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Forum Discussion
Does 2.1.3.4 restrict Satellite performance?
I have been with Firmware 2.0.1.4 since purchase, happy with that, I am using wireless backhaul, speedtest result was about 620Mbps when MacBookPro connected to Satellite,. Upgraded to 2.1.3.4 2 ...
just a new update.
it is almost reproducable. RBR50 drops speed after 5 days: enountered 2 rounds.
after stayed with firmware 2.1.4.10 for 5 days without any issue, on the 6th day, it started throwing performance issue, speedtest result dropped by 200Mbps (from 660Mbps to 430Mbps) when wireless on Satellite. monitored for 2 days, didn't see any improvement.
CPU load / memory usage / temperature all look pretty good.
Wireless Backhaul status is good too.
retarted Orbi Satellite, didn't help.
restarted Orbi Router, speed was back.
Although I always test on Satellite, but the problem seems to be on Router side, looks like a time bomb something in Router, that reduces backhaul performance after 5 days (to remind to reboot?)
I am getting a bit frustrated now.
Provided Netgear support debug logs, don't think they looked it...
Forgot to mention what I have observed.
After speed dropped on the 6th day,
I firstly restarted Router, when Router was back, I noticed the wireless backhaul status is poor and stayed at Poor. I tried speedtest (on Satellite), same poor speed.
I then restarted Satellite too, wireless backhaul status was back to Good, re-tested speedtest, it now gave expected result.
It looks like wireless backhaul somehow became poor after some days, but the status shown in Attached Devices page wasn't correctly refreshed. Only when you restarted Router, it then showed correct status, which may explain where the performance problem came from: it was actually due to poor wireless backhaul but you couldn't see the correct status from Web UI.
So there are 2 problems:
1. Why wireless backhaul became poort after some days?
2. Why the status was not correct?
To be honest I like Orbi, it simplifies wireless setup with good coverage, but the performance issue is really annoy, now I have to restart Router and Satellite every week to get it worked properly... When I was using my old Router, I didn't even need to restart it in a year.
Possible you have a bad satellite going bad. IF you reboot the satelite after it's Poor condition and it comes back to Good then falls back to poor, I would look into replacing the Satellite.
Actually, I don't think that the satellite is bad. I had observed something similar, when I was on 2.1.2.18 and speedtests where only showing 50mbps instead of 100mps. I fixed that also with a reboot of either the satellite or the router - I can't remember exactly which one. So, this seems to be more of a software issue than a hardware issue.
And frankly, having monitored this forum for a couple of months now, I conclude that the Orbi HW is not the issue im general, as there are a lot of post of people having had their units replaced, but their problems persistet. This also indicates, that the Orbi HW is very good, but the FW still needs attention. And I know, that we concurr on the latter one. :smileywink:
I believe it is due to firmware, I don't have such problem with 2.0.1.4. As I described in the first post, those versions after 2.0.1.4 seemed to have some built-in logics to purposely reduce speed.
