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[SOLVED] Nighthawk X10 "stuck" at 94Mbps

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DWS44

New Around Here
Hi Guys, I hope this isn’t too bad of a newb question for my first post, but I’m about to pull my hair out putzing with my Nighthawk X10. Quick backstory…splurged and bought this when it first came out. To date, it’s been rock-solid and a pleasure, only very rarely even needing a restart. Until this week, I had 90/3 Cable Internet service, and on the X10, I had QOS turned on and set to those parameters based on its internal speed test.

FF to Monday…local ISP turned on upgrades to my neighborhood, and I now have 500/10 service. In order to get the new speeds, the ISP swapped my cable modem, (which is now an Arris Touchstone CM8200…modem only, no built-in WiFi, if that is pertinent info)

Problem I’m having is that the X10 is determined to only pass 94Mbit to my devices…wired or wireless. Speedtests on everything immediately peg at 94Mbit. Here’s the crazy part. If I restart the X10, it shows the full bandwidth both on the internal speed test and at the connected devices (480-500Mbit) and will do so anywhere from two minutes to two hours…after which this seemingly artificial 94Mbit limit takes over…and its always 94Mbit. Restart the router again…same thing…full bandwidth for a random short period, then back to 94Mbit max.

Along the way, for kicks, I tried running with my PC directly wired to the modem w/o the router just to see if I saw any speed antics coming from the modem, and there were none…full 480-500Mbit all day long. Connected back to the X10, back to the 94Mbit max speed after a short period.

What I’ve been through so far…I found the X10 was on older firmware (don’t recall which version it was on). I updated to latest Netgear Firmware 1.0.5.8. No change. I bit the bullet and reset to factory defaults through the Admin interface, setup the wireless again, and left everything else to defaults. QOS left turned off. No change…boots to full 500Mbit, then shortly after it reverts back to the 94Mbit max speed.

Failing using the Netgear firmware, I decided to give the @Voxel firmware a shot after I found some great simple instructions on installing that here on the board. (Thanks @kamoj for helpful post!). I installed Voxel’s latest R9000-V1.0.4.39.1HF last night in hopes of having better luck. Install worked perfectly, restarted the router, saw full bandwidth again, but wake up this morning and I’m back to the 94Mbit max speed again. Only thing I haven’t done yet is a factory reset since installing Voxel’s firmware. Probably try that next, though not too optimistic at this point. Heck, I even tried moving my two ethernet devices to different ports on the router, just to see if that shook up anything. No difference.

Sorry for the long read (Thanks if you made it this far!), but I’d love to hear any suggestions on anything else I can try to get, and KEEP, my full bandwidth through the X10? Is there some magical signifigance to the number “94” that I am overlooking? Or am I just going to have to bite the bullet and replace the thing.
 
Turn off QoS completely. QoS is only beneficial for speeds less than 250 Mbps. You also didn't tell on what you get that speed. Wired or wireless (or both?) devices?
 
Definitely sounds like the WAN port is stuck at 100 Mbps.
I have seen this happen with some routers, where Ethernet port auto-negotiation fails. Assuming the Ethernet cable is ok, the only way I've seen to fix it is to either get a different model router (or modem), or insert a Gigabit switch between modem and router WAN port (just plug each one into a switch port).
 
I think yes. Bad contact. Try to replace your cable. 100Mbps instead of 1000Mbps.

Voxel.

Well...now I feel a little silly for missing that connection. :oops: As I read your post, it dawned on me that as much as I swapped around troubleshooting, I never changed out the cable between the modem and router. Swapped it for a brand new cable I had on hand, and it immediately jumped back to full bandwidth (480-500Mbit on speed tests), and it has stayed there for going on five hours now. Still monitoring it periodically and keeping my fingers crossed that this was the solution.

Don't ya just love it when you go crazy into the deep end and overlook the simple things? Thanks to all for the replies and help!


Turn off QoS completely. QoS is only beneficial for speeds less than 250 Mbps. You also didn't tell on what you get that speed. Wired or wireless (or both?) devices?

Yeah, I never turned the QoS back on after the first factory reset...figured I probably didn't need it at the higher speeds. When all this was happening, the "94" max speed was showing up on both wired and wireless devices.
 

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