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Forum Discussion
Orbi RBR50 and Slow WiFi Problems with iOS Devices
I’ve been experience a very strange problem with slow WiFi speeds on my iOS devices for a few months now and was wondering if anyone might be able to point me to something to try to fix it. It se...
Thought I'd pop in with an update here to let you all know how things are going so far.
The Velop system has performed flawlessly so far without a hiccup or any drops in speed over the last week. I am hopeful that this will continue to be the case.
The Velop system is definitely not as fast as the Orbis are when they are functioning correctly. With the Orbis, I would almost always get a good full speed from Speedtest throughout all but the farthest reaches of the house, where it would only drop off slightly. For the most part I was always able to get the full 150 Mbs Internet service that I have with Xfinity and the distant points would only drop to about 125 or so. With the Velop system, I'm gettting an average of 100 Mbs in most of the house and only achieving the full speed within about 10-12 feet of the main router.
It's a bit tough to see the speed loss, but the reliability is probably worth it. In reading the specs for the Velop system, I'm not sure why I'm seeing such a drop in speed when everything should be capable of running faster. I may have to spend a little time to see if I can determine why this is the case, though I shouldn't have to tinker with any of these systems.
Maybe when the next firmware update comes out I'll try the Orbis again to see what happens, but I'm not too confident that Netgear will really get them fixed and reliable anytime soon.
So far, the Velop system is at least very reliable even if a bit slower. At least it's not like when the Orbis slow down to 2-3 Mbps or cannot reach the Internet at all on a regular basis.
I'm going to start posting this review on sites like Amazon, Bestbuy, Costco etc. See if this gets Netgears attention to act:
DO NOT PURCHASE ANY ORBI PRODUCT IF YOU HAVE WIRELESS APPLE DEVICES
Be aware there is a long-standing issue with Orbi and Apple IOS devices that Netgear
Has completely ignored. What happens is that over a 24-36hour period wi-fi performace of IOS devices (iphones, iPads etc) will degrade until the IOS device can no longer connect to anything.
Netgear’s ONLY response to date is to reboot the Orbi router which does clear the issue for another 24-36 hours. Netgear has even gone so far as to suggest that customers put a timer on their Orbi devices that power cycles them on a 24hr basis. There have been some other suggestions to turn off features of the Orbi system to eliminate this problem, all of them are suspect and don’t make sense, why would you buy a product like Orbi only to have to turn off features to make it work properly.
- I have many apple devices in my home. I noticed you are using AP Mode. What type of Router do you have behind the Orbi System?
I’ve always used the Orbi system without AP Mode, and before that I used an Asus Router along with Netgear Fast lane Repeaters. The main issue I have with my mobile Apple devices is the wifi seems to disconnect, particularly when I am moving my wireless device from one area to another. An example is if I’m cutting grass around my house and I’m connected to Bluetooth headphones, I noticed that my wireless completely disconnects and then a minute later it reconnects. Or if farm on my phone texting someone or looking at an article and I moved to a different part of the house the wireless intermittently disconnects from my device.
Also with my stationary devices, sometimes the wireless connection disconnects and/or freezes when I’m streaming. I have a plenty fast enough connection with 250 Mbps down and 15 Mbps up. tsig wrote:
Your wrong. My orbi is lightening fast and rock solid. No issues with my iphone 8, my wifes iphone x or our ipad air.
FURRYe38 wrote:
Same with my iPhone 6sP, iphone 5c, iPad Mini, ATV, iMac 2008, Mac Book Pro 2008 and a iPhone 4S. Has been working since day 1 with my 40 series system.
Nobody is doubting that you both are having flawless use of your Orbi systems. You're both fortunate / lucky / blessed / dodged a bullet.However, anyone who's active on this forum will know that there are a number of recurring, valid, problems that affect a percentage of the Orbi users - especially the RBK50 series. I've had previous discussion with Tsig over the percentage of users that are unhappy (approx 20% based on over 4000 reviews on Amazon)
To respond to someone's problems by saying that your system is just dandy is like saying "there's nothing wrong with playing Russian Roullete because I just pulled the trigger and the gun didn't go off"
People don't come to this forum because their Orbi is working well - so the majority of users will never be on here.
