N300 Netgear Range Extender Kills Speed

[ComputerWhiz305]

So, I have a 4.6Mbps connection according to my speed test. This is relatively the same for both a wired and wireless connection. The issue was that I could not get a signal on the other side of my house.

Therefore, I purchased the N300 Netgear range extender and I can now get a very strong signal (~100% most of the time). Where I have the device located, it receives a 91% signal from my router and most of my devices get a 75% signal or more from the extender. This works well, as I am using Netflix on a Bluray player and that was my reason for purchasing this.

However, over the past week, I noticed that videos are now taking longer to buffer. Seeing as it is the holiday season, I assumed that maybe it was because of more internet traffic for my ISP. Now that the holidays are over, the speed did not increase back to normal. Therefore, I ran a bunch of speed tests. Here are the results:

• 
  ■ Wired: 4.5Mbps
  ■ Router (Wireless): 4.4Mbps
  ■ Range Extender (Directly next to connecting device): 4.4Mbps
  ■ Range Extender (10-20ft away from the connecting device): 0.5Mbps - 1.2Mbps

So when I am sitting right next to the range extender, my speed is the same as the router. When I move across the room from the extender, my speeds bite the dust. This makes Netflix virtually unwatchable. Since I could watch Netflix previously, it would appear that this issue is new.

The bigger concern is that all of my devices still get almost a full signal, even when they are 20 feet away. Therefore, I wouldn't think that a lack of signal is causing the issue.

Any ideas on what's causing it?

Note: I have already tried both restoring defaults and rebooting the range extender, but that does not improve the situation.

 

[thx1138v2]

Radio signal propagation is tricky. Since you're still getting fairly good signal strength I'm guessing it might be some kind of interference causing the packets to be corrupted and being resent. You might try starting this up across the room and then go around to everything in the room not required for the transmission and turn each item off one by one and go back and check the speed. I'm not sure I believe it but I've heard LED lighting can affect WiFi. I had one occasion with a client that had some metal art hanging on the wall that was causing reflections/interference/something? We took the wall hangings down and everything worked fine. That, however, was in a metal frame building. I don't have a clue if that played a part or not. Some rooms can have dead spots for no apparent reason. It might be wiring and/or metal plumbing in the wall. I saw a device that would find dead spots on one of the computer web sites but don't remember where I saw it now. Probably one of these but you'll have to search for it.
ARS Technica
Extreme Tech
Hardware Secrets

It might not even be anything in your house. It might be a neighbor's equipment if they are close enough. One case I heard about was due to increased air traffic during the holidays. The air traffic stacked up and the holding pattern was over the location having the problem. The problem went away after the holidays.

 

[ComputerWhiz305]

Radio signal propagation is tricky. Since you're still getting fairly good signal strength I'm guessing it might be some kind of interference causing the packets to be corrupted and being resent. You might try starting this up across the room and then go around to everything in the room not required for the transmission and turn each item off one by one and go back and check the speed. I'm not sure I believe it but I've heard LED lighting can affect WiFi. I had one occasion with a client that had some metal art hanging on the wall that was causing reflections/interference/something? We took the wall hangings down and everything worked fine. That, however, was in a metal frame building. I don't have a clue if that played a part or not. Some rooms can have dead spots for no apparent reason. It might be wiring and/or metal plumbing in the wall. I saw a device that would find dead spots on one of the computer web sites but don't remember where I saw it now. Probably one of these but you'll have to search for it.
ARS Technica
Extreme Tech
Hardware Secrets

It might not even be anything in your house. It might be a neighbor's equipment if they are close enough. One case I heard about was due to increased air traffic during the holidays. The air traffic stacked up and the holding pattern was over the location having the problem. The problem went away after the holidays.

The strange thing is that nothing has changed. House layout is the same. Neighbours' equipment is the same. Nothing added or taken away from the house. Nothing outside has changed either.

Found out that there was a firmware update for the extender, so I did it. The speed on the extender were back to normal... for five minutes. I ran like 10 speed tests in a row, they were all 4Mbps+ and then all of the sudden it slams down to 0.2Mbps.

I'm going to contact the extender manufacturer to see if it might be a faulty device. I would assume that my router is throttling the bandwidth down, but that feature is disabled, so that can't be the issue either.

Overall, in the past few days, the speeds have declined so much that the WiFi from the extender is virtually useless. It took like a full minute to load the Tom's Hardware website to respond to this!

 

[thx1138v2]

The only things I can think of at this point are heat or ISP throttling.

Is the extender hot to the touch? If so check any and all vents and make sure there is sufficient air flow around it.

Are you sure the ISP isn't throttling you?

Please post your findings if you solve it.

 

[ComputerWhiz305]

Sorry for the big delay, but I did find the solution.
I downloaded the range extender firmware from the manufacturer's website and reinstalled it through a wired connection. It fixed the issue.
It happened again recently and I have discovered that it is a power surge that caused the issue. Whenever the power surges, it corrupts the firmware and I have to reinstall it.
I have it pulled into a surge protection power bar, but it turns out that the surge protection feature wasn't working on it.