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Orbi drops wifi for iPad Pro, iPhone 7 and Macbook Pro intermittently
Running 1.4.0.34 on both main Orbi and sattelite (main and sattelite are on different floors with wall between, perhaps 20-25 feet distance straight line).
I generally have "5 bars" of Wifi on all devices and a stable good connection, but I am seeing random wifi disconnects on all three mentioned devices (all running latest officially release Apple software - and all of them were rock solid with my previous Wifi and never dropped out). The iPad is wifi-only as is the Macbook Pro. My desktop iMac connected over ethernet seems to work ok though.
Searching here on the forum there seems to have been similar issues in the past with old firmware versions, I just want to bring up that this is still very much actual with 1.4.0.34 and I would be happy to provide debug information, but there arent much interesting in the log.
Anyone else having the same problems? Is Netgear on top of this, seems like a basic hygiene factor to not randomly drop the wifi connection.
The devices do reconnect after (a double-digit) number of seconds, but practically the connection is lost a few times per day causing a hickup.
Hello Everyone
We have release firmware version 1.12.0.18 this firmware has fixes for disconnects and many more I posted the release notes below.
https://kb.netgear.com/000044171/RBR50-Firmware-Version-1-12-0-18
If you are still having issues after updating your Orbi unit you may want to factory reset the Orbi and test again. If you are still having disconnect issues or other issues with this firmware please create a new thread or contact our support team.
http://www.netgear.com/support/contact.aspx
Thanks
DarrenM
146 Replies
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Apply "Enable MU-MIMO" under the (Advanced-->Advanced Setup-->Wireless Settings) tab.
Some Updates on the new Beta.
Unfortunately I encountered the occasional wifi drops but it's not as frequent as before.
I was in the same room as the router and I observed that prior to wifi drop, my mobile device will show very erratic wifi signal strength. Upon wifi drop, it reconnects back almost immediately however.
Hence the new Beta is still not perfect yet.I'm having major issues with my AppleTV now... ended up troubleshooting with Apple for a while the other night but the system just can not stay connected to my Orbi. I have an Amazon FireTV in another room and have had absolutely zero issues with it. This also seeemed to suddenly happen within the last week or two.
Seeing that I rely entirely on wifi to power my televsion programming, is there an answer for this in the foreseeable future?? The wife is going to personally strangle someone at Netgear if we can't get Mickey Mouse on the next time the 2 yr old throws a temper tantrum!! :).
See my post here: https://community.netgear.com/t5/Orbi/Intermittent-internet-connectivity-outage-with-Orbi/m-p/1291468#M7496
keys are:
Implicit BEAMFORMING and MU-MIMO DISABLED
Set 2.4GHz to fixed channel ( 1, 6 or 11)
Reduce broadcast power on 2.4GHz to 75%
see if that resolves your connectivity
- Lovingbenji,
It doesn't matter if they are 1m or 100m away, or even if the satellite is unplugged. The backhaul signal from the router going to the satellite constantly drops. You can watch it if you install something like Wi-Fi analyzer or inssider.
I am afraid that it is a hardware issue which is why it's not neing addressed. Support remoted in to my computer and tried to blame the signal drop on "network congestion" from neighbors (I only have 4 whose wifi I can see). You could put the orbi in the middle of the woods and it would still drop the backhaul. Very frustratingRE: BobertSaget "You can watch it if you install something like Wi-Fi analyzer or inssider."
Not seeing that in my setup. Running both Wireshark and Wi-Fi analyzer. Backhaul is being done in the upper bands I believe (149-165) and there is nothing else on those freq. in my location. My 5GHz (Client radio/SSID) is statically assigned to 44GHz and the only other signals there are at less than 30% compared to my 88% on Wi-Fi analyzer.
I also added DHCP reservations for the satellites so that they are always at the same IP to easily log into (although not much help since the attached devices table/page is no longer working on the satellites)
The only thing of note is that I performed a hard and soft reset (Power off > on/reset button and power on/reset button, on my router and both satellites before manually reinstalling 1.10.1.2 and reloaded my backed up config). I also generated a new link pwd and used the sync buttons.
Just putting thoughts out there, not sure if any of it will help.
wchp thanks for your advices, I'll try a hard reset / complete re-installation
Whaou
Kind of annoying if this is an hardware issue :-(
What I don't understand is that my other WiFi devices work very well at the satellite location, it's only that, from time to time, the stallelite disconnects for no reason ..
I am starting to be a bit upset by those "mesh" stuff, it is really not very stable imo
RE: lovingbenji "I am starting to be a bit upset by those "mesh" stuff, it is really not very stable IMO"
I used eero for a year and have also tried Google WiFi, but with both, I lost WiFi if my service provider was down (cloud based) which didn't work well with a smart home. But I had the coverage I needed to "reach" everything (albeit slower than an R6900)
I also concurrently ran the R6900 for my work devices where I needed high throughput.