Keep up the good work of helping folk who post here. :smileyhappy:
I agree to a point that not everyone has been lucky as some of us. I also put a lot of grain of salt behind so called "reviews" on Amazon. Yes I presume there are some valid and unbiased reviews out there. However, we don't know what the real issue is. Theres many various environments and interferences problems and also iOS issues as well. There is iOS known issues as well. So unless we delve more into troubleshooting and figure out where the real problems is, we just can't always blame NG or the Orbi system or FW. There are many factors that can contribute to end user experiences. Ya, it's always been the users claim to always blame the router. We have to at least take a good overall look and troubleshoot into find out where the real issue is before just saying, it's the routers fault. Been too many users claiming this and I have experienced where diving into and getting more information and troubleshooting, come to find out that some problems are not to blame with the router. :smileywink:
Of course, its not ways like this, there are HW issues at the router and FW level. Not saying there isn't. This is why some of us ask for details and to help us get a better picture of each users situation and environment. If all environments were the same, this would probably be easy. LOL. However it's not. So theres reason why I suggestion factory resets and set up from scratch. Manual channesl and disable those wireless features. Ask about wifi neighbors and connected device info and historical details. What modems are they using. All this information is helpful.
One day, will be nice to have it all working. In a perfect world. :smileyvery-happy:
Have a great weekend.
Ulairi wrote:
tsig wrote:
Your wrong. My orbi is lightening fast and rock solid. No issues with my iphone 8, my wifes iphone x or our ipad air.
FURRYe38 wrote:
Same with my iPhone 6sP, iphone 5c, iPad Mini, ATV, iMac 2008, Mac Book Pro 2008 and a iPhone 4S. Has been working since day 1 with my 40 series system.
Nobody is doubting that you both are having flawless use of your Orbi systems. You're both fortunate / lucky / blessed / dodged a bullet.However, anyone who's active on this forum will know that there are a number of recurring, valid, problems that affect a percentage of the Orbi users - especially the RBK50 series. I've had previous discussion with Tsig over the percentage of users that are unhappy (approx 20% based on over 4000 reviews on Amazon)
To respond to someone's problems by saying that your system is just dandy is like saying "there's nothing wrong with playing Russian Roullete because I just pulled the trigger and the gun didn't go off"
People don't come to this forum because their Orbi is working well - so the majority of users will never be on here.
Keep up the good work of helping folk who post here. :smileyhappy:
just countering your absurd statements:
"DO NOT PURCHASE ANY ORBI PRODUCT IF YOU HAVE WIRELESS APPLE DEVICES
Be aware there is a long-standing issue with Orbi and Apple IOS devices that Netgear
Has completely ignored. What happens is that over a 24-36hour period wi-fi performace of IOS devices (iphones, iPads etc) will degrade until the IOS device can no longer connect to anything."
This is an obviously incorrect statement. I (and others) have multiple Apple products working perfectly.
For those of you who aren’t experiencing any problems with your Orbis, I think that’s wonderful for you and I’m glad that things are working well for you. However, when you come to this posting to tell us that we are wrong and that there are no issues with the system, seemingly implying that we’re wrong or just whiny, isn’t helpful at all and is basically mean a cruel.
I have read through all of the posts regarding these issues here and elsewhere and what I’ve seen is people spending countless hours performing troubleshooting and trying various settings to see if they can narrow down the problem. I, myself, have spent many, many hours performing troubleshooting and trying various settings to see if they had any impact on the strange behavior I was experiencing with the Orbis. That and the fact that I never had any WiFi issues on any other WiFi network hardware, that replacement of the Orbis has resolved all of the problems can only lead one to a single conclusion. The Orbis are causing the issues. Attempting to deny this fact is pointless and contributes nothing to this conversation nor does it help to rectify the situation.
So, in summary, if your Orbis are working well, great. It’s nice to hear that they have the potential to work properly, but don’t try to deny that there aren’t problems for others. Please try and contribute meaningful, helpful suggestions for what may be happening to us.
