NETGEAR is aware of a growing number of phone and online scams. To learn how to stay safe click here.
Forum Discussion
I Give Up, Returned the RBK53
That’s it. After years of connection issues and promises of improvement with firmware upgrades only to be left waiting for another firmware upgrade to fix the previous issues , I decided to return the...
I've been on some 'fairly stable' firmware versions before, but netgear just never seems to get it right. This day and age with the complexity of technology all companies experience issues with a version of their firmware, but it just seems like netgear was never able to get it right. One version, I would have continuous connectiveity at slower than expected speeds and other versions I would have fast speeds but it would constantly disconnect especially when I am on a conference call for work. This is not what you expect for a ~$400 system that promises fast speeds and big range. Seems like firmware limited the ORBI's potential.
Hsc1102 wrote:Seems like firmware limited the ORBI's potential.
How was your firmware installed?
I would second the fact that there is something fundamentally off about the Orbi firmware.
I still love the hardware and no other router/mesh comes close in performance when the system works fine.
However the way the firmware distribution is managed + the inherent bugs in the code base (I presume) make the experience far less positive than otherwise.
My initial setup a year ago took over 2 days of trubleshooting before I got it stable
Adding a new satellite a few weeks ago broke a lot of things and took almost a week of hit & trial to get things back to normal (Eventually settled by setting Orbi as AP , downgrading firmware to 2.1.something and blocking internet access to all Orbis - to prevent auto updates)
Oh, and each time it reboots (say after a power failure), the whole network takes severeal minutes to come up and hours to fully stabilize. Short Brownouts and blackouts are fairly common in my town and I had to eventually move the Orbi power to a small UPS to avoid this
I think there is a lot more happening on the layer 2 switching on the Orbi than what happens on a traditional router and something about it is off
superczar wrote:I would second the fact that there is something fundamentally off about the Orbi firmware.
I still love the hardware and no other router/mesh comes close in performance when the system works fine.
However the way the firmware distribution is managed + the inherent bugs in the code base (I presume) make the experience far less positive than otherwise.
Please keep in mind that the only firmware pushed to users automatically are ones with major revisions. All others are up to the users. May not be a 100% fool proof system, but if your network is working and you login to the router and see that a update is 'available', shouldn't you ask yourself..."why?", unless you like living on the edge and particiapting in NGs new beta test group.
- In my case I had zero intent or wish to go to the latest firmware.
When adding a simple extra satellite broke my existing LAN, I had to go through a 100 hoops ( including updates to a minor non push revision) before finally settling on a forced downgrade to 2.1.4.16 ( and assigning static IPs to the Orbis + blocking internet access to them) to get things working.
On a side note, I have gone through plenty of home networking equipment over the last almost two decades. Enough to lose count of but there is none that I have seen that’s so capable yet so problematic
I and others are having good operation with current FW. Though we use factory resets and setup from scratch.
Fw is stable
superczar wrote:I would second the fact that there is something fundamentally off about the Orbi firmware.
I still love the hardware and no other router/mesh comes close in performance when the system works fine.
However the way the firmware distribution is managed + the inherent bugs in the code base (I presume) make the experience far less positive than otherwise.
My initial setup a year ago took over 2 days of trubleshooting before I got it stable
Adding a new satellite a few weeks ago broke a lot of things and took almost a week of hit & trial to get things back to normal (Eventually settled by setting Orbi as AP , downgrading firmware to 2.1.something and blocking internet access to all Orbis - to prevent auto updates)
Oh, and each time it reboots (say after a power failure), the whole network takes severeal minutes to come up and hours to fully stabilize. Short Brownouts and blackouts are fairly common in my town and I had to eventually move the Orbi power to a small UPS to avoid this
I think there is a lot more happening on the layer 2 switching on the Orbi than what happens on a traditional router and something about it is off
FURRYe38 wrote:I and others are having good operation with current FW. Though we use factory resets and setup from scratch.
While many others do NOT. Factory reset is a hassle and is for lost password
It was installed via the orbilogin page and as I always do, I did the factory reset.
Hsc1102 wrote:It was installed via the orbilogin page and as I always do, I did the factory reset.
You did a factory reset and you still have problems?
