Hey all,

Newbie here. I'm more of a mechanical geek than network/IT geek, but I've been administering my own home networks for 15 yrs now. Admittedly these networks have been very basic.

Was having wireless reliability issues with my ISP -provided gateway (Xfinity vertical white box about 18 months old). Although we get good speeds (1200+ Mbs) through the modem/router, the reach and reliability have been lacking.

A friend turned me on these products, so I purchased a RB5009 router and two RBcAPGi-5acD2nD access points. He worked to configure them for me, leveraging his own configuration work.

I got them set up in my home and have been playing with setup and locations.

Question 1: Although I get very good wireless speeds from the Xfinity box when I'm very close (700-900 Mbs), I cannot get more than 250-300 out of my Mikrotik APs, regardless of proximity. Wired speeds out the RB5009 seem limited to around 500 Mbs. I've tried resetting both various times. I've also tried putting the Xfinity router into bridge mode, but same result. Any thoughts on configuration settings in either the router or cAPs that may be limiting bandwidth?

Question 2: As a coarse measure of security, I like to go to GRC dot com (SPinRite and Shields UP!) by Steve Gibson to test my network for glaring vulnerabilities. I got good results with the exception of the standard "ping" request, which was acknowledged. Are there simple firewall settings that can fix this so that random pings to my system will be ignored? I've heard firewall settings have the danger of turning my router into a brick, so I'm reticent to just start poking around. I also don't want to break basic functionality since my family of 5 relies on the internet for daily important stuff )as we all do).

Thanks in advance!

Being able to ping is often necessary for testing and useful for other things. Most people with plenty of IT experience do not block it, aka not recommended.

What is more concerning is the seeming wired speed limitation on the RB5009 as it is capable of far more.
Thus I point to the either the ISP modem or ISP modem router in front of it or your paid for throughput as the culprit.

Does your RB5009 get a public IP or a private IP on the WAN side??

As for CapaCs........... 867/3 is the realistic max one should get = in the range of 290, so your getting reasonable results.......

As for Xfinity speeds, are those being reported by the xinfinity or is your testing more accurate...........

Being able to ping is often necessary for testing and useful for other things. Most people with plenty of IT experience do not block it, aka not recommended.

OK. Good info. Thanks.

What is more concerning is the seeming wired speed limitation on the RB5009 as it is capable of far more.
Thus I point to the either the ISP modem or ISP modem router in front of it or your paid for throughput as the culprit.

I certainly understood my new hardware as easily capable of higher speeds and I agree that it should be higher. I haven't tested it wired directly out of the router yet; I have a 100' cat5 cable with POE going to the cAP (acting as a switch) and then wired out to another switch and then to my laptop. Could the older cable, extra long, with two switches cause such significant bandwidth loss? I understood those losses to be minimal to negligible. Am I mistaken?

Does your RB5009 get a public IP or a private IP on the WAN side??

I don't understand this question - could you easily point me to where I can find how to determine this?

As for CapaCs........... 867/3 is the realistic max one should get = in the range of 290, so your getting reasonable results.......

Oh. This is disappointing. I was under the impression that these cAPs were more capable than that. My Xfinity router was pushing out 700+ on the regular (admittedly, you had to be very close)

As for CapaCs........... 867/3 is the realistic max one should get = in the range of 290, so your getting reasonable results.......

As for Xfinity speeds, are those being reported by the xinfinity or is your testing more accurate...........

All speeds on laptop are tested through speedof.me or bandwidthplace.com . I use the app "speedtest" by Ookla on my android smartphone. I found good consistency between these three tests.

Thanks for your help!

Yeah I would try to upgrade to a cat5e or cat6 cable whichever is cheaper. The use of switches should not adversely affect the speeds.

I highly doubt xfinity model would give you that much throughput, maybe 500-600 at best. Unless its wifi 6E and came out yesterday.