I think that the Orbis have great potential and when they work correctly, they perform extremely well and are definitely the fastest system that I’ve experienced. However, as they have proven to me to be unreliable over the long term, I have to find them fatally flawed at this point.
I feel like I repeat myself a lot in these forums.
I've posted something similar here before but here goes nothing:
there's an issue documented in this post: https://community.netgear.com/t5/Orbi/What-you-can-expect-with-your-Orbi-system/m-p/1503034#M23257 that many people have experienced with no concrete solution.
good luck - so far the only solution seems to be putting a smart outlet / timer on your satellite(s) to reboot them once every 24 hours (I'm not joking) or rolling back the firmware (but I still see people saying they experience the same issues on the older firmware)
see this guy: https://community.netgear.com/t5/Orbi/Orbi-satellite-dropping-connection/m-p/1512445#M24230
I really don't understand the people here that think repeating the same things blindly (have you tried disabling beam forwarding? mimo? have you tried spinning in a circle 4 times while holding the orbi above your head and dancing with it?) and talk down on the users that experience real issues.I'm happy to see that the majority of people have their Orbis working well. However, for people to say "The HW works as its stands" and to say "It's when it's set up by users and the environments that will start to see various issues" undermines the people that have gone through troubleshooting and faced numerous headaches from these disconnect issues.Again, I appreciate people that are trying to help the community but it really rubs me the wrong way when this is most definitely an issue with the Orbi under certain network conditions and you blame the user setting it up - especially after I've spent the last few weeks pulling my hair out debugging this issue with no solution (except rebooting satellites multiple times a day) until I replaced the Orbi system completely.It is a counter point to those that claim the sky is falling. Read thru the Google forums or the Velop forums, plenty of people there have problems as well.
Wouldn't want someone considering purchasing this product to ASSuME that it is unanomously problematic. It isn't.
tsigI'm sorry you feel this is an incorrect statement and for your system it might be but for many of us we are experiencing. and issue that requires us to reboot our Orbis every 24-26 hours, which is something I NEVER had to do with the previous Netgear nighhawk X6. I would be interested to know how many total devices you have connected to your Orbi system, in my case I have >50 devices with >30 of them wireless at anyone time.
I'm also running multiple wired devices connected at 1g through multiple Netgear switches (>60 actual ports).
For the record I work in IT, i'm a storage architect and have been doing FC & IP storage for over 25 years. I work on 10g and 40g enterprise class networks everyday, dealing with a simple home wire/wireless network is extreamly simple compared to that.
- Thank you for your posts! I’ve been having numerous issues with my Orbi RBR50 + 2 satellites (Costco Deal) since shortly after I bought it. My iPhone X gets stuck on the 2.4Ghz network and my download speeds were terrible! Supposed to be at 117MBps and getting 10... when I checked the speed through the new and improved Orbi App it says 115MBps! So frustrating! I have a Apple heavy house with and average of 29 devices connected wirelessly at any given moment. I rebooted the Router as suggested herein and everything is working again. The problem is, many of my devices are home Smart devices I’ve invested in mainly for security purposes to make it appear someone is home when we are out of town in addition to Samsung Wifi cameras. These issues worry me in regards to security because no one will be home to restart the router once a day while we’re gone!
And don’t even get me started about FaceTiming! The person I’m calling consistently tells me they see “poor connection” on their end while FaceTiming with me when I’m FaceTiming from home. What a joke!
Long story short, misery loves company so thank you all for sharing your experiences! I now know I’m not alone!!!!
Very thankful that I bought this system from Costco and I have the option to find something better with NO impact financially:-)
There is a majority stake in me that wants to see all these things get resolved in a new FW update... I guess I’m either stubborn, lazy or nieve! Regardless... gotta love Costco’s policy on customer satisfaction!
Don I thought that I'd come back to this topic and update you all on what has been happening since my last post.
