Netgear WAX214 WiFi 6 Access Point
8 September 2023(Or Why I’ll Never Buy Another Netgear Product)
A long, long time ago I bought a Matrox Marvel G200 graphics card. It was (for the time) quite expensive. It did 2D, 3D, and had a built-in TV tuner. It was great.
Shortly after, Windows XP was released. That was great too. Mostly everything just worked.
There was one hiccup, however. Matrox, in their wisdom, decided not to invest the effort in producing a Windows XP driver set for the Marvel G200. You could use it as a graphics card, but the TV function didn’t work at all, despite it being supported under Windows 2000.
Matrox went on my manufacturer blacklist from that moment.
Cut forward some years, I go and buy a Netgear WAX214 access point. I’m relatively impressed with it from a speed point of view, and it covers my house quite well.
Some time later, I notice I’m not getting great speed in one corner of one room, nearest to the wall shared with our neighbours. I pull out my phone and do a quick scan check strength … and I see that the WAX214 5GHz SSID is overlapping channels badly with next door’s WiFi.
Simple! I’ll change the channel on the WAX214 to a free higher channel, and that should fix the problem. I log onto the GUI and … what? There are only 4 channels to choose from on the 5GHz side. Wait what?!
Long story short, it turns out that Netgear have, for some reason, failed to certify this device for higher channels, so those channels aren’t available in the UI. There are mixed reports that on earlier firmware you can still get them, but I downloaded the first release available and it still has the same issue.
https://community.netgear.com/t5/Business-Wireless/WAX214-missing-5GHz-channels/td-p/2217122
So thanks, Netgear, for your stunning work on this – still current model – access point, that’s basically useless unless you live in a field with no neighbours. Welcome to my shit-list.
Matrox
Netgear