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Forum Discussion
Orbi firmware update v2.1.4.16 availability
We’ve been monitoring issues that some customers have experienced in OrbiOS 2.1.4. In response, we’re releasing firmware that provides a permanent fix for the homekit issue along with various other fixes. Please use the manual firmware upgrade process to apply to your Orbi.
Release note:
- Fixes issues with the Apple HomeKit connectivity
- Fixes the wireless crash and reboot issue when the router is under stress
- Fixes WiFi disconnection and IOT issues
- Fixes an issue where devices on the Guest Network are able to see (but not connect to) some devices on the main network
- Fixes an issue where device boot order caused devices connected over Ethernet Backhaul to connect wireless backhaul
- Updates the OpenVPN certificate from MD5 to SHA-256
Note:
CBR40 will be available later this month.
We look forward to hearing your feedback.
-NETGEAR Team
808 Replies
Updated and voila! Addressed all my issues and now im getting 680Mbps on a 400Mbps line that was perviously giving me 380Mbps on a good day! I'm talking steady service! Great job guys!
Did anyone else get an private message from NetGear support to help work with their L2 Support team? It was from DarrynM
- I got a PM to work with support last week. They contacted me and the tech tried replicating the problem on their lab system (reboot loop on wired backhaul). They suggested a factory reset which has fixed my problem.
So it’s just an attempt to fix your problem, not an attempt by the developers to understand what is going on.
I’d recommend doing a factory reset (not that painful) and if problems persist, respond to the PM that you want to work with them.Glad the factory reset helped with yours. Been asking users to do this. Ya I know it's pain however seems that each FW that gets released is different and for some reason the configuration persistence is getting in the way or not being correctly re-applied after a auto update. I've posted this behavior to NG. Not sure why they can't seem to get a seemless update to work with out users having to resort to a full factory reset and set up from scratch. Hopefully they will figure it out. Ive had no issues after donig a factory reset and setting up from scratch. Then do a save configuration to file. Keep this for the current version of FW that it was saved for.
jeblis wrote:
I got a PM to work with support last week. They contacted me and the tech tried replicating the problem on their lab system (reboot loop on wired backhaul). They suggested a factory reset which has fixed my problem.
So it’s just an attempt to fix your problem, not an attempt by the developers to understand what is going on.
I’d recommend doing a factory reset (not that painful) and if problems persist, respond to the PM that you want to work with them.
I have what amounts to an RBK43 setup. (Began with RBR40 and RBS40 and later added a second RBS40). I have at times loved and at other times hated this product/setup. As of 2.1.4.16 the affair is over. I pulled the whole setup and went back to my "trusty" (relative to the Orbi) R6700v2. What is SO frustrating to me is how some people are reporting great success and everything 'fixed" after this firmware update. EXACTLY the opposite for me... Horror show. Lately I had been having an occasional dropouts. (My system was stable back in the day (?version 1.x.x.x days as I recall) but since then and with each forced upgrade I feel like the number of drops has increased. With .16 it was absolutely ABYSMAL for my system/setup. (Frequent drops within 2 hours of a firmware upgrade/total system redo/reset/factory reset of ALL units.)
I have DONE absolutely everything suggested... repeatedly. Simple setup, factory reset more times than I care to admit. Don't use ethernet backhaul. Upgraded satellites first, router second. I've disabled EVERY "feature" that the system was supposed to offer, MIMO, Beam forming, daisy chain etc etc ect. My wifi channels have been adjusted, eliminated any switches for testing, changed cables (despite the most laughable suggestion I've ever seen in the forum... use "quality" ethernet cables... NOT the one included in the box")... I've asked my neighbors to turn off their WiFi because my Orbi doesnt work right, I've worn a tin foil hat... NONE of it works...
I'm a Netgear fanboy, trust me, but there are limits. Short of users just removing the system entirely, which I have been forced to do... here is my suggestion to Netgear.
Maybe Netgear or the Moderators or this forum could provide some information as to WHAT the problem actually is? Does Netgear know?
