Zac

Atm I am casting my XR1000 with a different wifi name due to troubleshooting

No I have my wifi on my R3 still on. And it's still showing my xr1000 and this phantom device. I know what you mean though, like if my devices are connected to my xr1000 they won;'t show up on my device manager. But i'm talking about wired connections to my R3 is showing an extra device that makes no sense. As for the appletv doesn't matter what content none of it is recognised as media.

Oh and on a completely unrelated note, happy to make a separate post, all the traffic to my Apple TV is classified as unknown instead of 'Video & Streaming' no idea how to fix or adjust this? for now I have just prioritised that device.

I have woken up in a bit of a haze but I'm trying to make sense of things on my network. After I updated to .23 I did a factory reset and all my devices are now unknown. I don't know if there is a way for the router to automatically identify devices by their assigned name? If there is that would be ideal. Anyway, after about an hour of painstakingly identifying and naming my devices I am left puzzled by one remaining Ethernet connection. My router has 3 Ethernet connections: 1. XR1000 (in AP Mode and it constantly disappears and re-appears which is very annoying but is what it is) 2. My computer 3. Apply tv I now have a 4th connection which I have appropriately labelled ? it has a Lan and Mac address and has registered usage but... I don't have a 4th device. Am I going crazy here? Happy to delete this post if I am overlooking something completely simple but after scratching my head for an hour with my morning coffee I figured i'd post here in case somebody smarter then myself has the answer. I somehow think that my XR1000 is showing up as two devices but they have different mac addresses etc.

I have found no matter what router I have it’s always best practice to manually select channels. I use Netspot and if you look at it for long enough you will see most people just plug and play and their routers will constantly jump around channels seeking the best one and causing overlap/ interference. you should manually inspect your wifi channels around you and select the one that stays quite. For me personally no routers around me seem to be able to use channel 100+ (I’m in Aus it’s different for each country because they use certain channels for aircraft radio/ military etc. called DFS channels. router sometimes just disable these channels by default. In this routers case it’s the ones you mentioned I believe. so for me I set my main router 2.4 to channel 1, 20mhz width and 5ghz to channel 100, 80 width. and I set my AP to 2.4 GHz channel 6, 20 and 5ghz to 36, 80 by setting 1/6 you avoid overlap (1,6 and 11 don’t overlap) and generally the best if uncrowded. and by setting to 1 manually it moved the two people near me to channel 11. Sorry long reply but in summary auto is never ideal because jumping around can cause huge lag/ buffers if your say streaming especially if lots of interference.

I really really hope so. The router seems awesome features wise but this wifi problem is really doing my head in.

I just don't know if my specific router is a faulty unit or if it can be fixed with firmware updates? Been a month since I had the router and wife is complaining about wifi not working in the house. So temporarily gone back to my xr1000 until wifi can be used but I really hope I don't have to wait 12 months with no updates addressing the wifi not working. I can live with the other bugs/ problems as I know they will get resolved over time. But wifi being broken = wife angry XD

Any updates on this Fraser? Would love to be able to use this router properly

Hey Fraser, Sorry for it being such a long post. Wanted to be as detailed as possible and include pictures this time. please if you want me to try anything or run any further tests let me know.

