Disappointing Deco X20 — 200 Mbps on a 1GB fiber connection :(
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TL/DR: This supposedly "1800 Mbps" router can't break 250 Mpbs; the Netgear router it's meant to replace runs circles around it. What gives?
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I bought a used Deco X20 this week, hoping to replace a Netgear AC wifi router that has never performed as expected. My home has a 1GB fiber connection, and my 2021 M1 MacBook Pro is usually connected via ethernet through the router. With that setup, I generally get ~230 Mbps on wifi and 900 Mpbs on ethernet.
The 5 Ghz range around our home is mediocre, so I wanted to finally kick that router to the curb and get a mesh/wifi 6 system. After reading reviews on several options, this one seemed like a solid price/performance choice. It has not turned out that way so far.
After setting up the Main unit, which is just under my desk, I am getting — at best — ~220 Mbps on wifi and 250 Mbps on ethernet. And yes, I have isolated the latter, right now I have wifi turned off on my MBP and I can't even break 100 Mbps. 🤦🏻♂️
I've tested with an older MBP and my iPhone, the results are the same. This late model MBP has an 802.11ax Wi-Fi 6 card, if the Deco X20 supports up to 1800 Mbps then I should have no trouble getting close to my fiber speed of 900 Mbps, but at the very least I should be matching that speed with ethernet!
Am I missing something here? I've gone through every setting I can find in the app and online dashboard.
Other things I have tried:
- Fully reset the router, I started with it that way last night.
- Made sure the firmware was up to date, it is.
- Ran "Network Optimization."
- Identified the ideal 5 Ghz channel, at least with the Netgear in place — 149. But of course I can't change that with the Deco, it's stuck on 40 (I had read that the admin for this was simpler than usual, but WOW it is anemic).
- Turned off UPnP, turned on IPv6 (though I don't know if my broadband uses that).
Any help is appreciated. If this doesn't turn around then I'm back to square one and will have to resell this system.
Edit: I meant to include the wifi specs that my MBP is seeing...
IP Address: 192.168.---.---
Router: 192.168.68.1
Security: WPA2 Personal
BSSID: 1e:5f:67:58:65:9
Channel: 40 (5 GHz, 80 MHz)
Country Code: US
RSSI: -30 dBm
Noise: -89 dBm
Tx Rate: 1,200 Mbps
PHY Mode: 802.11ax
MCS Index: 11
NSS: 2
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Yeah, @SpiderLAN, honestly I feel like this is a pretty strong outcome: we have high ethernet throughput for the computers that need really fast connectivity (faster than they would get with wifi anyway) and we're getting solid wifi performance for everything else, with much better coverage than the Netgear provided. I'm in the process of shutting down the former and getting everything switched to the Deco. It would still be nice if the wireless AX devices could get high throughput numbers — maybe that's forthcoming — but I'll take strong household coverage for now.
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Checking in here, @Riley_S — is the engineering team back?
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I did receive some initial troubleshooting steps from them regarding this thread. However, I do not have a beta firmware to provide for these devices.
They say that the wired speed should have been fixed in the Deco X20(US)_V2_1.1.4 Build 20221115 firmware update
given that you have already updated and are still seeing the behavior, they recommend changing these settings to try and determine a cause:
Set QoS to Fair Mode,
Remove Any Devices that Were Given High Priority Through the QoS settings.
Turn off Any Parental Control Features on the Network,
Disable the Antivirus Function on the network.
Disable UPnP for the Network
After this, see if the wired speed of the connection remains at 200mbps. If any of these settings were the cause, I can report this directly to our engineering team. If the speed issues persist, the engineers would like to know if setting one of the satellite decos as the main node will cause the speed to increase.
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Hey, @Riley_S, I was about to respond that much of what you passed along was moot for the time being (my Deco X20 ver. US2.6 doesn't want to update beyond 1.1.3, etc.), but weirdly I am suddenly getting real speeds when plugged in! Definitely nothing has changed in my network, but I'm hitting 800-1000 Mbps now. What's more, at the moment I'm consistently getting stronger wifi speeds as well — ~370-400 Mbps. Still a far cry from the speeds I assume that an 802.11ax computer should be getting with this router, but better than I was ever getting with the Netgear.
Sooo... I guess I'm good? :)
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