I feel like there are hundreds of unsatisfied users with dropout issues and as of yet I havent read in 1000's of posts what exactly the trouble is? Maybe if Netgear could spell it out? Say what they are doing to fix it? What has been tried? A roadmap or plan of sorts; users could hold onto some tiny sliver of hope or faith that this system will work someday. I WANT it to, trust me... when it DID work the coverage and throughput and saturation were spectacular but when the wifi/internet go out 15 times a day it doesnt matter how fast it is. (Quote from my son... "Dad, slow is better than zero")
What makes me the MOST upset is that when it worked I recommended it to others... I feel BADLY now... like I wasted THEIR money too.
I appreciate that the team is working on it, I realize that they just released a firmware that was supposed to fix the crashing "under stress"
- Fixes the wireless crash and reboot issue when the router is under stress
(The fact that a product can't function "under stress" does NOT leave me feeling good about it by the way)
In any event, I'm joining the others who have sadly given up on my Orbi system...
If one of the moderators wants to DM and send me a beta firmware or would like logs from my units I'd be happy to try.
Took me a year to give up... my Orbi spirit is finally broken... v.16 killed it
- Can someone else please confirm that this latest update WORKS 100% with Honeywell’s Lyric T5 HomeKit thermostat?
Because I CANNOT get my two to work at ALL reliably with my RBK50 system and Apple’s HomeKit Home app. They’ve been showing up as “No Response” and/or drop off/remove themselves from the HomeKit Home app for the last few Orbi firmware updates. They used to work 100% of the time, ALL the time I’d open up the Home app.
Version 2.1.4.16 was suppose to fix HomeKit completely, NETGEAR looks like there’s still an on going issue with HomeKit. Now I’ve reached out to Honeywell about this issue and they have “forwarded it to engineering” to look into it. But NETGEAR, could you guys please look into this or work together with Honeywell on this. I cannot quite point my finger as to which one is the culprit. RBK50 Windows 10 PC
I just updated to firmware V2.1.4.16 last night, and it hasn't resolved my problems at all. Both wired, and wireless devices are constantly dropping connection, everything from a roku 4 premiere, to to both my Wife and I's iphone 8 plus, to chromebooks, to ipads. This has been an ongoing issue for several weeks, requiring sometimes HOURLY reboots of my orbi system. In order to reconnect my iphones I constantly have to hit the "renew lease" button in order to be correctly assigned an IP address by the router. None of my other routers by other brands have EVER had this issue, but this one has been happening intermittenly since I purchased the Orbi over a year ago. I know its a firmware issue, and when the orbi works properly, its awesome, but I'm just about done dealing with this, especially because of the extortionate Netgear support policy. 90 days? What kind of BS is that for a modern consumer product. If you have faith in your products, you should be standing behind them for at least a year. And to make it just about impossible to talk to someone beyond that 90 days is also wrong. Oh, and in case anyone is interested, I did contact support within the 90 days, they sent me a new orbi, claiming the hardware was defective (it wasnt) and when the new one had the exact same issue, they did spend time running diagnosics on my network, checking the logs etc, and were eventually able to get it working with a beta firmware patch, but it took 2 weeks to get that far. Now I'm at the mercy of beta firmware being developed for people who hopefully are having the same issues that I'm having. Sorry for ranting, but really tired of dealing with this and listening to my family complain about not having consistent internet access when I spend over $300 on a supposed top of the line mesh system.
