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Forum Discussion
My Ethernet Backhaul Setup
Sorry in advance for the long post.
I have been following this forum as an observer for quite a while now, and have noticed that many people are having issues with their Orbi setup, either when...
I'm attempting to use an RBR50 with 2 RBS50 satelites with a wired backhaul. I agree with one of the posters above about the setup being "metastable". Some times it works, sometimes it doesn't. If I power cycle after a problem, it seems that any wired connection to the RBR50 works, but wifi to either the RBR or RBS units fails to connect.
I'm pretty disappointed as this was an expensive setup, and my initial elation at having a strong wifi signal throughout the house has faded away. I'm wasting hours of time rebooting routers, and trying to get everything running which lasts for a day or two, then I'm running around the house plugging and unplugging devices hoping that one of the power cycles will fix it.
BTW, running 2.1.4.16 firmware
ed-m, when you power cycle the Orbi system, are you keeping the satellites plugged in via the ethernet cables to the RBR50? If so, then this is probably why it is not connecting properly to your wireless clients. Whenever you do the reset dance, you should unplug the ethernet cables linking the orbis together, and have it connect to the wireless backhaul first. Then, once the satellite is connected and synced with the RBR50, plug in the ethernet cable and it should switch over to wired backhaul.
I just installed Google Wifi in my parents' house since Orbi has been too unreliable for me. Pros and cons to each system, but in my limited experience the ease of setup and reliability of Google wifi clearly wins out based on current firmware. Hopefully Netgear can make much needed improvements.
As a side note, one of my Arlo cameras has stopped functioning properly after the latest firmware update. I don't know what is going on over at Netgear QA, but it's not good. I'm regretting investing in their systems given all of the bugs they are pushing out.
SeaMonkey80 , thanks for the reply. I hadn't tried that, and that is possible for one of the satelites to establish a wifi backhaul first, but for the second one, the signal is just not strong enough for the wifi backhaul to connect. But I think your idea is good, and in fact yesterday I finally got the second satelite to work by deleting it, bringing it next to the RBR, and syncing the units over wifi, then I moved the satelite back and connected it with ethernet and all seems good for now .....
... but....
I shouldn't have to jump through hoops everytime there is a hiccup..... the firmware needs to improve..... and I'm not sure what happens for the rest of the family if i'm not around the next time there's a problem.
Thank you for jumping in and responding to my post yesterday ..... I appreciate the help :)
You guys might hope over to the new beta test thread and see about getting some new beta to try. Migtht be worth testing it out and see if this helps this...
ed-m wrote:
SeaMonkey80 , thanks for the reply. I hadn't tried that, and that is possible for one of the satelites to establish a wifi backhaul first, but for the second one, the signal is just not strong enough for the wifi backhaul to connect. But I think your idea is good, and in fact yesterday I finally got the second satelite to work by deleting it, bringing it next to the RBR, and syncing the units over wifi, then I moved the satelite back and connected it with ethernet and all seems good for now .....
... but....
I shouldn't have to jump through hoops everytime there is a hiccup..... the firmware needs to improve..... and I'm not sure what happens for the rest of the family if i'm not around the next time there's a problem.
Thank you for jumping in and responding to my post yesterday ..... I appreciate the help :)
ed-m wrote:
SeaMonkey80 , thanks for the reply. I hadn't tried that, and that is possible for one of the satelites to establish a wifi backhaul first, but for the second one, the signal is just not strong enough for the wifi backhaul to connect. But I think your idea is good, and in fact yesterday I finally got the second satelite to work by deleting it, bringing it next to the RBR, and syncing the units over wifi, then I moved the satelite back and connected it with ethernet and all seems good for now .....
... but....
I shouldn't have to jump through hoops everytime there is a hiccup..... the firmware needs to improve..... and I'm not sure what happens for the rest of the family if i'm not around the next time there's a problem.
Thank you for jumping in and responding to my post yesterday ..... I appreciate the help :)
Agreed. Netgear should try to solve this issue, if they have not already. There is a beta firmware that I have signed up to test that may have fixed this problem, but I haven't yet installed it on my system - waiting for the weekend.
Logically, given the procedure we have to go through in order to connect the wired backhaul, it would seem that a simple fix would be to somehow delay the activation of the ethernet ports on the satellites until the wifi backhaul has synced and configured after the system boots. This way, if the power goes out, then the system could come back online, connect to the wifi backhaul, then automatically connect to the wired backhaul after the set delay. No need to do the silly run around the house unplugging and plugging in cables. Just my thought for a possible fix...
Let us know if this might be fixed in the beta...
SeaMonkey80 wrote:
ed-m wrote:
SeaMonkey80 , thanks for the reply. I hadn't tried that, and that is possible for one of the satelites to establish a wifi backhaul first, but for the second one, the signal is just not strong enough for the wifi backhaul to connect. But I think your idea is good, and in fact yesterday I finally got the second satelite to work by deleting it, bringing it next to the RBR, and syncing the units over wifi, then I moved the satelite back and connected it with ethernet and all seems good for now .....
... but....
I shouldn't have to jump through hoops everytime there is a hiccup..... the firmware needs to improve..... and I'm not sure what happens for the rest of the family if i'm not around the next time there's a problem.
Thank you for jumping in and responding to my post yesterday ..... I appreciate the help :)
Agreed. Netgear should try to solve this issue, if they have not already. There is a beta firmware that I have signed up to test that may have fixed this problem, but I haven't yet installed it on my system - waiting for the weekend.
Logically, given the procedure we have to go through in order to connect the wired backhaul, it would seem that a simple fix would be to somehow delay the activation of the ethernet ports on the satellites until the wifi backhaul has synced and configured after the system boots. This way, if the power goes out, then the system could come back online, connect to the wifi backhaul, then automatically connect to the wired backhaul after the set delay. No need to do the silly run around the house unplugging and plugging in cables. Just my thought for a possible fix...
