Negear R7000 Nighthawk Quiet Hum Normal?

[multimedia_geek]

Hi all, first post here .

The title pretty much says it all. My parents just got their internet upgraded to 60Mbps (tests around the house with my Nexus 5 and the R7000 yield between 61 and 70 Mbps) and needed an upgrade on their dying WNR2000. They wanted to cheap out on a router but while I am in town for the summer I am setting up a Plex server with full Blu-ray rips done with MakeMKV. My teenage brother is also showing some signs of becoming a serious bandwidth hog. I thought I should be safe and pick a high end router that should also last them a long time. I also like making them buy expensive gear I cant afford . After doing some digging I picked the Netgear Nighthawk R7000 over the Asus RT-AC68U.

The important part is that when under load (small, big, medium - it doesn't matter) from a client it makes a quiet humming/hissing noise. The router works perfectly other than the noise. I would bet this is the power supply and shouldn't be a super big concern but I wanted to make sure I shouldn't exchange it out. I would hate to have had them pay $180 for a device that will drop dead early. Online opinions seem to be split. Some think that is is normal for some models to do it, while others believe it is the sound of a defective power supply that could give out at any time.

Also, I am fairly certain I posted in the right area, but if I didn't feel free to move me around .

Thanks Ahead!

 

[theveterans]

Brand new router making noise is NOT normal IMO. My brand new Linksys WRT1900AC (never seen or heard the fan spin yet) and 5 year old Netgear WNR3500Lv1 never made a noise whatsoever even under heavy use. Exchange it ASAP as it's an indication of short lifespan IMO.

 

[multimedia_geek]

Works just fine so far, but I am going to exchange it out for a new one later this week just to be on the safe side. This thing is so much faster than their old POS. It can actually handle full Blu-ray rips to multiple clients in the house while their old one couldn't even do one.

(Edit) It seems to be having occasional dropouts. Both Ethernet and WiFi connections die - my AT&T Microcell dropped off the radar and I lost connectivity on my Nexus 5. Speedtests were unusually slow (10Mbps) and continued to get worse with every test. Ookla finally wouldn't even connect and I lost cell connection (Microcell stopped broadcasting) for a few seconds while it searched for a 'real' AT&T tower. It all came back up all by itself after about 30 - 60 seconds and speedtests are stable at 60+ Mbps. I am most definitely taking this sucker back for a new one.

 

[htismaqe]

According to a Netgear representative, the hissing sound is "normal" and is not an indication of failure.

Dropouts have been reported by several users, it's not caused by, or related to, the hissing sound.

 

[multimedia_geek]

I got the replacement and I can say that this has the hissing/humming/etc noise under load. Either I got two duds (possible if an entire batch was poorly made) or the sound is quite normal as said above. I did have a complete dropout on the new device. I did update the firmware to see if that fixes any further dropouts. Didn't help me last time, but a review on Amazon mentioned the update did the trick on his second model so who knows. If it continues to have issues I may just direct them to buy an Asus RT-AC66U (the AC68U is back to normal prices on Amazon and there is no way they will go for the $219 it is going for now).

Edit - Anyone know why disabling WMM slows the network down? Charter and Ookla speedtests were running between 25 - 30 Mbps with it disabled. I re-enable it and viola, it's running at 60ish Mbps again. I even tested with a Steam download which wouldn't break 3.0 MB/s with it disabled. I enable it and Steam downloads between 6 - 7 MB/s. Freaky. I think WMM is buggy on the current firmware and causing some issues. I am not sure why the connections completely drop out though. It has only happened that one time so I will keep an eye on it.

Edit 2 - Download speeds are all over the place. Sometimes it runs at 7, sometimes it runs at 3, sometimes it hits 25, 30, 40, 55, etc. It is all over the board. Not sure what the heck is going on. It's the middle of the night so there is no traffic other than me.

 

[thiggins]

Edit - Anyone know why disabling WMM slows the network down? Charter and Ookla speedtests were running between 25 - 30 Mbps with it disabled. I re-enable it and viola, it's running at 60ish Mbps again. I even tested with a Steam download.

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wireless/wireless-features/30938-dont-mess-with-wmm

 

[sfx2000]

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wireless/wireless-features/30938-dont-mess-with-wmm

TLDR - WMM is needed for 802.11 Frame Aggregation and Block Acknowledgements - reduces overhead.

Should also note that FrameAggregation is why we require WPA2/AES/CCMP auth and encryption to secure the bundled frames in 802.11n

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[sfx2000]

This sound is common among a lot of the newer Broadcom devices. Some people cannot hear it though.

It can described as a hiss, fuzzyness, slight screeching, staticy etc.

Whatever you want to call it.

Not all Broadcom based devices make the noise mentioned - this has nothing to do with the chipset, has everything to do with the DC power supply design...

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