XeroFire wrote:
RBK50 Windows 10 PC
I just updated to firmware V2.1.4.16 last night, and it hasn't resolved my problems at all. Both wired, and wireless devices are constantly dropping connection, everything from a roku 4 premiere, to to both my Wife and I's iphone 8 plus, to chromebooks, to ipads. This has been an ongoing issue for several weeks, requiring sometimes HOURLY reboots of my orbi system. In order to reconnect my iphones I constantly have to hit the "renew lease" button in order to be correctly assigned an IP address by the router. None of my other routers by other brands have EVER had this issue, but this one has been happening intermittenly since I purchased the Orbi over a year ago. I know its a firmware issue, and when the orbi works properly, its awesome, but I'm just about done dealing with this, especially because of the extortionate Netgear support policy. 90 days? What kind of BS is that for a modern consumer product. If you have faith in your products, you should be standing behind them for at least a year. And to make it just about impossible to talk to someone beyond that 90 days is also wrong. Oh, and in case anyone is interested, I did contact support within the 90 days, they sent me a new orbi, claiming the hardware was defective (it wasnt) and when the new one had the exact same issue, they did spend time running diagnosics on my network, checking the logs etc, and were eventually able to get it working with a beta firmware patch, but it took 2 weeks to get that far. Now I'm at the mercy of beta firmware being developed for people who hopefully are having the same issues that I'm having. Sorry for ranting, but really tired of dealing with this and listening to my family complain about not having consistent internet access when I spend over $300 on a supposed top of the line mesh system.
Assuming that you've tried a full factory reset with both Orbi units, and have manually restored your configuration, I have kind of a wacky idea to throw out. We have iPads here (couple of iPad Pro 10.5"'s), and I have an iPhone 8, as well as a Samsung S9. My wife has an iPhone 7. Couple of Samsung "Smart" TV's *smile*, couple of desktops and a laptop, and so on. We also had a Roku Ultra that was fine (since returned, but worked fine while we had it), and also Fire TV's and it all works well with the latest Orbi firmware. What I'm saying is that other than Chromebooks, we have pretty much everything that you've mentioned, and it all works here.
I'd suggest taking various clients off the wireless, and then the wired clients, one at a time, until things stabilize, and see if you can figure out which one(s) are misbehaving. Or if not misbehaving, at least behaving in a way that the Orbi isn't handling properly.I wouldn't worry about the Apple hardware, iPhones and iPads, anyways, I doubt if they're problematic with the Orbi, I'd be looking particularly at odd, one-off sort sort of hardware, maybe an iot item, some home automation or surveilance cameras. But you never know, you should find out which client(s) are acting up if you're patient enough. The important thing is to only change one thing at a time, so that when things go off the rails, you'll have an idea what cause it. If you can figure out which client(s) are causing all the disruption, that might help you figure out which direction you want to go in. This should be a short term thing, shouldn't take long.
You could also do the opposite, of course, turn off everything that uses wireless, and verify that things are stable with just wired clients first. If your network with just wired clients on it isn't stable, then turn off your wired clients and add them back in the same way. If you haven't found the problem yet, add each wireless client back, one by one, looking at each one's effect on your network as it's added to the clients you've already added. Hopefully you could figure out which clients are responsible for the mess on your network. Keep in mind, it could be more than one client that's out of control.
Just a thought....
You're not alone. I was using my iphone last night and I noticed i lost internet, it was connected to WiFi but said it had no internet connection, I noticed my son was streaming netflix on the apple TV still though. I had to turn WiFi off on my iPhone 6S Plus and turn it back on, and all was fine.
manofice wrote:
You're not alone. I was using my iphone last night and I noticed i lost internet, it was connected to WiFi but said it had no internet connection, I noticed my son was streaming netflix on the apple TV still though. I had to turn WiFi off on my iPhone 6S Plus and turn it back on, and all was fine.
Exact same issue.
They know over there at NG. They are 100% aware of the problem per my support tickets.
Dont waste your time factory resetting anything. Its an exercise in futility.
It's a matter of waiting for them to solve the issue.
AMAZING Guys.
OK so I had a bit of time when I there was no one needing stable internet at home. (No one working from home, Communicating with loved ones overseas etc) So I thought I will give the Ethernet Backhaul another try.
I did try twice before, Once before manually upgrading to 2.1.4.16 and then again after. But both times I plugged the Satelitte into A Network Switch that was then connected to the Orbi Router.
Both times loss internet almost instintly, I didn't leave it the 5 minutes only found that out after the second attempt That is what I was going to try this time around, if it goes down wait 5 minutes to see if traffic comes back.
