Netgear router as access point has marginal bandwidth

[fullboogie]

I've got AT&T fiber to my house which gives me approximately 500mb up/down when checked through a wireless connection on my laptop or phone. The gateway's wifi has been turned off, and I have a decent little Netgear router behind it handling my wireless (R7800). From that R7800, I have one Cat6 running upstairs to a 4 port Netgear switch. Front that switch, one port runs to my Hikvision NVR, two run to Hik cameras near my detached garage, and one runs to another R7800 Netgear router in AP mode in my garage. When doing wifi speed tests on my garage router the best I can get is about 60mb up/down, which I don't understand. If everything is hardwired with good Cat6 cable, shouldn't my garage router give me speeds somewhat comparable to the router in my home? Is there anything I can look for that may be causing such an issue? Many thanks for any help you can provide.

I am an eager hobbyist who setup a Hikvision I-series NVR and 8 cameras, and have setup all my routers over the years. But certainly not a pro if that matters.

 

[biggen]

Are you connecting to the garage router on 5Ghz in AC mode? Are you next to the garage router when performing the speed test? What is the channel width? Are the channels between the router in the house and the one in the garage non-overlapping? What speed is that 4 port switch?

Take a laptop/computer with a physical Ethernet port and plug into that 4 port switch and do a speed test from there. If you get full expected speeds, then you know everything to that switch is in good shape.

 

[fullboogie]

Biggen - thanks for the response. Here's what I found in response to your questions:

Garage router: 2.4 band, auto channel. 5.0 band, channel 153. 5g speed test, 93 down, 8 up. Wired to the garage router, 92 down, 86 up.

Home router: 2.4 band, channel 11. 166 down, 180 up. 5.0 band, channel 161. 593 down, 512 up. Hardwired, 664 down, 400 up.

At the switch upstairs, hardwired from laptop to switch: 92 down, 92 up.

The Netgear switch says it is a gigabit switch.

 

[sebastiantombs]

The bandwidth of that switch is the bottle neck, or the bandwidth of one of them and you're going through two routers. Speed may be fine until under the load of constant video streaming.

 

[user8963]

1. never connect routers with routers even if they claim for AP mode. some of them are still buggy and give you double nat problems. routers are not build to run as access points..

2. if lan is also slow..
did you connect fiber modem/router to the wan port of netgear wifi router ?

most of these cheap routers has only 100mbit wan port and gigabit lan port...

3. use google. seems that there are problems with this netgear router

Archived - NETGEAR Communities

community.netgear.com

Archived - NETGEAR Communities

community.netgear.com

 

[user8963]

Open WRT is also full of same problems... Funny ...

R7800 performance

With latest snapshot or even latest release, wifi tops out at ~300 mbps as does wired from lan->wan. I ran top and CPU is not even close to being maxed out when I do a speedtest, so doesn't seem like a lack of hardware forwarding as the issue if I analyzed correctly. Where is the bottle neck...

forum.openwrt.org

Buggy Hardware and bad firmware... buy good stuff , less problems even cheapest ubiquiti ap should perform better

 

[fullboogie]

1. never connect routers with routers even if they claim for AP mode. some of them are still buggy and give you double nat problems. routers are not build to run as access points..

2. if lan is also slow..
did you connect fiber modem/router to the wan port of netgear wifi router ?

most of these cheap routers has only 100mbit wan port and gigabit lan port...

3. use google. seems that there are problems with this netgear router

Archived - NETGEAR Communities

community.netgear.com

Archived - NETGEAR Communities

community.netgear.com

I did this setup because I could not get any reliable wifi from the house into the garage - too many walls/doors so it was slow. That's why I ran a Cat6 to the garage and connected another R7800 for wifi when I'm in there working on shit.

Yes, I did connect the AT&T modem to the WAN port on the R7800 in the house. Should I connect to a LAN port and get another switch? My LAN ports are full on the home router.

 

[user8963]

No read my new post and edit. it seems impossible to fix if all equip is able to use gigabit lan. Its the hardware itself. i just scrolled through the openwrt thread fast, there are some hints how to change flow control in wrt firmware, but with netgear firmware you are lost according to netgear forum.

sad for you..

 

[fullboogie]

Open WRT is also full of same problems... Funny ...

R7800 performance

With latest snapshot or even latest release, wifi tops out at ~300 mbps as does wired from lan->wan. I ran top and CPU is not even close to being maxed out when I do a speedtest, so doesn't seem like a lack of hardware forwarding as the issue if I analyzed correctly. Where is the bottle neck...

forum.openwrt.org

Buggy Hardware and bad firmware... buy good stuff , less problems even cheapest ubiquiti ap should perform better

Sorry man, but that is so far beyond me...

 

[user8963]

yeah i understand.. but they are talking to about another firmware.. with your original firmware you are right in the netgear forum and there are many who have the same problems and all say its a firmware bug.

it seems that your second router loses the 1gbit link and go down to 100mbit which is the first link from netgear forum.

all in all.. call netgear/ go to their forum maybe they have a better firmware now or know what settings you have to change.

it seems a hardware problem, so it would not help to change something on wiring or whatever..

next time if you have wifi problems
. dont buy ROUTERS, .. you need accesspoints.

 

[fullboogie]

On another note - why is it that I can do a hardwired speed test on my downstairs R7800 and it has great speeds. Then when I do a hardwired speedtest on the switch upstairs, connected via a Cat6 cable, it's terrible. 1/10 the speed. Cable problem maybe?

