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Forum Discussion
Orbi continually causes Win 10 PC WiFi media disconnect
I installed an ORBI RBR50 router with two satellites connected with wired backhaul this week. Updated the firmware on the router and both satellites. Since changing over to the ORBI, my wireless co...
Try a Manual FW load:
https://community.netgear.com/t5/Orbi/Firmware-2-2-1-210-released-as-of-10-3-18/m-p/1647303/highlight/true#M42416
Severt wrote:
Based on the last suggestion, I checked the log but found nothing that appeared to be relevant. However it is peculiar in that it only has events starting today. I expected that it would have events from the entire week that I have owned it . What is also strange is that the first event in the log is:
Initialized, firmware version: V2.2.1.210] Saturday, December 15, 2018 08:17:44
I don’t know what “initialized” means. Perhaps the router had an unplanned reboot and at that time cleared its logs?
Next, I did check and have seen that my laptop has switched once in the past hour from the 5ghz to 2.4ghz. I also noted that after a drop and subsequent restart of the laptop wifi adapter, the laptop connected to a different satellite. (The satellites are roughly equidistant.) I also noted in the attached devices tab that two devices, an xbox and an amazon echo, were shown as connected via wire, whereas they are both wireless.
I did reserve an address in the router for my laptop, but this does not fix my problem.
Finally, I can now recreate the problem. When I run a download speed test from speedtest.net, my wifi drops and I need to restart the adapter. Sometimes it takes a couple of tests, but I will get it to fail.
Thanks to all that have suggested things to try.
My last post. This problem was never resolved. I did the firmware update as suggested and then did the MTU and channel change again with no luck. Netgear recommended I return the Orbi, which I will be doing shortly.
Now a word about Netgear support. No rancor here, just facts. I submitted an email trouble ticket four days ago. I got back an email within hours requesting additional detail. It was a template for this category of problem. I had already provided almost everything asked for, so it was easy to cut and paste it back in and did so quickly. I waited a day and no response, so I pinged them by posting a request for status against the trouble ticket. No response. Waited another day, and did this again and no response. So after four days I started a chat session and referred to the email trouble ticket. I got routed to the concerns desk. From there I got routed to an expert. I don’t know if she read the email TT or not, because she made no mention of it. What she did do was walk me through basically all of the steps I had gotten from the community post about this problem. So I repeated them. Problem still exists. Her recommendation at that point was to return the Orbi.
My takeaways: Netgear support has minimal technical depth. They should have a process for escalating problems that are beyond the first line of support. Don’t bother with submitting an email trouble ticket. I am not going to bash the Orbi product, because I do believe it functioned well on all of my devices except for the two Windows 10 laptops that were having problems.. I really wanted to make it work, but the Netgear support staff just was not capable.
This does read much more like the unspecified Windows WiFi client on the Acer (can't find anything useful as Acer Spin 13 does lead to a Chromebook, not a WIndows system) does badly fail. Very unlikely this is normal and caused by an wireless AP STA. Reminds me to issues seen when testing the 160 MHz capable WiFi clients from several chip vendors btw. What kind of WiFi interfaces are in use on that Acer Spin, and the older WIndows system, what driver are in place?
The Acer has a Qualcomm Atheros QCA61x4A Wireless Network Adapter. I have attached the network diagnostics report generated by Windows. I checked with Acer and the driver is current. The older Lenovo thinkpad edge as a Realtek RTL8188EE wifi adapter. I have the Acer on a lot of networks this year (30+) and have never had this problem with any other network.
I am guessing that it is a layer two standards implementation incompatibility between the adapter and the WAP. I can force the problem to happen by doing a speedtest.net download on the Acer. So high volume makes it happen quickly, but it will happen even at low traffic rates, just takes longer to see the failure. The other interesting thing was that it happened more readily when the laptop is located midway between WAPs. Perhaps if I had reduced roaming sensitivity, I might have mitigated the problem.
