NETGEAR is aware of a growing number of phone and online scams. To learn how to stay safe click here.
Forum Discussion
Orbi recently became very slow.
We have been having ~115M-120M speeds on my Orbi up until the past week or so. Now I am seeing ~20M max and a TON of timed out connections. The speed is poor on both wireless and wired connections....
After doing a FW update, was the ISP modem and Orbi system powered OFF for 1 minute, then power on the modem and let it sync, then power on the Orbi router then satellite and try a speed test via wired PC?
I powered off both the modem and the Orbi for 5 minutes while I went and got a drink. I then followed your steps and got only a marginal speed improvement. I now measure ~30M instead of ~20M when using ethernet. My ping times jumped from 5-7ms to 28ms.
I also did your other changes to MIMO, etc. I only see a checkbox for 20/40Mhz Coexistence under 2.4GHz which was already checked. I assume thats what you meant by "40Mhz only". IPV6 was already disabled. I also disabled SSID broadcasting on both 2.4 and 5GHz since I could not find the setting to totally disable Wi-Fi.
One new finding to report is that the Upload part of the tests fail now:
A socket error occurred during the Download test. A firewall could be blocking the connection or the server might be having some issues. Please try again later.
I retried 4 times and always get that same error. My earlier tests did not have that problem.
Quick update: The "One new finding to report is that the Upload part of the tests fail now:" went away once I reenabled SSID broadcasting. My ping times have also returned to sub 9ms.
Ok, I would do this, turn off all other devices accept for your one wired PC. Factory reset the Orbi router and set it up from scratch. Leave the SSID name and PW as default for now. Skip adding the satellites. Just get thru the wizard or even skip it and go directly to testing speeds with your wired PC using default settings. You should see to spec speeds here.
What browser are you using to take speeds tests?
What speedtests sites are you using? Try your ISPs speed test site if they have one to compare with.
Besure your PC security software is disabled and browser plug-ins are disabled as well before testing.
Hmm, I do not see my previous reply to this.
I'm using Chrome 69.0.3497.100 on both a Win10 laptop and a Win7 desktop.
I turned off AV, the firewall and diabled my 5 brower addons. It did not help the speed problem.
Previously I said I could only think of 2 more options to try:
1: Revert the firmware to an earlier build (maybe even 2.3.x.x). I'm not sure that is possible without possibly bricking the Orbi though.
2: Replace the ethernet cable between the Orbi and the cable modem. It is the Orbi provided one but I had not used that cable w/the other router when I tried it.
Since that reply I have replaced the ethernet beween the Orbi and cable modem twice without any speed improvements. I have also repeated my old router and cable modem test both with the Orbi ethernet and the other 2 I used with the Orbi. In all cases the older modem reported just over 175M.
I have tested with the direct Ookla speedtest page and Cox's reskinned and hosted Ookla page with basically the same results: Orbi will get just under 30M every time. Even the built in Orbi test which takes longer to run reports ~29M on 3 runs.
I am only left with the least favorable option now unless someone has another suggestion. For now I am going to hold off on reflashing the firmware for a few days to give everyone a chance to mull this over and come up with other ideas.
Many many Thank Yous for your very quick responses and suggestions so far.