 

[fullboogie]

yeah i understand.. but they are talking to about another firmware.. with your original firmware you are right in the netgear forum and there are many who have the same problems and all say its a firmware bug.

it seems that your second router loses the 1gbit link and go down to 100mbit which is the first link from netgear forum.

all in all.. call netgear/ go to their forum maybe they have a better firmware now or know what settings you have to change.

it seems a hardware problem, so it would not help to change something on wiring or whatever..

next time if you have wifi problems
. dont buy ROUTERS, .. you need accesspoints.

Thank you for sticking with me, 8963. Really appreciate it. I'll look into the firmware problem.

 

[SouthernYankee]

I use an ASUS RT-AC66U-B1 as my main router. That is connected to a 16 port switch. Two ethernet runs off the 16 port switch connect to two separate RT-AC66U routers in AP mode. All three routers have the same SIDD, but are on different channels 1,6,11 (2.4 GHZ) for wifi access. The routers as access points do not have any hardwired connects other than the connection back to the main 16 port switch. There is no traffic passing through the AP other than wifi. The object is to have the least amount of traffic running through the router and AP.

Other switches run off the 16 port switch, for the TV, ROKU, Chromecast, and sound systems and other PCs.

There is a separate wired network running of the second NIC in the BI PC for the cameras.

 

[user8963]

Yeah.. check first what @sebastiantombs wrote..

if "4 port Netgear switch" is only 100mbit, then you will have the problem there. you can post model number.

if its gigabit and you are still having 100mbit, its maybe the firmware like mention in netgear forum.


@SouthernYankee

This can work. But it can also fail. I had a lot of trouble with this,.. in some netgear routers you couldnt turn off nat/firewall/qos completely resulting in terrible problems. also some cheap tplink routers seems to have terrible bugs resulting in high rates of packet loss.

if you know how to set up it right and the firmware of the device is good, then it works fine. for someone who is searching plug and play with easy configuration i would suggest ubiquiti/similiar equip now. they are made for these cases and are working fine.

 

[Mike A.]

Speed tests also will reflect the capabilities of the client device used to run the test.

Are you using the same device to test?

 

[alastairstevenson]

At the switch upstairs, hardwired from laptop to switch: 92 down, 92 up.

That's the same as the Garage AP - which probably lets out the connection and device in the garage as being the source of the problem.
The throughput suggests the link speed is 100Mbps instead of the expected 1000Mbps.
Do the R7800 ethernet ports show different colours depending on link speeds? Any clues there?

Suggestion :
Connect the PC directly (not using the existing cable) to the R7800 ethernet port that the Netgear gigabit switch is connected to, and run a speedtest.

Yes, I did connect the AT&T modem to the WAN port on the R7800 in the house. Should I connect to a LAN port and get another switch? My LAN ports are full on the home router.

When operating in AP mode - normally only the ethernet ports would be used.
Hooking up the WAN port would imply a routing function is operating between it and the ethernet ports.
For clarity - what is the 'home router' ?

 

[biggen]

So the switch upstairs you only get 100Mbps when hardwired to it? That is a 1Gbps switch and the laptop you plugged into it has a 1Gbps NIC?

What's the model on that switch? When your laptop was plugged into it, you should see a link light on the switch. Does the link color indicate a 1Gbps link according to the color legend on the front of th switch?

 

[Flintstone61]

Looks like the Op is getting plenty of input. I would avoid using netgear. just my past exp. and .02$

 

[fullboogie]

That's the same as the Garage AP - which probably lets out the connection and device in the garage as being the source of the problem.
The throughput suggests the link speed is 100Mbps instead of the expected 1000Mbps.
Do the R7800 ethernet ports show different colours depending on link speeds? Any clues there?

Suggestion :
Connect the PC directly (not using the existing cable) to the R7800 ethernet port that the Netgear gigabit switch is connected to, and run a speedtest.


When operating in AP mode - normally only the ethernet ports would be used.
Hooking up the WAN port would imply a routing function is operating between it and the ethernet ports.
For clarity - what is the 'home router' ?

There are no lights on the Netgear ports.

The speeds reported for the garage router are with it hardwired into the laptop.

So the switch upstairs you only get 100Mbps when hardwired to it? That is a 1Gbps switch and the laptop you plugged into it has a 1Gbps NIC?

What's the model on that switch? When your laptop was plugged into it, you should see a link light on the switch. Does the link color indicate a 1Gbps link according to the color legend on the front of th switch?

Yes, only 100mb-ish when hardwired into the upstairs switch. No colors on the Netgear switch unfortunately. Here is the model I bought:

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/netgear-5-port-10-100-1000-mbps-gigabit-unmanaged-switch-white/6840341.p?skuId=6840341

 

[user8963]

@fullboogie

Please turn OFF any of these features in the first r7800 which is connected to the fiber modem

UPnP
QoS
WMM QoS
ipv6 (maybe you need it because of your fiber company, if you disable it and cannot reach internet, enable again)

maybe have to restart...
if not help...

then disconnect the 5 port netgear switch from garage (if possible) and connect it with a short prebuild lan-cable to the first r7800. then connect your computer directly to the switch with lan cable, run speed test...

if error persist and still limit to 100mbit, buy new network equipment