Netgear R7000 Poor Network Coverage

[ankydu]

I am uploading an diagram of my house and the kind of coverage I am getting. Please see and comment !

 

[ankydu]

@thiggins, please see and reply?

 

[sinshiva]

is the performance you're getting while the devices are sending/receiving a significant amount of data, such as some kind of speedtest?

 

[stevech]

that's a small-ish house. One story, it seems.
If the walls are ordinary two-layer drywall, this can be OK.
But the path from the router to/from the handheld samsung does have many walls.

I'd relocate or reposition the router, and/or put an AP on the far end of the house.

Assuming you can't run a cat5 cable to the far end, say under the house if its raised-foundation, or in the attic. Then put an AP on that cat5.
Or in lieu of cat5 running, use IP on powerline (e.g., HomePlug), or MoCA to replace the cable.

But truly, if the WIfI router were placed more optimally, this is not a large space.

 

[ankydu]

Just to add:

The point where I have shown my S4 in the open area, the 5GHZ range just vanishes in that location. Secondly the router is currently about 5 feet from the ground sitting on my PC cabinet. And Thirdly regarding obstructions, there is a Split Air Conditioner unit and its internal unit both at about 8-9 feet height on 2 different parallel walls. Also in the last half room before the S4 location in the open area is a store room full of iron boxes. Thats all with the obstructions. I also tested with my S4 on 2.4Ghz in front of my house with one concrete wall (!0 inches thickness) and one iron fencing. about 30 feet away from the router and again got just about 1 of 4 bars. Is there a problem with the router?

 

[ankydu]

Talking about walls today I checked and found out of the 4 walls coming in the path of the router and my S4 each concrete wall is of 6 inch thickness and the last one being 11 inches in thickness. And today I went outside my house on the road right next to the room where the router is placed (a 11 inches concrete wall in between) and found that I had connectivity till 262 feet from my house on the 2.4Ghz band after that it lost the signal. So is it normal?

 

[thiggins]

5 GHz signal attenuation is higher than 2.4 GHz. I count four internal walls (straight diagonal path) between the router and S4. Thick concrete kills 5 GHz signals. That's why powerline networking became so popular in Europe due to more common brick, concrete, stone building construction.

There is nothing wrong with the router. You are simply expecting too much range for your home's construction.

 

[TonyH]

OP, what is f/w version on your R7000? Is it 1.0.2.194_xxx? If so try one version prior to this. I just don't understand
locating the router at one corner of house. Many times I heard relocating router is impossible. Nothing is impossible.
There is a way if there is will. My router is at the center of top floor loft in ~3000 sq. ft. 2 story house. Coverage is good from basement to top floor. My cable entrance is at the basement utility room. I had to extend that cable up to the loft for the router. When house was built I had cables run for Ethernet, telco in every room in the house. If absolutely there is no way to locate the router properly, use AP where it is needed in the house.

 

[ankydu]

OP, what is f/w version on your R7000? Is it 1.0.2.194_xxx? If so try one version prior to this.

Yes its the same as you have mentioned. But why one version prior, how is that better?

Also I have unlocked the Change region drop down via the telnet method given on the net and changed my country to India (where I live), hope that will not have any bad effect on the performance.

 

[TonyH]

Hi,
Peruse Netgear R7000 forum. Many reported 197 f/w wireless problems. Or You can try latest dd-wrt by Kong. Every f/w comes with good and bad issues. Nothing is perfect. You ought to know that. Changing country code affects TX power limit and channel assignment.

 

[ankydu]

Hi,
Peruse Netgear R7000 forum. Many reported 197 f/w wireless problems. Or You can try latest dd-wrt by Kong. Every f/w comes with good and bad issues. Nothing is perfect. You ought to know that. Changing country code affects TX power limit and channel assignment.

So any idea choosing which region will gimme maximum TX power Limit?

 

[ankydu]

Recently when I raised a support ticket in Netgear Support section. They advised me to change the Fragmentation Length and CTS/RTS Threshold as 2304 and 2305 for both the 2.4 and 5 ghz bands. Any idea what do they do ?