This meant choosing the network I wanted based on service requirements. A PITB
The single Orbi router is almost as good as a R6700 and when the satellites are on give me the reach of the other true mesh network devices (Orbi is really hub and spoke, not mesh). This means a single SSID for both freqs and reaches everywhere.
The other competitor's devices continue to evolve but have a little more time at their backs and have been sorting things out longer.
I believe the Orbi will get there in the not so distant future. I am seeing this as more of a hickup than anything else (a painful one though).
If Netgear would just roll out a 1.11.x.x which was really 1.8.x.x with a "Do Not Auto upgrade" I would be happy as things were mostly working pretty well until this 1.10 release.
If I could make a wish... The R6700 firmware/interface on the RBR50 so I had more granular control over the WiFi!
- ORBI!!!!! Get your stuff together!!!!! ICANT STAND THIS ANYMORE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! DISCONNECT DISCONNECT DISCONNECT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
While we wait for Netgear to sort this out I have put my backup router into service.
Below is the signal graph for the Orbi RBR/S50 (L8-Holyoke) and the R6900 (TwoAchers) behind it.
Thank you, Retired_Member, for confirming that. Combined, these threads are nearly 700 messages on this issue.
https://community.netgear.com/t5/Orbi/Intermittent-internet-connectivity-outage-with-Orbi/m-p/1148009 = 218 messages
https://community.netgear.com/t5/Orbi/Update-V1-9-1-12-Netgear-officially-announcing-Improvement-in/m-p/1274790 = 199 messages
https://community.netgear.com/t5/Orbi/Almost-officially-done-with-Netgear-Orbi-and-their-support-due/m-p/1215411 = 127 messages
https://community.netgear.com/t5/Orbi/Orbi-drops-wifi-for-iPad-Pro-iPhone-7-and-Macbook-Pro/td-p/1220137 = 82 messages
https://community.netgear.com/t5/Orbi/Orbi-disconnecting-continously/m-p/1248199#M5311 = 61 messages
DrCal: thank you for the update. That's frustrating; I hope they are updating all Orbi packages affected by this issue.
It may be helpful to Netgear and users of these forums to report specific devices and software/ firmare versions that are having problems, and non-default Orbi router settings, to aid in troubleshooting. I'm pretty new here, but it appears from the specifics some have reported that Apple and Nest products are frequently noted, and miscellaneous other IoT devices also seem to be disproportionately affected. There is a ton of info on discussion forums for these products about wifi problems they are having with routers of various kinds, and in some cases solution are noted. In the case of Apple OS X, the latest OS update seems to have helped many (I'm at OS X Sierra 10.12.5 not having any problems at all). OS X 10.10.x was notorious for behaving badly with non-Apple wifi, for example, and I'm not sure 10.11.x was much better in that regard. Now that Apple seems to be heading for the exits with their router business (too bad, they were good routers, and of course they worked well with Apple devices), many Airport Extreme users are moving to other routers, and these issues seem to be getting more attention.
- ikjadoon I completely agree. Complaints of these exact issues go back over 9 months! We really are held hostage due to Netgear's pathetic 90 day support period where you get to go back and forth being told to change channels, factory reset, and other things they know don't help.
I seriously question those early reviews and all the review sites which tend to favor the highest bidder. I don't feel like Netgear cares about us and they are only focusing on their next big release and more new sales. They are burning a lot of customers on the way who will never fall for their products again.I found this post which relates to the introduction of wired backhaul, but it highlights what the focus was.
"Let me acknowledge that our customer base has been clamoring for this feature for a while, and we are trying to be responsive to their needs. To provide context on why it's taking a while to get it out, during the first quarter, the Orbi Engineering team was focused on bringing out the two new products (RBK30 & RBK40) to market. Now that it's accomplished, we're actively working on bringing this feature and a couple of other interesting, market-requested features to you.
Orbi Product Team"
- Lol Bing, that message from Netgear was like a big slap in the face to everyone having issues.
DrCal, my experience with support is very similar. Back and forth often with multiple days of delay just to tell me to reset the router or turn off beamforming and it is just a never ending cycle. Fun fact: Level 2 support is in the Phillipines and is run by a 3rd party called Concentrix... It's not even Netgear.That comment was from 26 Apr
- at least it was a honest statement :smileyhappy:
I would request that you all take a look at the backhaul signal coming from your router. I certainly don't see how it would be possible to have a stable connection when this is going on. Please post your findings if you can, I'd really like Netgear to explain why this is happening or if is a hardware issue.