This time when I tried it. I used the LAN cable that was connecting my Switch (where the Satelitte was located) in my office directly into the Satelitte then the switch into the Second port of the Satelitte. And no loss of network at all. Just an intermim blip in my office for my LAN devices when I juggled the LAN cables. And testing since I have had no loss of internet at all.
Since the Ethernet Backhaul went in I have notice no difference at all with my WIFI devices connecting to the Satelitte when it has Ethernet Backhaul or WIFI backhaul.
Before going for the Orbi RBK50 system I did have a Nighthawk R8000 where the 5GHZ was a bit patchy some times in where my office was, That was the only reason why I wanted the Ethernet backhaul But it does seem that the WIFI link between the 2 ORBI units, works brilliantly. I will report back say after a week, or if I start having issuesI had a breakthrough with my ethernet backhaul.
Until yesterday (13/6/2018) i was using the 5Ghz wifi backhaul. Earlier in the day I did a factory reset, reinstalled V2.1.4.16 and then tried connecting the dreaded cable. My backhaul cable, at the satellite end, goes through a TP-Link 5 port switch, but at the router end, I connected it directly to one of the Orbi router RJ45 ports. Within seconds all turned to sh*t with lots of magenta ovals.
Where to from here? In desperation I swapped the cable from one of the Orbi router's RJ45 LAN ports to the one next to it, and within seconds - yes folks, seconds, i kid you not - my router Attached Devices list showed under Connected Satellites, Connection Type: Wired. And it remained stable.
What magic was performed? I can't explain, but I'm sure you will recall instructions for the use of USB ports that if it doesn't work in one, try another.
Whats the model# of this TP-LInk switch you were using? Managed or Non managed switch>?
Bad cable?
For those having the random reboots and disconnects from the Sattelites, I'd like to share my experience that I think may help. I have the RBK53 from costco (1 RBR50 and 2 RBS50s). I was having the issue that many have been complaining about regarding constant disconnects and random reboots. After looking at my 30+ devices, I realized that some of them were attempting to connect to the same IP address as the sattelites, causing all this mess. Everytime there was a reboot, the sattelites would come back with a different IP. I went in and set both sattelites to static IPs of 192.168.1.2 and 192.168.1.3, and then set the DHCP range from 192.168.1.4-50 and have not had a problem since. I will try the newest firmware, but I doubt that I will have any issue moving forward as the previous 4 firmware updates have been stable. Give it a try, and I hope it helps some of you out.
- That’s why this thread specifically states, Manual update.
- Everyone finding this acceptable is missing the point. I understand that in this tech world we live in firmware upgrades are common but It is unacceptable that a consumer product requires additional steps like static ips, factory resets, or anything more than your average firmware upgrade. We paid good $$$$ for this price of junk of which some of us are stuck with.
- Wooohooo what a surprise I have the orbi with two satellites and the latest observed behavior is when there is internet activity on both stalllites one satellite disconnects. Can’t wait for the next firmware upgrade which will take another hour of my life between the manual firmware upgrade for router and 2 satellites and the prerequisite factory reset.
Meanwhile I’ll be on my work conference call tomorrow and the internet will crap out on me.
Wow the Orbi is great.... when it works which is 50% of the time that I have owned it.
Feedback/status report for BretD
Having run 2.1.4.16 for a while now—a week maybe?—it has improved HomeKit. I cannot think of finding a device unresponsive since applying it. I have iDevice wall "switches", Lutron light switches, and a Hue lightstrip run from an AppleTV as the hub.
So far as iOS devices dropping off the WiFi, despite having a very strong signal, that's still happening, although, I'd say it's happening much less than before (but still more than a few months ago when this whole mess started.)
Is any of the following enabled on the router? Beamforming, MIMO, Daisy Chain or Fast Roaming?
bwc_ wrote:
Feedback/status report for BretD
Having run 2.1.4.16 for a while now—a week maybe?—it has improved HomeKit. I cannot think of finding a device unresponsive since applying it. I have iDevice wall "switches", Lutron light switches, and a Hue lightstrip run from an AppleTV as the hub.
