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AmitR's avatar
AmitR
NETGEAR Employee Retired
Mar 09, 2018
Solved

Orbi MR 2.1 issues update 3/9/18

Let me give you a quick update on the status since the last time we posted.  Over the last several weeks, we assembled a cross functional team, locked them in a room with food and coffee and dedicate...
Troubleshooting
Starbucky's avatar
Starbucky
Apprentice
Mar 17, 2018

I have similar circumstances. I've had my RBK50 for three weeks now and only experienced wifi disconnects (multiple clients) last saturday and then a random reboot last sunday morning. I have one week left to return the system and I am considering going out today to guy a Velop 3 pack. I have been waiting for a few days to get access to the beta firmware and after I agreed to the NDA or whatever I haven't heard back and all my follow-ups have gone un-answered.

Even though i've only had a couple glitches I don't want to take chance that after next week my system will start to drop wifi and start rebooting as is the case for other Orbi owners who've owned their systems for a longers period.

We really like Circle and I'm going to have to drop another $130CAD on the Circle device and attach that to the Velop solution...which alltogether will end costing a bunch more than the RBK50.

Anyway I'm tired of worrying about whether to return or not. I just hope I don't run into issues with the Velop.

snaptopixel's avatar
snaptopixel
Tutor
Mar 17, 2018
AFAIK the Circle device only has a 10/100 Ethernet port so your speeds will be maxed out at 100mbps, that was the whole reason I bought the Orbi instead. Would love to get a hold of the beta firmware to get Circle going. Router is working fine otherwise
  • Starbucky's avatar
    Starbucky
    Apprentice
    Mar 18, 2018

    Actually the speed of the interface for Circle doesn't realy make a difference. Latency would be more of an issue (wifi more latency vs wired). The Circle device is not an inline component so traffic does not go through it. It works by highjacking the DNS requests for managed devices through ARP cache poisoning. It does increase the broadcasts on the LAN and uses very little WAN bandwidth fromwhat I can tell. It doesn't have much impact on performance.

     

    I bought a Velop 3pk and Circle box yesterday and have been doing lots of testing. The initial setup was very similar to Orbi and similar amount of time. I'm only using one satellite (wireless backhaul right now, i will test wired also) at this point to better compare the Velop to the Orbi RBK50. I placed the router and satellite in the same spots I had the Orbis. It took a while to reconfigure all my cams, home automation stuff, streaming devices, tablets, phones, etc.. 30+ devices, not counting PCs . I used the Speedtest app on my iPhone 7 in every room of the house and indeed the Orbi is usually faster. The roaming is similar for both brands (seemingly for iOS clients). It will maintain connection with the current node and drop to 2.4G when the second node is closer and a 5G connection would be possible. 

    This is day two so I can't comment on stability (dropped connections or internet). The Velop forums also show users having dropped connections and reboot issues so it suffers from similar issues the Orbis are having with the latest FW. Velop owners are also saying that speed gradually decreases over time and reboots are required to restore speed. I haven't seen that issue in the Orbi forums. Anyway things aren't that much better on the Velop issues side, alot of angry postings there too about the amount of time being taken to resolve issues.

     

    My initial feeling is that I may actually stick with the Orbi. I've had a couple of issues with it with dropped wifi connections and one reboot in three weeks. I just fear regretting it later on. One of the major reasons, funny enough, is that the Velop web interface sucks, no advanced config, no stats, no VPN solution, logging, etc. The devices page is nicer in a way but devices frequently show as being offline (long time issue for Velop). Other little things too, way too basic. The iOS/Android app however is better IMO than Orbi's. Mind you not by much. They're both lacking.

     

     Anyway I'm going to keep testing the Velop. I have 5 days left to return the Orbi.

     

    I'm still hoping the moderators/engeneering will provide me the 2.2 beta but no one is getting back to me...

     

                    

    • DerAusgewandert's avatar
      DerAusgewandert
      Star
      Mar 19, 2018

      strange, I posted a reply and my post disappeared...

       

      Starbucky, I can confirm your findings.

      I tested a Velop (2pk) side by side with the Orbi and the bottomline is that the Orbi is better in handling roaming clients. The connection on the Velop would go down to fair with very weak signal before it switched me over to the next node which was right next to me. It then switched to the 2.4GHz rather than the 5GHz as well. Lots of spots in the house with bad signal because of that. Under identical conditions with the Orbi, I never lost the 5GHz connection and the signal is always excellent throughout the house, seemlessly switching between nodes. Sure enough, this is one of the hotter topics in the Velop forum with a number of users with that exact problem - not even mentioning other threads with internet connection issues. Lots of angy users, just like here.

       

      I will probably stick with the Orbi and return the Velop. I will test this one more time. Overall the signal and client handling seems to be much better on the Orbi - at least in my house.

      cheers

      • Starbucky's avatar
        Starbucky
        Apprentice
        Mar 19, 2018

        Good day DerAusgewandert,

         

        I totally agree. I did some thorough testing with one satellite to compare to the Orbi and then added the second Velop satellite last night in our upstairs hallway. Adding the second satellite took over an hour, it just wouldn't complete sinking and kept telling me to bring it closer to the router... I ended up having to basically put it right next to the router. I rebooted the entuire system a couple of times to see if my various devices would connect to their nearest satellite and they just wouldn't. I have 7 Dlink cloud cameras and they didn't connect to their nearest AP and worst of all a basement camera insisted on connecting to the second floor satellite with barely any service making it essentially non functional. As I sit at work this morning two of my other cameras aren't connecting remotely. I also have 5 Chromecast Audio throughout the house and all of them connected to the router rather than their closest respective satellites. Those are some of the stationary devices. Our phones and tablets also wouldn't roam well at all. I tried wired backhauil too and it didn't make any difference, in fact it messed up the devices page identifying all wired clients as connected to one of the satellites when they are in fact connected to a gigabit switch on the router... All said, in my case the RBK50 2pk is much better than Velop 3pk. I'm packing up the Velop tonight and re-installing the Orbi, keeping my fingers crossed that I continue to have minimal issues.

         

        Cheers,