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Horrible customer support experience + G3100 false advertising Wifi 6

I have a Verizon Gigabit connection with a G3100 router. As described here here the router comes Wifi-6 enabled with support for 160 MHz lines. But my router comes by default using only 80 MHz channels. I wanted to learn how to use my router to its full potential, as I have a WiFi-6 chip in my computer (Intel AX200).

I called Verizon Support about this and spoke to them for an hour and then they hung up on me while I was on hold to be connected to a technical supervisor. I called back and they tried some stuff which did nothing but change the channel width on one my channels from 80 MHz to "5" (i.e., 5, not 5 MHz. Just the number 5.), with no change in performance. They said that they couldn't do any more and forwarded me to the G3100 technical support line.

I was connected to a guy (named Muhammad, although I doubt that will help identify him...) who was very unhelpful, incompetent, and rude.

He first refused to help me, claiming that my issues were with "speed" and that anything relating to "speed" has to be taken up with Verizon. Obviously this is wrong, as my issues are with the router.

After I explained this to him, he began to instruct me regarding how to enable IPv6. Clearly, he did not understand that I wanted WiFi-6, not IPv6 (which has NOTHING to do with Wifi 6!).

After I explained this to him, he gave me instructions for how to enable WPA3. OK, I thought, maybe this is a part of the process... So we did it.

Then when I asked him about Wifi 6, he kept interrupting me saying he had already helped me with WPA3 and IPv6, and that "WPA3 is Wifi 6". This is completely wrong, as I tried to explain to him. Then he hung up on me.

I spoke to someone else afterwards who insisted that 500 Mbps I am getting on Wifi is "great speeds" even though the Verizon speed test very clearly says to 'Check' my connection speed. I know that Verizon doesn't guarantee Wifi connection speeds, but it does guarantee that its router is Wifi 6 certified, 802.11ax, with the capacity for 160 MHz channels. However, I cannot make it go any faster than than before I upgraded my Wifi 5 card to a Wifi 6 card. I am 10 feet from my router and the only device connected.

I believe that Verizon is lying about the G3100 having a Wifi 6 certification.. Thank you for listening to my customer support horror story.

Comments

disgruntledCust1

I should add -- the last tech I spoke to claimed that he was able to see that the 5 GHz network which says its width is "5" is 160 MHz, but I think this is a mistake. It's not any faster than when it was 80 MHz. How does that make any sense?

jonjones1

First off WiFi 6 enabled does not gurantee a device will connect at that protocol.

There are not that many devices that have the standard as of yet.

I noticed you mentioned a computer with that chip standard, and that you are questioning the actual Verizon router as really having that standard.

Best way to test this is purchased or borrow a new wifi6 router not of verizons brand. You can get a Asus or a Netgear router and I am sure other companies make them as well and test if your wifi6 device works with them.

If they do then you know that the full functionality on the verizon newest router is not operating at the wifi6 standard. If however the newer non verizon routers are working at this standard then you know its either a setting in the verizon router or its not enabled.

smith6612

Take note that 160Mhz Bandwidth operation is not necessarily a feature that needs to be implemented with WiFi 6. You can get it on WiFi 5 Wave 2 chipsets as well (the APs I use at home can operate in 160Mhz mode on 802.11ac). Other features like the higher modalation rates, Massive MIMO, MU-MIMO, and improvements to the 2.4Ghz band, and likewise Wi-Fi 6E with 6Ghz channel operation, are what Wi-Fi 6 really brings to the table.

The gotcha is, many routers require you to set the control channel to Channel 36 first, before you select 160Mhz operation. The reason being is, there is only enough spectrum in the 5Ghz band for three 160Mhz wide channels, and the second non-overlapping channel resides entirely in DFS Channel space. For 5Ghz to remain visible to devices which do not support DFS, the control channel must reside outside of that frequency space. The third non-overlapping channel in the 5Ghz range, resides in a range of channels newly made available as of the end of 2020, above Channel 165, which many devices are not able to operate on as they were not certified to operate in that range. That channel range above 165 can also only be used indoors. The control channel for that in 160Mhz mode would need to reside on Channel 149.

Generally speaking, it's best to use no wider than 80Mhz channels. In my own testing, getting more than 80Mhz wide channels to work stably has been rough even on WiFi 6 chipsets. It works best when there are no other surrounding networks.

Cang_Household

I would suggest you to just leave the channel selection as automatic. From my experience, automatic channel selection is a rare cause of slow WiFi speeds.

Are you sure the devices you tested with are capable of WiFi 6 and their CPUs are able to handle near-gigabit bandwidth?

With the newest firmware, my G3100 delivers 700Mbps+ from one wireless device to another.

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