So far as iOS devices dropping off the WiFi, despite having a very strong signal, that's still happening, although, I'd say it's happening much less than before (but still more than a few months ago when this whole mess started.)
bwc_ wrote:
Feedback/status report for BretD
Having run 2.1.4.16 for a while now—a week maybe?—it has improved HomeKit. I cannot think of finding a device unresponsive since applying it. I have iDevice wall "switches", Lutron light switches, and a Hue lightstrip run from an AppleTV as the hub.
So far as iOS devices dropping off the WiFi, despite having a very strong signal, that's still happening, although, I'd say it's happening much less than before (but still more than a few months ago when this whole mess started.)
So odd - I have a number of Apple TVs, and 3 iPhone and 4 iPads on my network running os 11.4 and os12 beta and none of them have any issues with dropping the signal from the Orbi on this firmware. Are you updated on all your devices to latest iOS? Are you hitting interferance from a neighbor? I had to use WifiExplorer on my Macbook Pro in order to find clear channels on 2.4 and 5ghz - even in a single family home due to how over powered all Wifi APs are these days...
tdroz73 wrote:
bwc_ wrote:
Feedback/status report for BretD
Having run 2.1.4.16 for a while now—a week maybe?—it has improved HomeKit. I cannot think of finding a device unresponsive since applying it. I have iDevice wall "switches", Lutron light switches, and a Hue lightstrip run from an AppleTV as the hub.
So far as iOS devices dropping off the WiFi, despite having a very strong signal, that's still happening, although, I'd say it's happening much less than before (but still more than a few months ago when this whole mess started.)
So odd - I have a number of Apple TVs, and 3 iPhone and 4 iPads on my network running os 11.4 and os12 beta and none of them have any issues with dropping the signal from the Orbi on this firmware. Are you updated on all your devices to latest iOS? Are you hitting interferance from a neighbor? I had to use WifiExplorer on my Macbook Pro in order to find clear channels on 2.4 and 5ghz - even in a single family home due to how over powered all Wifi APs are these days...
Also been running the 2.1.4.16 firmware on my system. No issues with HomeKit or any Apple device having connectivity issues. Are all your units running the same version? If one of your satellites can't run this same version I would turn it off and see if the problem goes away. Homekit definitely did not work very well with 2.1.4.10. If the issue goes away you'll probably have to wait for this version for your particular hardware model.
If all of your units are running 2.1.4.16 then I would power cycle the router and satellites and see if that doesn't correct the issue. If it persists I would perform a factory reset with 2.1.4.16 installed on all units.
I'm running Wemo switches with the Homekit gateway, iDevices, and Ikea's connected lighting solution with several AppleTVs, Homepods,iPhones, iPads without any issue.
I thought at first this fw had solved my wired backhaul problem but it was short lived. The wired satellite start going back and fourth between wireless bands, both with a “poor” signal level. I am in router mode so I may switch to AP to see if that makes a difference. About to the point of giving up if that does not work.
You say you are in router mode and plan to switch to AP mode. To do that you need a separate third-party router between the internet entry point to your house and the Orbi in AP mode. Or are you running two routers?
Chesbr,
i am only running one router (the orbi). I do have an old Netgear 3400v1 that I would use as the main router should I decide to use the Orbis in AP Mode. It would give me better qos, just not sure if switching orbi to AP mode would help. It really seems that Netgear would be able to provide a setting in the satellite to “force” it to a wired backhaul and avoid all confusion.
FYI:
Had ethernet backhaul working for a week (in AP mode). Router had to be rebooted and now can no longer establish ethernet backhaul. It was working after the new firmware and a complete reset. All features turned off. Giving up till next firmware release. Rebooting now and will go back to poor backhaul signal on wireless backhaul. Would be nice if netgear told us what they are doing to address the ethernet backhaul issue.
Netgear if you contact me I can give you logs to help diagnose (been on the forum everyday for months so I have already tried all of the "solutions" suggested by participants).
