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Almost officially done with Netgear Orbi and their support due to not fixing the wifi issues
I am done waiting not hearing anything back from their engineering team to fix this issue. It's been 3 weeks now with no fix. I pretty much told them, they have till Feb. 10th before I purchase a different Mesh system and ditch this crap Orbi. This is ridiculous its taking this long to fix the issue. I work for a living in IT, and work with large products from EMC, CommVault, and have worked with their Dev teams on issues and they resolve them within days of being found.
I can't keep tolerating the disconnecting of my wifi devices (android) like this any longer and having to reboot the routers when another device just decides it doesn't want to connect any longer.
Hello Everyone
We have release firmware version 1.12.0.18 this firmware has fixes for disconnects and many more I posted the release notes below.
https://kb.netgear.com/000044171/RBR50-Firmware-Version-1-12-0-18
If you are still having issues after updating your Orbi unit you may want to factory reset the Orbi and test again. If you are still having disconnect issues or other issues with this firmware please create a new thread or contact our support team.
http://www.netgear.com/support/contact.aspx
Thanks
DarrenM
129 Replies
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Return it already... The Orbi is not for you and doesn't work well in your environment. Making threats in a community forum is rather pointless.
If you work for a living in IT then you should have patience and understand that software bugs take time, dedication and a process to catch them and fix them, specially when the software is inside a hardware item being sold to the general public, it's not your typical work enviroment software where if a bug fix causes another big one you just reverse the software update or make your workers deal with it, Netgear needs time to make sure something they release doesn't actually cause more issues than it solves, so please be patient, if you can't wait then yes, return or sell the product and wait a few months till all the bugs are killed and the product is more stable then buy it again.
Regarding your issue, have you checked to see if there's perhaps other Wi-Fi networks, devices etc causing interference in your home? have you tried rebooting all devices, switches etc? I have seen several people complaining about issues with disconnecting iOS and Android where the problem was solved when they discovered something such as a wireless soundbar which creates its own Wi-Fi network creating the interference with the Orbi.
PS: I just noticed you mentioned having your product for 4 months, so yeah returning it is not an option for you anymore.
I have to agree with OP.
The forum has turned into a lot of community users saying turn this off, turn that option off. Change your soundbar, Change the settings on another device all to get ORBI to do what it is supposed to do out of the box (No other Router Asus, Linksys. Even Netgear) has issues with for example my home network setup. - Only Orbi.
Yes these "workarounds" to get Orbi to do what it is supposed to do out of the box are great..... However:
Lets not loose focus here. Orbi should work with all options it has available in the hardware and interface, Secondly it should work with all devices that are wifi compliant full stop.
As it stands at the moment it does not......
- There are such a little amount of complaints about orbi in comparison to how many are sold. I mean take a look. Lol. If you don't change settings the orbi works. If u do it has problems. I would say an IT guy will probably have more problems than others because of fingering the system. Other than upgrading firmware mine works flawless. 4700 sq/ft house on 3 stories. I say take your orbi back and leave the netgear forums forever. Good luck.
If you consider changing the wifi password,, opening a few ports for certain games, and other devices by changing settings, then these devices are junk. That really isn't changing settings and it's basic settings. Heck, Netgear required me to change a few settings to resolve another issue I had with it losing ports. It works great on my iOS devices, and a few other wifi devices, but android no, and a few other devices that are directly connected to it, it won't let htem connect or pull an IP until I reset the router.
I have to agree with the OP, Wifi needs work. I get disconnected all the time all over the house on andriod and a couple of laptops.
I just did a measurement for a goof 12 feet away from the main router going thru 2 paper thin new house walls and I'm dropping 5mhz to 2.4.
I wouldnt complain if it was seamless but it takes about 5min to drop the 5 to get to 2.4.
There seems to be issues with the orbi, I have plenty of other examples throughout my house but I only highlighted one of them.
I KNOW the 5 sucks for distance but only TWO walls and 12 feet?????