 

[stevech]

Recently when I raised a support ticket in Netgear Support section. They advised me to change the Fragmentation Length and CTS/RTS Threshold as 2304 and 2305 for both the 2.4 and 5 ghz bands. Any idea what do they do ?

CTS/RTS threshold - This is a protocol used for mixed 802.11n and newer, and older WiFi like 802.11b/g. The older products' formats cannot decode that of the newer. This can lead to more false negatives on clear-channel assessment - which is "listen before transmitting", to reduce simultaneous transmissions (collisions). Most consumer routers have a CTS/RTS enable/disable choice in the config screens. The advice to change the CTS/RTS threshold, in my opinion, is so small as to have no effect.

Re the Fragmentation Length setting... This affects the size of over-the-air transmitted data frames. Shorter means more are sent per single IP layer packet. More frames, more overhead, lower data throughput. But too, shorter fragments can reduce collisions in areas where there is a lot of persistent traffic on the same channel (+/- 3) and mixed mode.

Really, I think changing these is grasping at straws.

The cure for such this is to
Don't use 40MHz mode in 2.4GHz
If all your client devices support, say, 11n, then your WiFi router/Access point can be set to NO mixed mode, or 11n only. Then CTS/RTS isn't needed (except for the "Hidden Node" problem, q.v.).
Change channels to find one where nearby SSIDs near that channel number are not heavily USED. It's OK to have lots of low-usage SSIDs. Only professional/expensive tools show you how "busy" a given SSID is. The mere presence of a neighbor's SSID means little. It's like a near-empty freeway lane.

 

[azazel1024]

Doesn't look like an overly small house to me. 40x80ft is resonably large, especially when you throw in a 2nd story. Mine is only 24x65ft and I need two routers to cover it.

Though my biggest issue is I have a large masonry fire place and chimney that my router backs up to, so 3/4ths of the house is on the other side of this chimney and the router.

You step to the otherside and 6ft from the router the signal strength has dropped 18dB in 2.4GHz. Down the hallway is fine, but you step in to my bedroom and you add 4 more walls on top of the masonry chimney (that is about 4ft thick cinderblock and stone) and around 40ft and you've attenuated 40dB. So I tossed a router in my basement under that bedroom that both covers the basement well and that far corner of the house.

For you, I count something like 4-5 walls, plus possibly steps getting in the way depending on where you are on the far side of the house there, plus something like 50-60ft. Even if it is just 1/2" drywall and 2x4"s, that is asking a lot of even a 2.4GHz signal to punch through all of that without losing a lot of signal strength. Figure each standard 2x4" 1/2" drywall wall is going to attenuate the signal at least 4dB per wall in 2.4GHz, probably more like 5 or 6dB and that is straight through a wall, not at an angle through the wall, or if there is AC duct work the signal is trying to pass through, or metal studding or something else in the walls (like 5/8" drywall, or masonry).

The options I see are

1) switch to 20Mhz mode and set your channel so that there are no interfering signals. If there currently are no interfering signals, try changing around the channel anyway. You may have some other 2.4-2.5GHz interference going on from a source other than a Wifi network. With the 20MHz switch, at high attenuation (IE long distances), 20MHz mode on 11n actually is FASTER and works at longer ranges than 40MHz mode, though at close to medium range/attenuation 40MHz mode is typically faster to a lot faster.

2) Stick an access point on that side of the house and wire it in, if that is possible. Or you can stick an access point on that side of the house and connect it back to your existing router using powerline adapters. You'll probably restrict the speed a lot, but I'd imagine it'll be a lot faster than what you have going on now.

3) A different router, preferably one with external antennas that you can then swap for much larger external antennas

4) final option is stick a wireless repeater in between the two points, but this is the least desirable, as wireless repeaters cut down on usable bandwidth a lot...possibly more than using powerline adapters would, and you have the disadvantage that if the repeater is in active use (IE someone is connected through it and its working away), you are drastically cutting in to any other wireless users available bandwidth due to the Tx/Rx chain from your device, to the repeater back to the router/AP.

 

[azazel1024]

Talking about walls today I checked and found out of the 4 walls coming in the path of the router and my S4 each concrete wall is of 6 inch thickness and the last one being 11 inches in thickness. And today I went outside my house on the road right next to the room where the router is placed (a 11 inches concrete wall in between) and found that I had connectivity till 262 feet from my house on the 2.4Ghz band after that it lost the signal. So is it normal?

