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ATeamAdam's avatar
ATeamAdam
Guide
Mar 23, 2020
Solved

Orbi RBR50 - instability issues

My kids have been complaining about our wifi for 2 years.  Now that I'm working from home I'm feeling their pain.  I've rebooted my router probably a dozen times in the last week.

 

Purchased October 2017

Firmware:

2.5.1.8

1 base station + 2 satellites

 

This is generally what happens:

Wifi will stop working, the orbi app says the internet is offline.  I call my ISP and they confirm that the internet is infact online and working properly.  When I try the internet speed test in the orbi app it does still return a good result.  I reboot the router and everything starts working again.  I think it's only wireless connections that have the major issues.  The wired connected devices will still connect to the internet, although not well.  I can get to google, I can get search results, but I can't get any of the links in the results to work.

 

Now after reboot, in the orbi app it is showing no devices connected, even though I know there are plenty connected.  The traffic meter is enabled, but is showing no results.

 

I disabled circle yesterday and that seems like it is helping with stability.

 

I'm getting no indicator lights flashing on the orbis for any of these issues.  When I reboot it flashes white while it is booting up, but it eventually goes away.

 

I haven't tried restoring to factory defaults yet.  I'll try that next time it goes down.

 

Is my router dying?

  • ATeamAdam's avatar
    ATeamAdam
    Mar 24, 2020

    Thanks for the quick insight.  Appreciate the guidance.

     

    Any Wifi Neighbors near by? If so, how many?  I do have a few wifi neighbors, depending on where you are in the house you can see about a half dozen signals, most of them are pretty weak.

     

    I setup these settings after the factory reset.  Hopefully it goes smooth.

    New config:

    2.4 Ghz Channel - 6

    5 Ghz Channel - 48

    Beamforming - enabled

    MIMO - enabled

    WMM - enabled

    Armor - disabled

    Circle - disabled

    Daisychain - disabled

    Fast Roaming - disabled

    IPv6 - disabled

    20/40 mhz coexistence - disabled

    Short preable - enabled

     

27 Replies

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  • CrimpOn's avatar
    CrimpOn
    Guru
    Mar 23, 2020
    ATeamAdam wrote:

    Is my router dying?

    Probably not, but it might be "sick".  There seem to be two "camps" of Orbi users who have updated firmware to 2.5.1.8

    • For some of us, it "works great".  Same as always.
    • For others, it is a "living nightmare" of issues such as you describe.  There are very long posts about 2.5.1.8 that you can read through.

    So, yes, a "Factory Reset" is one possibility.  Save the configuration to your computer. (On the Advanced Tab, Administration, Backup Settings.  Do the Factory Reset: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMw4ePACgc4 When it comes up and is ready to configure, say that you want to "Reload a previous configuration".  This is a relatively painless reset method.

     

    If the issue persists, then it may be necessary to reconfigure the Orbi, which for me is over an hour of drudgery because I have made so many setting and assignments.

     

    If the issue still persists, some people download firmware 2.3.5.30 from the Netscape support web site and do a Manual Firmware update (actually "down-date").

     

    Sorry not to have better news.

  • tomschmidt's avatar
    tomschmidt
    Virtuoso
    Mar 23, 2020

    Late last year Netgear released v2.5.0.x firmware, which had major issues.  It also appears to have messed up the flash memory for some configuration items such that rolling back to v2.3.x releases or forward to v2.5.1.8 caused random issues.  If your router ever had the v2.5.0.x firmware, then the only way to clear its corruption of the flash memory is to perform a factory reset.

     

    I suggest taking screenshots or printouts of each of your configuration pages that you customized, that way you can manually reconfigure the router again to the same configuration after the factory reset.

     

    Good Luck.

    • ATeamAdam's avatar
      ATeamAdam
      Guide
      Mar 24, 2020

      Appreciate the insights.  I'll try the factroy reset tomorrow.  

       

      Is there a place I can look for best practices on manually configuring the Orbi?  I have been running a pretty vanilla configuration and I figure this will be a good time evaluate better options.