Thanks for posting ikjadoon. I would not be surprised if this affects every single Orbi router. I feel like this has to be a hardware issue, it's been going on since the Orbi was released. I hope others continue to post their results so this terrible issue can gain more attention.
All Netgear engineers are trying to do with their firmware releases is force more devices to connect to the router instead of the satellite and cover up the problem. I have had a support ticket for months and they first made me return the satellite which made absolutely no sense like you said. Their support is outsourced and when the technician hears the word satellite and disconnection they just assume that is the problem and they don't fully understand the product. I received a RMA router replacement yesterday and it was brand new in box and had these backhaul drops instantly before I even connected it to my modem. If I were you I would definitely return it while you can. I bought mine from Best Buy in January so I am stuck at the mercy of Netgear. I'm trying to get a refund due to their warranty on this defective product they can't repair.Another data point: we have a house full of Apple products and we're not having any problems. I found this forum not because I had a problem, but because I did a "vanilla" setup with all default settings and had a few questions about potential setting tweaks (like IPv6 settings). Now I am very curious about what is going on. At least one person has been helped by upgrading Mac OS X to latest version (some previous versions have not played well with many non-Apple routers). And a quick look at the Nest customer forums and other IoT device forums will show you that many people are having problems with those devices with a broad range of routers, and there are some recommended solutions posted on the Nest forums (I only know, because I look at the product community forums before I buy). But clearly there is much more going on.
First, a few quick facts: (1) Netgear did over $1.2B in revenue last year; (2) they have over 50% of the high-end consumer router market (no I don't have a precise definition for that, it is from an investor presentation); (3) some of us are not having any problems, and, in fact, have terrific performance from Orbi. I suspect most Orbi users are very happy, which is why they are sellng so well. Based on my limited experience over about 2 weeks, I think the rave reviews that got us to buy Orbi were basically legit. I saw a recent post on the forum that said there are over 700 posts about Orbi connection problems -- that is a very small drop in a very large bucket. Either there are hardware quality issues that have affected a small % of their routers, or there is something about the environment or router config that's not working for people who are having problems. Our experience may be more typical of the "no problem" customer in that while we have a lot of connected devices of various types, we don't have anything very complicated going on with wifi. The tricky devices are all connected to the router via Cat6 cable (via one of several switches on an ethernet backbone). We use wifi primarily for laptops, cell phones, and iPads, all of which have their current OS version. The Sonos units, Apple TV, AVR, Blu-ray player, etc, are all connected via Cat 6. And our wifi devices all have the latest version of the relevant OS (this makes a difference with many products). We have the Orbi connected directly to a current model (Arris SB 6190) cable modem via Cat 6 cable (not connected to another router / cable modem combo provided by the cable company). I suspect it is complexity in some environments that is causing the problems, and it may help some people to fall back to their previous router, review the settings, and figure out what is different. Having an Orbi router connected to another router provided by the cable co makes things more complicated.
For us, Orbi replaced an Apple Airport extreme router plus a 2nd AE router connected as an access point, via Cat 5 ethernet cable (in "roaming mode" as Apple recommends). This was a great product combo, but never provided solid wifi to a remote 2nd floor office. I was planning on trying another WAP on second floor, but decided to try Orbi to replace both AE units. Though the Orbi lacks the ethernet backhaul option we had with Apple AE (rumored firmware upgrade), we still get much better wifi coverage on the second floor. The Orbi has been as stable as the Apple units (very stable), with much better wifi performance in remote areas of our house (covering about 3,000 sf with near our 150mbps service level, and getting about half that in basement where we have no Orbi). Believe me, I'm not gloating, just pointing out that there may be something specific about your setup that is making things complicated, and I hope you can find it.
In this backhaul issue, I think it's actually just two issues: hardware failures & FW w/ critical bugs. The former stems from my experience and the latter stems from Netgear's repeated efforts to get a usable firmware out to those affected; I think they can reproduce these issues in-house: how else would they be writing a firmware update? I appreciate their acknkowledgment of the problem and continued efforts, but at some point, a transaction is a transaction and WiFi is too integral for our work.
Hardware and FW bugs: neither of these are the concern of customers and no customer, to be blunt, should need to be doing beyond their due diligence in troubleshooting. But, I think most are because they have no other choice and as Retired_Member has noted, there is a definitive Netgear-based failure: the backhaul should work seamlessly and should never require any user intervention besides moving the Satellite closer. Yet the Netgear-to-Netgear connection dies every 15 to 30 seconds?
