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Intermittent internet connectivity outage with Orbi?
I just installed my new Orbi router yesterday, replacing a Nighthawk R8500. I believe that overall wireless coverage has improved, though top-end performance is not quite as high (measured via fast....
I read in the other "Ring Door Bell" thread that a customer had better results after disabling "Enable Implicit BEAMFORMING". So I tried that just to see what happens. It's probably too early to tell yet, but my 2 Nest cameras have only disconnected once in the past 2 days and I think that's because there was a power outage at my house today (I wasn't home and both cameras went out at the same time, something the intermittent outages haven't done).
I installed 1.4.0.16 yesterday and enabled Implicit BEAMFORMING around 5pm as a test to see if any of my 2 Dropcams would intermittently disconnect as I originally reported in this post. Unfortunately they did disconnect - At 5:34, 6:23, 6:33, and 6:38. I soon disabled it again to prevent these disconnects and they've been fine all day today.
So sorry, but this issue still exists with the latest 1.4.0.16 firmware. Fortunately disabling implicit beamforming is still a workaround.
From my point of view, this isn't a Netgear problem, per se - the Dropcams clearly have a driver issue with the implementation (because otherwise *all* devices would negatively react to beamforming).
However, pragmatically, it's exceedingly unlikely to ever be fixed by Google (just like the original Ring doorbell) - thus I think the earlier-proposed solution of disabling beamforming per-device is probably as good as it's going to get.
Netgear, any chance of this being implemented?
Rodney
> From my point of view, this isn't a Netgear problem, per se - the Dropcams clearly have a driver issue with
> the implementation (because otherwise *all* devices would negatively react to beamforming).
My previous netgear R8000 also had beamforming but my Dropcams (and Nest cameras) did not similarly frequently disconnect. Therefore I don't think we have the data yet to assert that this is a Dropcam-specific problem with beamforming vs. a Netgear or Orbi bug. Anyone know of any other non-Netgear router with beamforming where (only) Dropcams/Nest cameras disconnect?
Our other devices may also be experiencing short disconnects and recovering... It's only the Dropcams/Nest cameras, their continuous network connection, and Google email alerts that notifiy us each time when it happens (even if very brief).
I wasn't aware of the experience with the R8000 - that's an interesting datapoint. I focused on the Dropcams in particular because they are known to have issues with a number of 2016-release/mesh products besides Orbi, and Google is long-and-notoriously known for their poor after-sales support in general on issues like this.
It may well be that there's no clear way to indicate who's at fault here - in both cases, the vendors are sourcing the wireless chipsets (and thus drivers) from other manufacturers where they (being Google and Netgear) have little to no control over the usually binary-only code blobs supplied to them by the chipset makers. It's an unfortunate reality that has persisted for more than a decade.
Rodney