I created a topic earlier into the release where I noticed abnormal performance from the R3 compared to the XR1000 I was using. I have since performed multiple tests in more detail to try and understand the problem. I am unsure if I have a faulty router, if it's firmware or if it's hardware related but there is a definite performance issue I am experiencing relating to wifi strength and wifi speed. Test Scenario: I have a 1000/50 connection. Through Netduma speed test I am 947/47 which is the same result I was getting with my Xr1000 via ethernet. Setup my R3 3 meters away (not near any walls, electrical devices or anything that would interfere with signal quality) Across 10 different tests (tested with various software) - I know Speedtest isn't the best test but it is good for a quick indicator of performance. I am able to 350 Mbps download and 31.1 upload with high jitter of 6 ms and loss of 0.36% If I set up my Xr1000 In the exact same position. across ten tests took the average result which was 717 mbps download, 36.3 upload, 3ms jitter, 0% loss. Straight off the bat I am getting less then half the performance of download speed with double the jitter and strangely a loss%. Next issue is signal strength. Test scenario: I set up both my routers at other ends of my house in comparable positions. They are 15 meters apart I also swapped their positions to confirm consistency of results. I tested when being 2.5 meters away from each router in question. R3: When 2.5 meters away from the device and 15 meters away from the XR1000 I still have a stronger signal to the XR1000 this simply shouldn't be possible. The R3 has a connection signal strength at the very best of -53 DBM on the 2.4 GHz When compared to the XR 1000 it has -47 DBM while being 13 meters further away. The XR 1000 by comparison is -13 DBM on the 2.4 Ghz channel. and the R3 has -92 DBM On the 5 Ghz Band: The R3 has -48 DBM the XR 1000 has -36 DBM Even 15 meters away the XR 1000 is quicker even 15 meters away with a weaker signal then the R3. I don't know what is going on with the Wifi with the R3 if it's my specific unit or a firmware issue but something isn't right. I have tried putting the router in multiple locations, I have adjusted the antennas in multiple orientations including the two most common (all 4 straight up |||| to \||/ to _||_) I have tried different bandwidths and also tried various channels. On the 5ghz channel very few other networks around me penetrate into my house so there is very little interference. While 2.4 ghz is congested that doesn't change the results. Other issues noted: I have seen others report this issue but via ethernet upon waking my desktop from sleep it can take anywhere from 10-20 seconds for my computer to detect ethernet. Ethernet ping: With all the special features disabled I am getting about 2-3 extra ping in oceanic servers. I have pretty rock solid 5-6 ms on my xr1000 as I am located close to the servers in Sydney. On the R3 I get 7-8MS. (this is with ping optimiser / QOS and steady ping disabled) I do have IPV6 Enabled on the R3 compared to disabled on my XR1000 as well.. it's been broken forever on that unit but I don't think that would have any significant or any impact at all on WiFi performance. I don't want to call the unit broken I would much rather it's just a software/ firmware issue that can be resolved but I am happy to perform any test or try any suggestions offered to help fix this issue or at least identify what is causing the issue. Cheers,

Well that's my problem. I can't get the R3 under -70 DBI even in the same room as it. But 20 meters away my xr1000 is -55. Is why I think my router is faulty out of the gate.

Well you might not need 900 MB true but at range speed decreases anyway and my house is bigger so speed scaling matters so I agree with you it is important to get to the bottom of this issue. For example lets say in one room max speed I can get is 20% of my connection due to distance. If I had a regular 100mbps and I was getting only 20mbps that would struggle to play some video content in my guest room. However if I have a 1000 mbps and I'm getting 20% that's obviously 200 mbps which would still stream to my 4k tv beautifully. So I am with L2eactions. If they were able to achieve 900mbps even in a controlled test environment it would be good to know how/ what settings were used as that would indicate a performance ceiling we should all be striving to achieve. Plus being a new release it's important to work out any bugs/ hardware faults. Unfortunately for me I think as I said my unit is perhaps faulty.

Yeah I think my unit must be faulty. I definitely agree with you that Speedtest is overall a poor performance tool in general but it is a good tool for recognising issues. 10m away from my R3 and I have red signal aka poor quality. Most I can get is 150mbps if im lucky sometimes only 20. Where as my Xr1000 I am able to get 750+ reliably in the same spot. I ran 10 back to back tests for my averages on Speedtest and my xr1000 was within a couple % difference. all above 800 mbps when 1 meter away from it. Where as the most I can get on my R3 is 600 on a good run but it jumps between 350-600. If I set both my R3 and my xr1000 up via ethernet and place the xr1000 downstairs and several walls away approximately 20m it has a stronger signal then my R3 1 meter away. So I think for me at least I just have a hardware fault. But regarding Speedtest I have really consistent results on my xr1000. By the way I don't see classic wow for SOD on your Bnet? what's going on Fuzy?