FWIW, our setup is far simpler than yours: one Arris SB6121 mode on IPv4 (Cat6 connection), one hardwired client (an Xbox One; also Cat6), ~10 personal WiFi devices (5 phones & 5 laptops), and a Roku 3 + TiVo Bolt. We have a mix of Android/iOS & Windows/MacOS, all fully updated. I'm not sure how much simpler a "no problem" customer needs to be for a $400 WiFi system. We have no Sonos, no Nest, no WiFi cameras, no interior brickwalls, the closest connection to our CO (fully rewired in March '17 for a bandwidth upgrade), one floor between the router and satellite, and yet we couldn't get it to work.To be quite clear, the entire Satellite's WiFi SSID disappeared: that cannot be related to the quantity or quality of clients. Right?
I returned the Orbi today. I'll be keeping my eyes out for the choruses of success after the FW drops (and otherwise full hardware replacements by Netgear on those still affected by this particular issue). I suspect there are a few who have quite complicated systems, but I encourage them to test their backhaul connection: that should not be affected by any customer devices. And I'll buy on Amazon, to increase my chances of avoiding a Best Buy return by another customer (ours looked new, but who knows what Best Buy does with bad returns?) and get a longer 30-day return period.
True; I saw these threads and made the same conclusion before purchase; this is a corner case that stems from old devices, too many non-compliant devices, and/or very complex multi-modem, multi-router setups (that would be common for those buying a $400 WiFi ystem). My recent testing shows this not to be the case unless BobertSaget and I are the only ones with this issue and backhaul problems. Maybe everyone else affected has excellent backhauls.
To test, it's simple enough with an Android device (unfortunately don't have an iPhone nearby to confirm):
1. Download WiFi Analyzer by farproc
2. Tap the 2.4G button to switch to 5G mode.
3. Here in the lowband channels, find the Orbi 5GHz and note the MAC address.
4. Then scroll to the right for the highband channels. Find the backhaul connection (~130 to 150 is the channel number, IIRC), that almost exactly matches the Orbi MAC address, give it an alias by tapping and holding (as it is unnamed), and then filter out all other 5GHz networks to make the backhaul easier to see (3-button menu).
5. Watch it for about 5 minutes (if you're having constant disconnections like me) or open it up when you lose connection on your devices.
Retired_Member
Right, OK, how is this a WiFi system if it just routes clients to the single working device inside the system? Have you been able to test that or is this a strategy acknolwedged by Netgear?
My technical representative seemed to be knowledgable about the 5GHz highband backhaul, but just stated they had no way to test it. That's answer enough for me, if my only issue is the backhaul.
No way: you've gotten both the router and satelite replaced by Netgear, yet you still have the issue? Man, I feel you. Is there some crazy 5GHz highband interference? Microwaves only affect 2.4GHz, our cordless phone system uses DECT 6.0, we're fairly isolated (3-4 feet and a table) away from power adapters, etc. Hmmm.
Sorry, I have no idea how to do that. Sounds like I need some software I don't have.
Sounds like there is a beta patch for the RB50 but nothing for the other models... Unfortunately, my Orbi is back in the box and being returned.
Yes, I have a Samsung Note 4. I just need to know what to download and how to run the app. Thanks.
Hii! I apologize for the delay. You are amazing for testing this. I have high hopes for Netgear's FW.
So, the Orbi router has two simultaneous 5GHz networks. One is your normal 5GHz SSID that all your devices connect to (this network uses a low channel number in the 30s or 40s; also known as a lowband 5GHz network). This one can be enabled/disabled, given an SSID, used to connect to the internet, etc.
The second is a hidden, nameless 5GHz connection that has a high channel number (thus is a highband 5GHz network; channel is something like 140 or 150). This one is solely used to connect the Orbi router with the Orbi satellite, unit to unit. This is the "backhaul". Right, typical "mesh" WiFi systems carry both the unit-to-unit communication and the internet on the same WiFi network. This necessitates a 50% drop in bandwidth for every new mesh unit. Orbi is different: it has a dedicated, hidden "backhaul" for its unit-to-unit communication, that doesn't steal bandwidth from your normal internet SSID.
Right, two 5GHz neworks running on different channels. Lowband network for the internet; highband network is the backhaul. The issue is the backhaul keeps crapping out every few seconds. How to check it:
1. Download WiFi Analyzer by farproc (free app on the Play Store)
2. Tap the 2.4G button (top-left) to switch to 5G mode.
3. Here in the lowband channels (30s to 40s), find the Orbi 5GHz SSID and note its MAC address.
4. Then scroll to the right for the highband channels (go to around ~140 to ~160 for the Orbi backhaul). The backhaul will be here, have no SSID name, and almost exactly match the Orbi MAC address. Tap and hold its signal hump to give it an alias.
3. Click the "eye" button (top-right) and pick "Time Graph". Then press the 3-button menu to fiilter out all the other channels except this newly-named backhaul; it'll make it easier to see.
5. Watch it for about 5 minutes (if you're having constant disconnections like me) or open it up when you lose connection on your devices.