I moved to the Linksys Velop, but wasn't really happy with the download speeds which averaged about 100Mbs whereas my Internet service is 150Mbs. So, i did a factory reset on the Orbi system, enabled Beamforming and MU-MIMO and disabled daisy-chaining as I want a spoke-and-hub setup. I plugged this into my main router and ran it in parallel to the Linksys Velop network for about three weeks. The Orbi system held up over this time and I didn't experience any problems or slowdowns during this time.
So, the next step was to take down the Linksys Velop network, rename the SSID on the Orbi Network to the normal network name and adjust the network addressing scheme to a 172.16.x.x format for my network. Since I have done this, about two weeks now, I still have not had any issues <knocks on wood> and the network has been running at high speeds with Speedtest showing that I'm getting the full 150Mbs Internet service in all of my regular use locations.
In my case, the full factory reset and susbsequent re-creation of my network setup seems to have solved the stability problems. So, maybe there's hope for the Orbis afterall. They certainly do perform better than the competition.
Well, here we are just a few days later and my Orbi System is back to its old tricks.
When I went to check on then wireless network’s status today, I got abysmal results on a speed test from my iPhone, but great results from my iPad. I logged into the router to see where and how things were connected and found that the iPad was connected to one of the satellites on 5G, so it looked like the router and the satellite were functioning correctly. The iPhone, however, was connected to the router, but on 2.4G. I turned WiFi on and off and even rebooted the iPhone, but it would only connect on 2.4G no matter what I tried. It did switch to the satellite after the reboot, but the connection was still very bad speed wise. it was much lower than it should have been even for a 2.4G signal.
So, next I rebooted the router and then the iPhone jumped on the 5G network and all was well again. This is very similar to what was happening to me before. Now the system seems to be stable for a longer period of time, but still gets crazy/confused after a while with very strange inexplicable results. This is all with the 2.1.4.16 firmware, which is the current version that’s available for the system.
I’m going to try it for another couple of weeks, but if it’s still unstable, I’ll be going back to the Velop system.
Something you might ask NG support for an RMA for if you feel you've done everything to keep it running.
Bandito wrote:
Well, here we are just a few days later and my Orbi System is back to its old tricks.
When I went to check on then wireless network’s status today, I got abysmal results on a speed test from my iPhone, but great results from my iPad. I logged into the router to see where and how things were connected and found that the iPad was connected to one of the satellites on 5G, so it looked like the router and the satellite were functioning correctly. The iPhone, however, was connected to the router, but on 2.4G. I turned WiFi on and off and even rebooted the iPhone, but it would only connect on 2.4G no matter what I tried. It did switch to the satellite after the reboot, but the connection was still very bad speed wise. it was much lower than it should have been even for a 2.4G signal.
So, next I rebooted the router and then the iPhone jumped on the 5G network and all was well again. This is very similar to what was happening to me before. Now the system seems to be stable for a longer period of time, but still gets crazy/confused after a while with very strange inexplicable results. This is all with the 2.1.4.16 firmware, which is the current version that’s available for the system.
I’m going to try it for another couple of weeks, but if it’s still unstable, I’ll be going back to the Velop system.
Unfortunately, the problems have been going on for too long and the warranty has long since expired. So, I’m on my own with this one.
The latest that I’ve experienced is that the problem may lie with just one of the satellites. It goes bonkers every 3-5 days and must be reset. The router has been, so far, unaffected by the satellite’s problems and has not required a reboot in quite some time. Also, the other remaining satellite seems to be holding up on its own.
Sounds like you've narrowed it down. I wish you could get an RMA for the one bad satellite. Something you could ask the forum moderator about and see. If not, if you need a 2nd satellite, might find one on amaxon or fleabay.
Glad the system is working better otherwise.
Bandito wrote:
Unfortunately, the problems have been going on for too long and the warranty has long since expired. So, I’m on my own with this one.
The latest that I’ve experienced is that the problem may lie with just one of the satellites. It goes bonkers every 3-5 days and must be reset. The router has been, so far, unaffected by the satellite’s problems and has not required a reboot in quite some time. Also, the other remaining satellite seems to be holding up on its own.