I can’t speak for everybodies unit but I know there is definite wifi issues. in another post I did extensive testing with my R3 compared to my XR1000. being 1 meter away from both routers (turned on off to test independently) my XR 1000 can occasionally reach 900 mbps. My R3 on average hits about 350-650. I can’t give an accurate result for the R3 because when I’m 1 meter away from the unit my wifi strength is RSSI of -70 where my xr1000 is -30. additionally my R3 loses signal if I’m more then 5 meters away from the unit. I have better signal to my XR1000 when it’s 25 meters away. Perhaps I got a faulty unit but I have put my poor wifi results down to poor signal strength. The range of my XR1000 is about 5x of the R3. I’m away for Christmas but you should check the strength of your signal to your R3 and see if it’s similar to mine? I would be curious to know if my unit is faulty. It’s almost like the antennas do absolutely nothing or aren’t making proper contact perhaps a manufacturing fault

Okay well I will certainly fiddle around with that and tinker over the coming days. I finally got a chance to sit down and tinker with my WiFi and there is a definite problem going on. I just did an hour of testing at 2am so network isn't busy neighbours are asleep etc. I do live in a town house so there is a quite a few devices around and I used a WiFi analyser and I have some rather interesting results to share that seem to be pointing to some issues but how we would fix them I have no idea. 1. Regarding the WiFi strength. I pulled it out and extended it from it's home to my desk and have my MB pro about 1 meter away from the device with no other electrical components turned on near it. I am getting a decent signal but I am picking up two neighbours routers with high signal strength. I took off all the antenas and put them back on to make sure they were all screwed on correctly/ tight. So the signal itself seems to be sub optimal. Additionally if I move about 5 meters to my bedroom my wife's phone, my phone and macbook all have poor signal strength with an RSSI of -85 dbm. Additionally if I move downstairs so I'm directly below the router I am getting similar results. I also tried adjusting the antenna so they are all vertical and tried 2 push down to the side nothing I do seems to make it better. It's almost as if the Antennas are not making good contact or not working correctly. 2. I used a WiFi Analyser extensively. On the 5ghz channel on channel 100 with 80 channel width I am able to achieve 335 download/ 27.6 upload. There are no other devices on this channel so it's clean. infact I actually get 100/40 on 2.4 channel 6, 20 width. When I adjust the channel to 160 width I can get 336/31.8 but I know it's not best practice to use 160 width due to interference. I did try 36, 40, 44, 48 channels but there are a few other devices on those networks and the performance was worse. 3. I did another test connecting to my Nighthawk in AP mode so while it's downstairs in another room probably 15 meters away my result on 5ghz was 794/48 4. For science I repeated the same tests above on my old XR1000 in the exact same position I had my R3 RESULTS: 5 Ghz channel: 666/42 using channel 44 as there is no 100 on the XR1000. The equivalent on the R3 on the same channel is 311/22 2.4 Ghz Channel: 164/46 When I moved back to my bedroom with my laptop. The R3 was 22.8/13.2 on 2.4 and 28.6/15 on the 5 ghz. The XR1000 is 152/34 on 2.4 and 509/42 on 5 GHz WiFi Strength: The RSSI is 55 in my bedroom and 40 right next to the router on my XR1000 In conclusion. The XR1000 is outperforming the R3 and has a stronger signal when it's through a couple bedroom walls and about 8 meters away compared to when my laptop is 1 meter away from the R3. it would appear Ethernet and ping is working perfectly fine. Great infact but the WiFi feels broken on this model. Not sure if it's my specific unit, or its a hardware/firmware fault or if it can be patched. Happy to provide perform any tests if you feel they would help and can send you pictures. I know this is a new unit so problems are expected but this seems really off. These tests are more accurate then my previous ones as I tested late at night now 3 am zzz and performed the same tests in as controlled environment as I could. Something is seriously wrong with the WiFi Peformance on my R3. Sorry for the long write up but wanted to provide as much data as I could.

So if I set steady ping to auto it does about 8 but manual is from 10+? Yeah busy day so will continue monitoring the WiFi. Don't want to cause alarms need to muck around with bandwidth. I chose what looked best and on 2.4 I have got it basically 1:1. For the SmartBoost I haven't tinkered around with it to much. I have my gaming PC as a priority device and gaming and I ran ping optimiser with advanced for both upload and download. I should probably muck around with it a bit more but been doing one setting at a time.

