Orbi RBK53 ethernet backhaul issue

t_k
Luminary
Feb 13, 2018
wrote:
Yes I know the cable is good and the switch ports are fine. If I connect that cable directly to my PC, instead of the satellite, I get consistent speeds of over 100MB/s. There's no way to switch the cable as it is run through the walls from my top floor down into the basement where the network closet is.

Btw, my router is listing the IPs of all the satellites correctly now and the ManCave orbi that was originally on 5g is now on ethernet backhaul, but the orbi that was on ethernet is now on 5G (at least according to the router page here):
The speeds from the downstairs router are pretty good, so it's not a huge deal, just more of an annoyance that I can't figure out why it says it's on 5G. Obviously when ethernet is available I'd prefer the Orbis to run on that due to latency and reliability concerns. On every AP I'm getting around 450Mb/s+ when I run Speedtest on my phone in the different rooms. The big deal was the ManCave AP. That AP is far enough from the router than when it runs on 5G the speeds are attrocious... around 20Mb/s, which for that room is unnacceptable given that there are 3 computes and a TV that runs a bunch of devices like AppleTV, PS4, etc.

I already disabled daisy chaining, but that doesn't appear to have done anything obvious. Is there a way to tell if the downstairs Orbi is, in fact, running on 5G? Maybe the router is just displaying the info incorrectly and it's actually on ethernet now?

You probably already figured this out, but you're not missing anything. The ethernet backhaul feature just unreliable. Unfortunately, you are throwing away your time attempting to make it stable.

See this thread where another user spent many hours finding this out the hard way

See this post for my results when I also tried this and had similiar results to you.

I'd hate to see anyone else waste their time working with this half-baked feature.
- budy
  Luminary
  Feb 14, 2018
  Well… I really don't get why you are posting this comment. I had been using ethernet backhaul since fw 2.0x and it had been only after updating to 2.1.2.18, that I actually needed to perform a factory reset on my satellite, since the UI didn't changed from 5G to wired, when I was able to confirm, that the ethernet backhaul worked nonetheless. So, I removed the cabling from the satellite, performed a factory reset and a new sync. Once that was done, I plugged the cable back in, just the way Netgears docs state. That was, when the LED ring on the router stayed a solid magenta, but the system did work. Moreover, all my wireless devices were noted to be attached to their resp. APs, so I decided to simply turn off the LED ring.
  
  That's it… the system has been up for weeks with no issues at all. So, pittying other people for trying to get their setup right, doesn't seem very appropiate to me.
  - t_k
    Luminary
    Feb 14, 2018
    budywrote:
    Well… I really don't get why you are posting this comment. I
    I can answer that and I'd appreciate it if you actually read this. You are describing the switching issue between wired and wireless backhauls that others (including myself) have run into. The problem in a nutshell is this: the Obri "wired backhaul" solution attempts to "auto-detect" if an ethernet cable plugged into one of the built-in switches provides access to the layer 2 broadcast domain. This is a bad idea since any mistakes here will cause broadcast storms and/or cause the Orbi to jump back and forth between wired or wireless backhauls. Examples of exactly that happening is what I provided in links.
    
    This is provably unreliable and this is almost certainly what is causing the issue you described. Sometimes the impact of this problem is minor ( swapping between 5Ghz or wired backuals is usually just a minor performance hit) and sometimes they are major (broadcast loops, bringing down your network). In any event, they are all caused because of a poorly created feature. Auto-detection for a wired backhaul is a risky choice because it
    would have to always work. What was implemented clearly doesn't, that's what everybody using it is running into. Why else would all these unrelated people be on the forums talking about the same thing? There is no secret club trying to undermine the Orbi, these are end users.
    
    Now, say you just spent hours chasing down that problem, and now you see somebody else posting about it. There's no fix and this new person is about to have to go through the same thing - drudge through a bunch of irrelevant suggestions and fuzzy logic, and then either half convince themselves it works or just give up entirely. You might be inclinded to let this person know to stop pushing on a rope. That's why I posted.
    
    That's it… the system has been up for weeks with no issues at all. So, pittying other people for trying to get their setup right, doesn't seem very appropiate to me.
    See, now that's where things kinda break down. If it's been up for weeks with no issue at all, why did you post 2 days ago about the issue? It doesn't pass the smell test that you would have had no issues for at least 8 days, then posted about an issue. It seems more likely that you just want state "I've had no issues" in order to drive home a point.
    
    Also, who is being pitted against who here? I certainly want Netgear to be held accountable for poor product development and actively misleading their users in the capability of the system. However, user wise, who exactly is being pitted against each other?
    
    For some reason, you seem to really want to "teach me a thing or two" for trying to save you some time.
    
    And, just to drive the point home, the efforts of making noise seemed to have worked. Late last night Netgear announced they are moving BACKWARDS on their firmware and did a partial acknowledgement of the issues people are facing
    
    https://community.netgear.com/t5/Orbi/OrbiOS-MR-2-1-issues/m-p/1506307/highlight/true#M23649

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Orbi RBK53 ethernet backhaul issue