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Forum Discussion
Orbi - Device Battery Life
I've seen some old messages with users having similar issues, but I haven't found one yet with a fix for my issue.
I've got several portable devices that are seeing severe battery drain, but only when connected to my home wireless. One is a LG G6 phone (running Android 8), the other is an old Samsung Galaxy S5 (running Android 6). This problem may affect other wireless devices with batteries, but I don't use any of those frequently enough to tell if they have the same problem.
Router (RBR50, firmware 2.5.1.16), single satellite (RBS50, firmware 2.5.1.16). For what it's worth, I have a wired (CAT6 cable) between the router and satellite. For a couple years I had the router on the first floor at one end of the house, and the satellite on the second floor at the other end. Recently I moved the router to the second floor, and the satellite to the basement. Issue occurred both before and after this change. I've walked around the house to check signal levels, I'd consider them in the good to excellent range. There does not appear to be any signal level or speed issues inside my house. This was an ongoing issue for me for probably a year or more, and then it seemed to magically go away for about 6 months. Now it has reoccurred for the last 6 months or so.
The Orbi is operating in router mode. UPnP, IPv6, dynamic DNS, VPN Service all disabled. Currently I've got 20/40 MHz Coexistinace disabled on the 2.4 GHz network, and WMM (Wi-Fi multimedia) disabled on both 2.4 and 5.0 GHz. I've also got Beamforming, MU-MIMO and Fast Roaming disabled at the moment. Daisy Chain Topology is also disabled - but this shouldn't matter with my setup. At various times I've toggled everything under "Advanced Wireless Settings" on and off to see if they make any difference. It did not. A couple months back I also tried the nuclear option – resetting the settings back to factory defaults. It also did not solve the problem.
Both phones seem highly affected by this issue. If I’m not charging my phone overnight, it can drain half the battery or more while I am sleeping and the phone is idle. If I have wireless disabled, it may only lose 5-10% during that same time frame. My wife tends to leave her wireless disabled most of the time unless she needs it because of this issue.
Now for the strange part. On my phone, if I connect to the guest network rather than the main wireless network the battery drain issue seems to go away. At times I leave my phone connected to the guest network to avoid this problem. But I have some apps that I use occasionally (for example, controlling multimedia stuff in my living room if I'm too lazy to find the remote) that only work when the phone is on the same network as the other devices, which makses switching networks a pain.
I’ve tried about everything I can think of. Did I miss something? Any other ideas?
7 Replies
Some_Dude wrote:
I’ve tried about everything I can think of. Did I miss something? Any other ideas?
Wow. What a puzzle. Sounds to me like "somebody is talking a lot". My inclination would be to install a battery usage app, such as GSam Battery Monitor Pro. It will report how much battery has been used by screen, WiFi, Cell radio, and how much by apps. As of Android 9 or 10, the individual app usage requires an advanced setting which I think is not required for Android 6.
I am not an Android phone user but your problem is very interesting, especially that connecting to the guest network reduces the battery drain effect. I found this on the internet which seems to say that other devices on the network are multicasting and causing your Android phone to wakeup: https://www.reddit.com/r/oneplus/comments/adz4us/wifi_battery_drain_caused_by_a_router/. Could something in your network be doing this, so connecting to the guest network solves it because that device isn't broadcasting there?
That sounds promising... I'll have to play with things and see if I can find a device that's frequently broadcasting to the network. Unforutunately this may be one of those issues that may require trial & error plus time, so I'll post back if I find out more.
I would power OFF the RBS and disable Guest Network and test to see if you still notice battery drain. Possible that the wifi device is flipping back and forth between either the RBR or RBS signals when it shouldn't be. This would indicate a possible wifi device problem.
I don't have a solution to the problem, but I did notice the same thing happening with a couple of basic phones that run Android when I installed my Orbi system this summer. They had no battery drain issues on my previous setup, which was not a mesh system.
FURRYe38 - I had also been wondering if the phones were flipping back and forth between the satellite and router every few minutes. Your suggestion would be a good way to test this.
pdeethardt - That was pretty much my experience as well. No issue on my old router (Buffalo WZR-HP-G300NH running DD-WRT, which is not a mesh system).
Thanks for the help everyone. I've got a Cannon printer that I suspect may be the issue. It looks like it's got Bonjour enabled, which appears to be some kind of multicast that may be sending out a signal to everything on the network periodically.
So I've got some things to try - it may be a setting on that printer. It may be a problem with multicast on some other device. It may be the phones switching which wifi unit to connect to. Or it could be something else entirely. I'll just have to pick one, test it for a few hours, and try again if needed. I guess time will tell.
Try running the RBR alone with out the RBS online and see. Let us know if you notice any differences.
I know you may not have any Apple phones, hoever there is known batter problems on recent iOS 14 versions.
