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Forum Discussion
"Config sync" loop with firmware V2.3.1.44
RBR50 and my two satellites (RBS50 + RBW30) were very stable out of the box for a couple of months now after getting the initial configuration right. However after updating (involuntarily!) to the "a...
So it's not often that I say "Boy was I wrong," but here it is . . .
I listed on the reasons on this thread that I couldn't go back to a single SSID (too many devices already configured with separate 2.4G or 5G SSIDs, difficulty reconfiguring "2.4G only" devices with a single SSID, etc.) -- but here's what finally put me over the edge and made me bite the bullet and do it. I spend most of the workday on conference calls (video and/or audio) over WebEx, and ever since switching to the Orbi about 6 weeks ago I have had constant issues with audio dropouts, robotic "Max Headroom" audio effects, etc., that never happened before Orbi. It didn't make much sense to me because all my speedtests were fine but the WebEx software was always reporting "poor network quality."
Finally I stumbled on this: http://www.dslreports.com/tools/puma6
This a tool originally designed to spot problems in Intel Puma6 chipsets in routers (not relevant here), but it's also a good way of testing jitter and latency of a connection. Well guess what? Instead of a nice green box, I got *mostly* red with my setup. Yes, my downstream was 238Mbps, but the variance in round-trip packet times was off the charts. Literally HALF or more of my times were > 500ms, while others were in the 50ms or below range. In other words, WAY too much variation for things like stable audio or video conferencing. (And yes, I tested direclty to my cable modem as well, bypassing the Orbi, and got great times and all green, so I knew it wasn't my modem or connection.)
So I thought, okay, I wonder if this separating the SSIDs is causing this jitter problem -- so I decided merely as a test to go back to a single SSID, not changing any other settings. Well, wow. Suddenly everything was perfect -- all green on the test, perfect audio/video calls, no more Config Sync looping on the status page, correct firmware versions reporting from all the satellites. Basically eveyrthing I said was "broken" about the Orbi was magically fixed by switching to a single SSID. Oh, and that problem where I coudln't ping between devices a lot of the time? Turned out it wasn't that I couldn't ping between satellites -- is was that I coudln't ping from one BAND to another. Single SSID solved that, too.
Like a lot of people here, I moaned and whined that it was ridiculous and impossible to live with one SSID and bandwidth steering and it was ridiculous to force people to do that. Well, hand me my serving of crow and humble pie for dessert. Advice to anyone wanting to switch to a different 5G SSID: DO NOT DO IT.
And to anyone who has and has had no problems, I'd encourage you to run that Puma6 jitter test linked above. Maybe your setup isn't as great as you think it is.
That puma6 test is only for ISP modems and or modem/router combos.
The big issue is with cable modems with Intel chip sets.
You can test Broadcom based modems as well.
Historical information regarding the Intel chipset flaw that was found is here:
MrMediaGuy wrote:
So it's not often that I say "Boy was I wrong," but here it is . . .
I listed on the reasons on this thread that I couldn't go back to a single SSID (too many devices already configured with separate 2.4G or 5G SSIDs, difficulty reconfiguring "2.4G only" devices with a single SSID, etc.) -- but here's what finally put me over the edge and made me bite the bullet and do it. I spend most of the workday on conference calls (video and/or audio) over WebEx, and ever since switching to the Orbi about 6 weeks ago I have had constant issues with audio dropouts, robotic "Max Headroom" audio effects, etc., that never happened before Orbi. It didn't make much sense to me because all my speedtests were fine but the WebEx software was always reporting "poor network quality."
Finally I stumbled on this: http://www.dslreports.com/tools/puma6
This a tool originally designed to spot problems in Intel Puma6 chipsets in routers (not relevant here), but it's also a good way of testing jitter and latency of a connection. Well guess what? Instead of a nice green box, I got *mostly* red with my setup. Yes, my downstream was 238Mbps, but the variance in round-trip packet times was off the charts. Literally HALF or more of my times were > 500ms, while others were in the 50ms or below range. In other words, WAY too much variation for things like stable audio or video conferencing. (And yes, I tested direclty to my cable modem as well, bypassing the Orbi, and got great times and all green, so I knew it wasn't my modem or connection.)
So I thought, okay, I wonder if this separating the SSIDs is causing this jitter problem -- so I decided merely as a test to go back to a single SSID, not changing any other settings. Well, wow. Suddenly everything was perfect -- all green on the test, perfect audio/video calls, no more Config Sync looping on the status page, correct firmware versions reporting from all the satellites. Basically eveyrthing I said was "broken" about the Orbi was magically fixed by switching to a single SSID. Oh, and that problem where I coudln't ping between devices a lot of the time? Turned out it wasn't that I couldn't ping between satellites -- is was that I coudln't ping from one BAND to another. Single SSID solved that, too.
Like a lot of people here, I moaned and whined that it was ridiculous and impossible to live with one SSID and bandwidth steering and it was ridiculous to force people to do that. Well, hand me my serving of crow and humble pie for dessert. Advice to anyone wanting to switch to a different 5G SSID: DO NOT DO IT.
And to anyone who has and has had no problems, I'd encourage you to run that Puma6 jitter test linked above. Maybe your setup isn't as great as you think it is.
- You're correct that it's not *for* the Orbi -- but it's as valid as any other means of showing you that you have packets arriving to the client device way out of sequence. In my case, my video and audio conferencing was almost unusable, because half of my traffic was arriving a half a second or a second too late over the LAN. In my case there was about a 750ms delay on 50% of my traffic when connected to a satellite, and about 250 to 500 milliseconds when connected to the main Orbi router. (Direct to modem, on the WAN, everything was fine.)
So in my case having separate SSIDs was introducing an unacceptable amount of lag and jitter in most of my traffic. Switched to a single SSID, and everything was perfect.
The fact that the tool is designed for something else is kind of irrelevant; it still shows you what you need to see on your LAN. There are a lots of better tools for this, of course, but this one is easy because it's on the web and you don't have to install anything.So MrMediaGuy are you sying that all your issues that made you go for separate SSIDs are also fixed, i.e. the older IPADs and the Apple devices flipping to 2.4Ghz ?
Thanks.