Sorry for my earlier post, I just read these two.

You are asking WAY too much of the router. Multiple concrete walls is going to kill signal. Especially 5GHz, but 2.4GHz as well.

If you read my prior post, I have a 4ft cinderblock and stone fireplace (so it is partial hollow cavity with the cinderblocks, actual masonry thickness is probably closer to 14-18 inches) and it drops signal strength by around 18dB,

3 concrete walls a 6" of thickness each plus an 11" concrete wall probably adds up to at least 30dB of attenuation, if not more. Plus roughly 50ft of distance, and not knowing the coverings over the concrete (I assume they aren't bare concrete). That is probably pushing you in to -70 to -80dB of signal strength on 2.4GHz. By comparison I have -76dB of signal strength laying in bed from my living room router on my laptop with resonable sized antennas. That is 2-3 bars according to Windows and I can connect at around 24Mbps and get a usable 1.5-2MB/sec on my laptop. My iPad 2, which probably has similar gain and Tx power to your S4 would connect at 1 bar, sometimes dropping the connection completely, occasionally I'd get 2 bars for a second before dropping. I could get a usable 200-300KB/sec usable throughput on my iPad. That is through that chimney and 4 regular 2x4 walls and only 40 some feet.

That is less distance and a lot less obstruction than what you have going on.

You need a second router in your residence.

Open air distance doesn't do a lot to impact signal strength. That same living room router I can connect at -62dB at my mailbox 150ft away from my router, but it is directly visible through my living room window, so direct LoS with only two panes of glass (not low E) in the way. Out the rear of my house, at a similar distance from my router, I connect at -76 to lost connection (inSSIDer shows to about -85dB) depending on exactly where I plant my feet, but that is through an exterior 2x4 wall, insulation which is FOIL faced (1960's house) and a layer of wood siding with a layer of foam insulated aluminum siding on top of that.

So effectively that one exterior wall added 14-23 dB of extra attenuation (that means that the signal is about 21-200x weaker) at the same distance, just different partitioning between me and the router. Its also why I am placing an access point in my garage with the antennas mounted through pigtails on the exterior wall of my garage to remove any obstructions from where I need Wifi in my backyard, so it is all open air (and ~20ft closer to the location, which doesn't hurt either).

2nd access point man, 2nd access point.

 

[nanobullet]

Well I had the same problem with my Samsung s4 and I changed his wifi state from power saver to normal. Case solved.

Sent from my GT-I9505 using Tapatalk

 

[ankydu]

Also on my dell latitude laptop. Its built in wifi is wifi G and when checking with InSSIDer, the max speed for my netgear router at 2.4 GHZ is reported as 216 where as its set as upto 600 mbps in settings. I also get other neighboring networks and I can see those at 300mbps in InSSIDer. Anything wrong?


Also at about 40 feet from my router with 2 6" concrete walls in between, on my laptop, though the signal is quite good on my laptop 3-4 bars and occasionally full 5 bars, the wifi network keeps disappearing on and off from the laptop under wifi search. IE all of a sudden the network disappears and reappears and reconnects, doesn't happen with my old Linksys WRT54G router.

 

[viking2]

I think Samsung S4 has some issue with the 802.11ac network. My phone gets full signal on the ac network but when I browse from the upstairs bedroom separated by 2 drywalls I get a 6mbps connection speed and I cant browse at all. But my nexus 10 which also connects to the 5ghz 11n network has 160 Mbps connection rate in the same location. I am suspecting some problem for the s4 on 5ghz network as it doesn't even operate on the 11n if the 11ac doesn't work.

Sent from my GT-I9500 using Tapatalk

 

[ankydu]

Many a times my net becomes sluggish. And when I try to ping google the reply times are like:
60ms
390ms
62ms
433ms
61ms
877ms
......................

It only gets rectified when I disable and re-enable wifi on my laptop. Earlier I thought its my laptop at fault but now observed similar behavior on my desktop with 300mbps WIFI N USB adapter as well?