-Bobby
- I do not use implicit beamforming. Everything works awesome without that option and relying on the "explicit" beamforming that is enabled by default. Or at least that's what I've learned here on the forums, that explicit beamformingwas part of the AC wave 2 standard that Orbi complies with. Implicit is just Netgear's attempt to get more modern wifi performance on legacy devices and can cause issues with some manufacturers. I don't need that "extra" feature.
I tried everything that was possible and mentioned here in the forums and nothing was helping. My iOS devices frequently reconnecting.. As I mentioned I'm in contact with the Netgear Support and I opened also a defect at Apple. But to be honest I do not think it is an issue at Apple side as I never had the probelms with my Time Capsule.
- Move it farther away then. Smh.
I have 3 units, I moved them everywhere for testing, nothing helped.
bobby35ny wrote:I have 3 units, I moved them everywhere for testing, nothing helped.
in what sized area , eg how big is your house as my 3500sft house only needs one router and one sat max , actually running the second sat cause issues as there was too much wifi and too much overlap
- Yup overlap hoses u. I have 4700 sq/ft and I don't see how I could install another sat. Would over saturate me for sure.
I've got 2 satellites and only 3100 sq ft. Router on the main level, and satellitess both upstairs and in basement. 1 would cover it, but I need ethernet both up and down. My upstairs is probably just 30 ft, and one wall, from my router. I'm not seeing any issues with connectivity/saturation - that I'm aware of.
I'm not going to say the Orbi issue some folks experience with Apple is Apple's fault or Orbi's fault. However, if you do a little research you will see that other vendors (e.g. Ubiquiti) are also having issues with Apple WiFi, and have been off/on for a couple years. There's also folks reporting wifi drops on Apple's site as of today.
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7841910?start=0&tstart=0
Cisco even has an entire 47-page document devoted to tuning their APs to work properly with Apple iOS products. Maybe the recommendations in there will help someone. One Cisco recommendation is to turn off 2.4 GHz completely.
Whatever the problem is, it's not necessarily solvable by just changing firmware on Orbi.
Retired_Member I feel your pain!
Unfortunately netgear has always been crud when it comes to timely firmware updates/fixing bugs. They recently had a huge security issue with a range of their products and it had been in their firmware for a couple of years, it took someone threatening to go public after notifying netgear 6 months prior with no reply, before they rectified it.
I think you will be waiting a while for a firmware fix unfortunately, however if you are of a technical persuasion I would suggest you take a look at Ubiquiti Networks (enterprise company) their UniFi Access Points are rather inexpensive, if you are less technical they also have a TRUE mesh system they have released called AmpliFi which may suit your needs
Good luck with getting those bugs squashed Retired_Member I hope netgear dont drop the ball on this one too.prob because its the first router you have use with nodes or more and same ssid
there is certainly something that apple does that upsets the cart so to speak , its a matter of finding out what it is and crippling the orbi somehow to make it work with apple products , in the past it was to force 2.4 gig to 20mhz mode only
agreed but apple is a big part of the issue
I haven't noticed any outright dropped wifi on my iOS or macOS devices, but when I walk around my house (presumably switching from router to sat connection), my wifi calling is definitely unrealiable - dropped calls galore.
I can't speak to android stuff (not a user), but there's no question Apple has had a checkered past over the years in terms of playing nice with wifi.
However, other routers have seemingly figured this out (including some Netgear models, based on other comments here), so I hope Netgear's Orbi team will be able to get on top of this soon. The solution must be within reach... Well, I hope so anyway!
I'm willing to wait it out to see what the next firmware brings.
I too am about to return the Orbi. It drops connections all day long. My biggist issue is Wifi Calling. I work from home, and I'm dropping calls left and right. Conference calls I have to be on. Beyond frustrating. I didn't have this issue with other routers.
I really don't like the Apple bashing in this forum. Orbi clearly has problems with other products/vendors for Nest Cameras, TVs, Andriod devices, etc. I don't understand why members of this community prefer to bash other vendor's products, instead of providing useful feedback on how to make the $399 Orbi function properly.
Clearly the Orbi works for some people. It doesn't work for me. Even wired connections direct to the router fluctate radically (but that is a topic beyond this thread). And yes, I have replaced the Orbi hardware. Same issues. I have moved the router and satelite(s). Same issues.
Frustrated.
