I have an 8 month old Netgear Nighthawk R7000. About 6 weeks ago devices started losing connection to it wirelessly. Hardwire devices work fine. Daily something drops from it, be it a laptop, a tablet, an Echo or Google Home, a camera, etc. Then when I try to reconnect it, sometimes I have internet again on the device and sometimes I have to try multiple times to get it. I also have a Linksys router in bridge mode that this never happens to. The firmware is up to date (V1.0.9.88_10.2.88) and I’ve done a factory reset and left it with all factory settings for a day and it still did it. I also change the channel but it didn’t help. Being under hardware warranty still, I called Netgear. The person I talked to (Rose) had me look at the lights and tell her what color they were (white) and then asked if I can connect and I said yes. She then told me based on that, the device is fine and if I want to do anymore troubleshooting I would need to reactivate phone support at a cost of $229.00 for 2 years (more than I paid for the router), otherwise she couldn’t help me. So, after clarifying with her that unless I pay for phone support, they won’t troubleshoot it and if they can’t troubleshoot it, they won’t honor the hardware warranty. She then told me that I agreed to that by accepting the terms and conditions when I activated it. I asked if she could connect me to a supervisor, but she flat out refused. This call was worse than talking to Comcast. My assumption is that there is an issue with the wireless radio, but with them refusing to warranty the hardware, I’m hoping someone has a suggestion that I can try.
Possibly, but most likely not. If the radio was bad, NOTHING would connect. You didn’t mention that all your devices are having problems, only that some have occasional problems.
The most likely culprit is either one of your other devices has bad firmware or you have a neighbour who brought a new device online. It’s unlicensed bandwidth, and everything from microwave ovens to cordless phones to WiFi and Bluetooth are in there somewhere. I’m not blaming the victim, but I think the mistake you made was expecting a wireless link to be reliable… they’re just not. If it matters that a devices stays connected, you pretty much need to wire it in.
I would encourage you to get a WiFi scanner app for a mobile phone (I think Android works best for this, but I don’t have any experience with iOS in this regard so that’s just my hunch.) You will see what other signals, and what strength they are, that you’re competing with.
This recent Ars article (and probably others from the same author) may interest you:
It’s all the devices connected to this router by wireless. The ones connected to the other router in bridge mode work fine. As for signal, I can be in the same room as its in and it happens on my laptop, tablet and Echo. I’m in a rural area and my neighbors are far enough away that I can’t see their network and they can’t see mine. I also tried different channels.
Since you did not give any details of how you have configured the router, some of the following might not pertain.
Can you use the Linksys router as primary wifi source as a test. Switch the two. Try to keep same distribution of devices on primary and bridged routers. If problem persists in Nighthawk, get it replaced. Still under warranty?
If using both 2.5 and 5ghz bands, try disabling one and see how it works. Test both if necessary.
Disconnect all wifi devices and add them one at a time. See if you can find one causing problem. This will be time consuming and annoying.
I would investigate this. When you reconnect and you don’t have internet what are the symptoms? Do you connect to the wifi network but can’t get internet access? Do you get an IP assigned by your DHCP server? Can you access local devices on the network? Can you ping local devices? Can you ping IPs on the internet (eg 8.8.8.8)? What about pinging by FQDN (eg google.com).
There are more troubleshooting steps that can be done here but that should get you started
If a device just can’t connect to wifi at all for periods of time try looking at the signal strength of that device (do it both on the router of possible and on the device itself). Do you have 5GHz and 2.4 GHz networks. Does the problem happen with both of them? Can you turn off the 5GHz network and see if that helps?
I would remove the Linksys router you have in bridge mode to keep things as simple as possible when troubleshooting, If I had to make a wild guess about what the problem is, I would blame the Linksys.
Are the devices that are losing access in the same area of the house? Might be some electrical interference by some device between the access point and the computers.
You might have something going bad on the board affecting one of the antennas, so might want to look into warranty options if it is still covered.
I had a Linksys router that started dropping devices after a few years, but could not pinpoint the issue so I replaced it and have not had problems since.