How come ORBI still getting raving reviews? is Netgear paying them for good reviews and ignoring a l

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t_kwrote:

budy 

The fact that the system does not have issues that you've detected is a good. However, one thing I really want to push against is the "works for me" response. It's muddies the waters as I pointed out in (3) and I've produced a way to know, within a few hours, if your system is impacted by the backhaul issues or not. That changes the scene from "I don't notice any issues" to "I know there are no issues".

 

It's possible, though extremely unlikely, that the Orbi's sold in the UK somehow have different behavior. I corresponded with a user from Germany that was having the same issue.

 

Roamabout

 

I actually wrote up the steps to reproduce the Orbi backhaul issues at your request. I would appreciate it if you ran through the steps. I believe, if you were able to see the issue yourself, you would change your opinion.  Right now, there is a bit of tone that "welp, every system has people that like it, and people that don't" - which really blurs things. It tries to make it seem that the Orbi's issues are on-par with other systems.

 

While it is true that every wifi system has champions and detractors, what is happening here - and not occuring with any other product I've observed - is that there are significant issues with stability (disconnects and the backhaul), and feature reliability (forced upgrades with poorly tested firmware). That's not a theme you see anywhere else. I don't frequently reference Reddit, but they have a long history of pointing this out, about only this product (1, 2, 3)

 

The tar and feature folks on this forum largely complain of a single theme: Intermitted disconnects - you aren't seeing a smattering of issues. If you were seeing irate uses with issues all over the map (e.g. somebody can't get a the device configured, or general wifi confusion), then you'd have a strong case that this is just consumer confusion. That's not what you're seeing.

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I do appreciate you putting together the test scenario and I have squirreled a copy of that away. Currently I lack the resources to fully re-create it.

If there is a way to provoke the failures with what I have I would be happy to poke at it. The core of my network is a 24 port switch into which is connected a Windows 10 file/media server with a lot (3TB) of movies and music on it as well as data files. The FIOS router and the Orbi router are plugged into that switch with the Orbi in AP mode. The Orbi router is in the middle of the house on the first floor, the sats are at either end of the house on the second floor, about 60 feet apart, and using the 5ghz backhaul to the Orbi router.

I have a first world problem in that all of my Win 10 devices are wifi only. There are around 36 additional devices all connected to the Orbi's with wifi (both 2.4 and 5ghz) and a very small number of devices connected to the Orbi sats with ethernet (a printer, a camera). To test with I have half a dozen Win 10 tablets/laptops and a dozen or so Android tablets and phones.

I spend most of the time connected to the Orbi router with wifi using either my Surface tablet or an android tablet. If there is something going on between the sats and the Orbi router I am unlikely to see it unless it shows up as one of the cameras not being reachable or the printer hard wired to the Sat is not responding. The wifi stuff connected to one of the sats gets used a lot for streaming Internet music (an Echo Show) and I would have noticed if that was dropping bits.

My point about the reviews of other mesh products is that I see several people saying they have had it with the Orbi and are switching to product X while 10-20 percent of product X customers are saying it sucks and they hate the vendor. The reasons may vary in their severity (slow and limited functionality is less fatal than disconnects) although the Orbi and the Velop were curiously similar. I recall that the Google wifi had the least significant reliability issues but people thought the range and speed were lacking which is why I eventually selected the Orbi and two sats for my large space.

One thing that should encourage everyone is that Netgear has not removed any of the threads here where people are registering their dissatisfaction. It is all here for the world to see as well as the status updates.