So I can confirm that the steady ping increases the latency by about 15 ms? However that is only on oceanic games where my ping is really low to begin with. I tested with Guild Wars 2 where my ping is average of 202 with or without steady ping on. However, with steady ping my ping never went above 206 where as without it once in about 5 minutes it would go to 220. Admittedly didn't test for super long but it seems to work better with international servers. Would love to read more about this feature so I could fine tune it. I basically wouldn't want it for oceanic and would want it for international but might just leave it on for oceanic games as well. It's a new feature and something I want to tinker with but glad to know i'm not losing my mind on weird performance on ethernet. Going to do some more WiFi tests tonight to see if it's a channel or bandwidth issue that's causing lower WiFi performance.

Max is three, usual usage is just two though. However my wife is always streaming while I game. ill be home soon and do some tests

Yeah so I did some more tests this morning. I tested with router out of cabinet 2 meters away exactly measured on the R3 on 5ghz I was getting 569/44.9 went downstairs measured 2 meters away from xr1000 763/44. the xr1000 is on a more congested wifi channel as I wanted to keep the R3 free. I am unsure why there is such a loss in speed. I think the better speeds I tested really early this morning was due to less people being up and less congested network. I will test different wifi bands and channels again when I get home and see if that makes much of a difference as that could definitely be a factor at play and I don’t want to jump to conclusions saying anything is broken when it could be user error here. i haven’t played with the geofilter yet I will check that out. I live in Australia so the geo filter feature isn’t as useful here being that I live close to the oceanic servers and even distance to most major cities isn’t very large. But if that setting is tucked away in there I will check it out. I read your explanation of how it works on another post I am intrigued by it and want to learn more. It might be useful for games that I play overseas and might be worth leaving on as oceanic 5 Ms or 20 Ms doesn’t really matter but if it steadies ping overseas yeah anyway I’ll play around with that and report back. surely you must be off work soon mate? You were on before I slept and still on you need a break sir ! Haha

Yes have tested with all the channels and widths using a WiFi Analyser and picked the best after extensive testing. The router is mounted vertically on a wall as it's on the 2nd level of my house so it's positioned to be able to go downstairs more efficiently. I have my old XR1000 in AP mode other end of the house to ensure total wifi coverage. - On that note, slight sidestep of my original question. Would you recommend putting it in AP mode or leaving it in router mode if it's extending my WiFi? I know typically you would just put a WiFi extender in AP mode but being the XR1000 is still a beast should I just leave it in router mode? With that said I did re-adjust the antenna this morning when I woke up and looks like it's wifi is a bit better now with 700/43 which is pretty fine. Perhaps I am imagining the results of my old XR1000. So I will put the actual wifi speeds down to my imagination and call it fine in comparison to the xr1000 Still losing 200 mbps when it's 2 meters away from the router seems a bit off. There aren't any electrical/wireless components near it. however it is in a cupboard which definitely would effect performance however, so was the old XR1000. I might try and take it out though to do some more tests. Regarding the ping - When you say disable it.. how exactly does one disable it? I can't see an option to turn it off? if I go to ping optimiser/ advanced - Always on, Auto and Low Latency are the options but all 3 result in the same outcome. Unless it's another setting entirely I am missing? Also is there a setting anywhere by default to show advanced settings? clicking on advanced while navigating the router on each page is tedious if there isn't yet that would be my feature request haha. Most people who buy this router are tinkerers and tinkerers will spend 90% of the time in advanced settings. Should be on by default I reckon with a basic view being optional click.

Do you have a VPN on? I had this only on my Iphone when I was connected to Nord seemed like the DNS didn't want to respond. Anyway I turned it off and it connected. Then turned VPN on and it connected. So not sure if you might have a similar issue or not? Almost seems like it's not connected to the new router you don't have an old router still broadcasting with the same name do you?

Sure I will give this a whirl in the morning and report back. Happy to try anything you have to suggest. You have been a great help in the past with my Netgear products.

