worked briefly but it went back to very low speeds. Google support suggested I contact Comcast. Comcast sent a tech out and he said the isp is working properly, which I figured bc of the speeds to the router were more than I pay for. I want to trouble shoot my current setup to see if its possible before I start from scratch.
Details
The first thing I did was check the modem's telemetry. All the downstream channels had an SNR of 36 dB or greater! For those of you reading that don't know, noise can kill all your networking equipment if left unchecked. Of course I suspect the modem, but then I remembered the last time I had performance problems on 5 GHz, a firmware downgrade did the trick. The thing that was alarming here was, I made no changes that would've caused the slowdown, unlike last time when I upgraded the firmware. I upgraded the firmware to v1.0.7.2. No effect. In fact, sometimes I couldn't even connect to 5 GHz. I used to get kicked from 5 GHz once in a while. Usually running the Windows Network Troubleshooter would restore the connection, rarely would I have to go power cycle the router to restore the connection. This was no longer working. If I was lucky, I could connect after running the Troubleshooter several times. Although, I noticed my phone stayed connected all the time with no perceptible drop in performance before this event.
I called my ISP, suspecting the modem, and maybe they could send a signal to straighten things out. Of course, they tell me to connect straight through the modem, but the offshored agent is useless beyond that, offering to schedule a service call. (I have my own router and modem, so this would cost me). I noticed no performance degradation straight through the modem. I've used all the same cables to rule out a bad cable. I watched the SNR numbers slowly rise on each channel. Then, about 90 minutes in, the connection came crashing down hard. I couldn't even stay connected to the game server: drops every few minutes, telemetry was over 36 dB on every channel. I noticed it was really warm in the room that day, and suspected a heat problem. After I was done "stress testing," I plugged in the dust blower and blew it out.
I have an AC wireless adapter: the Asus USB AC56. Still works fine on 2.4 GHz, but that's not the point of having it. Oh, and my upload speeds have not been affected. They remain at 10 Mb or faster. I reinstalled it, but 5 GHz was still slow, if it could connect at all.
Yes, the Nighthawk mesh router was plenty fast in our lab-based top speed tests -- it actually notched the fastest close-range transfer speed that we've seen from any of the mesh routers we've tested thus far, including a few models that cost twice as much. But when I took it home to conduct my real-world speed tests, things were a lot different. At several points during my tests, where I move from room to room running speed tests from various spots around my house, my speeds would plummet, forcing me to disconnect and then reconnect in order to get my speeds back up where they should be. It wasn't an issue with my network -- it was the Nighthawk router getting confused by a non-stationary client device.
Basically, the Nighthawk mesh router is brawny enough to hit impressive top speeds, but not brainy enough to maintain a steady connection as you move throughout your home. Other mesh routers I've tested have all done a much better job of optimizing my speeds -- and other surprisingly affordable Wi-Fi 6 mesh routers are coming soon, so you've got alternatives worth waiting for. All of that makes Netgear's mesh entry to the Nighthawk brand a tough system for me to recommend.
As for specs, the Nighthawk is a dual-band AX1800 router, with the "AX" indicating that it supports Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) and the "1800" indicating the combined top speeds of the two bands. As always, combined speed ratings like those are a bit misleading since you can only connect to one band at a time. Netgear claims that the 2.4GHz band can hit speeds of up to 600 Mbps, and that the 5GHz band is capable of hitting speeds as high as 1,200 Mbps.
Expensive, triband Wi-Fi 6 mesh routers like Netgear's Orbi 6, the AmpliFi Alien and the Arris Surfboard Max Pro all averaged faster top speeds across all distances -- but at a distance of five feet (blue), the Netgear Nighthawk was actually the fastest mesh router we've tested yet.
Still, the Nighthawk router did a lot better than I expected when we ran our own lab-based top speed tests. With the router wired to a MacBook acting as a local server, we connected to the Nighthawk's network using a second laptop that supports Wi-Fi 6. Then, we downloaded files from the MacBook at various distances and measured the transfer speeds. At a distance of just five feet, our average speed rang in at 901 Mbps. That's a terrific result, and better than any other mesh router I've tested, including fancy triband mesh routers like the AmpliFi Alien, the Arris Surfboarf Max Pro, and Netgear's own Wi-Fi 6 version of the Orbi mesh system. Each of those costs more than twice as much as the Nighthawk.
But then I picked up my laptop and moved to a new spot -- the kitchen. It's a bit further from the router, but it's an open concept floorplan that connects with the living room, so there aren't any walls in the way. All the same, my speeds plummeted to well below 100 Mbps.
Needless to say, this was weird. And, when I see a weirdly slow result like that in my tests, I'll make a note of it in my spreadsheet, then reset the connection. That did the trick -- after disconnecting from the network and then reconnecting to it, my speeds were back up were they should be, just shy of 300 Mbps.
But then it happened again. And again. And again. I'd move to a new spot during my tests, and my speeds would nosedive. I alternate rounds of speed tests from the front of the house to the back, and then from the back of the house to the front -- on one of the latter rounds, where that close-range living room test is the last test in the sequence, my speed came in at 93 Mbps. That was with the router only a couple of feet away.
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