Nokia Fastmile 5G Gateway 3.2 and 3rd Party Mesh Routers

[Meo034]

Good afternoon,

I recently upgraded to the Nokia Fastmile 5G Gateway 3.2 Home Internet system (in April of this year) and was initially very happy with it as I was getting roughly 100 Mbps download speed and 10 Mbps upload speed via the WIFI as well as the two ethernet ports at the back. However, the range of the WIFI signal from the Nokia isn't the greatest and I could not get WIFI reception in my front porch, front and back yards.

Therefore, I installed a 3rd Party WIFI system (Netgear Nighthawk Mesh WIFI 6) to resolve the signal range and was very happy until early July 2024 when out of sudden, my speed from the Netgear got reduced from 100 Mbps down to less than 30 Mbps. Tried various resets, reboots, power ON then OFF, then I decided to totally wipe out the Netgear router (default reset) and re-install it from scratch just to find out that the speed is still limited to approx 26-28 Mbps when I was getting much closer to 100 Mbps prior to early July 2024.

I bought three new Mesh network systems from Amazon (DECO 75 PRO, DECO AX200 and ASUS ET12 Pro) and all three have roughly the same download outputs (26-28 Mbps) once connected to the Nokia Fastmile modem. All three systems greatly enhanced my WIFI range where I have signal on my front porch, front and backyard as well as my workshop which is approx. 60 feet from the main router. BUT for some unknown reasons, I can only get 26-28 Mbps with any of those three 3rd party Mesh routers. I also tried changing ethernet cable (CAT 5, CAT 6, CAT 7 and CAT 😎 between the Nokia Fastmile modem and my Mesh router without any luck (same 26-28 Mbps download and roughly 10 Mbps upload). I am simply trying to get the speed that I used to have (April to end of June) which was always around 98 - 100 Mbps download speed and roughly 10 Mbps upload speed using a 3rd party mesh router. 

Can someone please help me? I am running out of patience and the amount of time spent trying to configure a 3rd party router with the Nokia Fastmile 5 G is crazy!!  

**Labels Updated**

[Meo034]

We are suspecting that the Nokia router firmware is the cause of it. 

[CallMeWally]

I'm pretty certain that the throttling is a result of a firmware update, but it's not a Rogers intended block of using non-rogers/nokia routers.  It has nothing to do with rate limiting of some devices (affecting all), or Double NAT, or keeping your router in router mode, or even bad cables (which I think we all know was bogus from the start).  To be clear, if you're running your router off a CABLE from the Fastmile rather than piggybacking off the Fastmile WIFI, you will want to keep your netgear** (**or other) router in router mode.   The throttling issue is actually to do with IPv6. 

The Fastmile is configured to using IPv6.   I don't have a way of confirming whether or not it did in the earlier stages of the Rogers 5G service, I'm guessing it didn't, but if your netgear** router does not have IPv6 enabled, you will not see the proper expected speeds of the service, ie 100Mbps vs 25.  

I would recommend you try a couple different things.  First, go into Fastmile via the web interface, and go to Network --> LAN Settings --> LAN IPv6 and disable it there.   Now check the speed from your netgear** router.   Speeds should be restored at this stage, but if not, re-enable IPv6 in Fastmile, and then login to your netgear** router and locate the IPv6 settings.   You'll likely want to enable passthrough as the option, BUT this MAY prevent you from being able to directly access your router settings after you save... so make sure to run a backup of your router settings first, and be prepared to restore and play with those settings to best suit your setup.  

Somewhat related... I have also enabled DMZ in Fastmile to my Asus router, just so that I know (as much as possible anyway), that no traffic is being blocked to my router which has its own firewall settings.  

Hopefully this helps.   Good luck!

[Duffer]

Took me a while to try the suggested tweaking of IPv6, but I did get around to it today.  Unfortunately, it did not work.  The Fastmile is putting out 100mbps+ speeds, the NetGear Orbi mesh system runs at 1/3 that.  The tweaking of the IPv6 in the Fastmile did nothing.  I did not try resetting the Netgear settings as I could not find any IPv^ settings in any of the Orbi settings (perhaps that system is too old to have it?  RB20).

[CallMeWally · Accepted solution]

Yeah, it's the router that needs the update. When I suggested the fastmile settings it was more of a hope that it might eliminate that requirement in the router, but I've tried it with a couple different routers and the fastmile adjustment doesn't fix it. You'll need to locate the ipv6 settings in your router in order to get the two devices working properly together.

[Duffer]

THANK YOU WALLY!  

I got into my mesh router settings and changed the settings to pass through as you described and bingo, finally full speed from my mesh system!  I really appreciate you taking the time to post the fix!!  Cheers!!