I do want to say a couple positives first coming from the XR1000. 1. The new DUMA OS design is fantastic, it's clean, simple and elegant. 2. I'm not sure if this applies to all Netduma products but coming from the XR1000 the OS is feels super responsive and turning it on/off is really quick having it be this responsive is fantastic and the companion app works just as well on my phone/ laptop 3. The unit itself is sleek and visually appealing. 4. IPV6 actually works unlike the Xr1000 which seems to constantly drop connection randomly and wont come back unless i disable ipv6 making it unusable. Huge W 5. UPNP Seems to be working fine. Tested a couple games on my PC and my Switch and NAT is working out of the gate as intended (I tested with IPV6 off for this) Overall I would say it's a great unit at a great price and functionally isn't broken like the XR1000 has been for.. well since release. I am very happy to jump from Netgear to Netduma they are the real Chads. Now the performance issues which I am hoping are bugs or can be patched/ addressed in a future firmware or perhaps I have somehow setup the router incorrectly but will do more testing tomorrow as I have only had a day to play with it now. 1.The WiFi doesn't appear to have nearly as good a range as my XR1000. I have a couple devices about 3 meters below it and they all have really poor quality connection. In fact my XR1000 is about 20 meters away setup in AP mode through several walls and almost all my devices prefer connecting to it despite it physically being the furthest away by far. And despite being further away it actually does outperform it. Something seems off with this if I go 5 meters away I seem to have poor connection quality and going downstairs just doesn't work despite it being mounted vertically. 2. WiFi performance - I have 1000/50 connection. On Ethernet I get 960/51 reliably. Testing on my Iphone and my Macbook pro about 2 meters away from the R3 router I am getting 350/33 on 5ghz channel. I also tested different bandwidths and channels and that was the best of the bunch. If I left it on auto I was getting about 260/33. On the 2.4 ghz It was even worse. I am getting 105/23. I plugged my XR1000 and repeated the same test on same frequency and channels and I was getting 830/49 on 5ghz and 210/42 on the 2.4 ghz channel. So ethernet wise it performs about equal with the XR1000 give or take but at such high speeds it's within margin of error but the wifi performance is less then half of the XR1000 which seems straight up wrong or un-optimised. 3. I am getting really bad ping in games. My normal latency for games in Australia (I live close to the servers) is 4ms across, WOW, League, SWTOR, and pretty much any game which has Oceanic servers. However I am getting about 22 average ping on the new router. I'm not sure if this is due to some weird optimisation happening at the software level but I plugged my XR1000 in and ping went back to 4ms solid. So no idea what's causing that? (These ping results purely from Ethernet for consistency) I did try the ping reducer and also tried setting manually capping much lower for QOS and prioritised my PC and disconnected everything else from the network but still ping was the same. So in conclusion it seems like the unit has great potential and i'm excited to join the Netduma train... goodbye Netgear but right now the Wifi seems completely broken. @Netduma Fraser i'm sorry for the long post write up but thought I would create a post in case you have any suggestions. Happy to try anything you suggest. Cheers,

I split the networks out of the gate. And unfortunately I did try both 2.4 and 5 and both don't work. I also tried different wifi bands etc to see if congestion may have been an issue no dice.

Setup the new router, looks good, acts well everything about it seems to be working fine except I have wife agro. Apparently the chrome cast just doesn't seem to work on the R3 it comes up with the "something went wrong, the device cannot communicate with your iPhone" message. A lot of people said that AP/ device isolation might be the issue but I can't find any settings in the R3 related to this? I definitely know it's the R3 - I plugged my XR1000 back in and it worked straight away. I also created a hotspot from my iPhone using mobile internet and the chrome cast works. Plugged the R3 back in and boom problem. Hoping I have missed a setting or something for a quick easy fix. My wife is not impressed haha. I do have Ipv6 on and I know that IPV6 isn't compatible with Chromecast but I would assume by default it would just default to IPV4 as a fallback since when I run ipv6 tests it still shows the ipv4 as reachable. Not sure if that has anything to do with it but just thought I'd mention it incase it's an issue?