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Forum Discussion
Orbi WiFi speeds drop low until I reboot the router
Dear All, I have the following Orbi mesh router with 2 satellites running the latest firmware v.2.7.3.22: Netgear Orbi Mesh Router RBK53S-100NAS (router + 2 satellites) Router Product Model: RBR50...
Avohai wrote:
I am also not so happy for getting ~ 300 Mbps on wifi when my internet capabilities are 600 Mpbs (verified with wired connection).
WiFi speeds are often a disappointment, for several reasons:
- Whereas an ethernet connection is inherently full duplux (packets travel in both directions at the same tiime), WiFi is inherently (a) half duplex (i.e. a device can either transmit or receive. it cannot do both at once), and (b) the available radio time is shared with every device on the network
- WiFi has a lot more overhead than ethernet. For example, every 100ms every access point broadcasts a "beacon frame", which takes up bandwidth. WiFi frames are actually longer than ethernet frames. (A very complicated subject, for example see this reference:
https://dot11ap.wordpress.com/ieee-802-11-frame-format-vs-ieee-802-3-frame-format/ ) - WiFi frames are encrypted, which takes processing power on the WiFi device to decrypt.
- WiFi speed falls off with distance (physics square law), so a link that may be 'rated' for 866mbs will not actually achieve that speed in practice. I am sitting 4' from my Orbi and my 2019 Sony phone reports a Transmit Link Rate of 650mbs and a Receive Link Rate of 585mbs (and that's before all that overhead eats away at it). Moving just 15 ft. away dropped them both. And... they are not constant. Link rates vary by the second as WiFi devices clamor for attention.
- WiFi devices vary in their capabilities. A friend and I were struggling to understand the speed of his home network. My Sony was reporting a much higher Speedtest than his older (and cheaper) Motorola.
I think if Speedtest is reporting 300mbs on your phone, tablet, or laptop WiFi, that's pretty good.
When you get a WiFi 6 system, the theoretical maximum speed will be higher, provided that you have WiFi 6 devices to use it.
While your response is welcome, it's not useful for this particular known issue, where speed is normal but then drops to a low value (usually 30~45Mbps) days later and stays at that low speed until a reboot. Many people have reported it. It's a problem with the router. It appears to be tied to one of the devices on the wifi network, my theory is it's connecting to the backhaul path. In my case it was a NETGEAR wifi dongle. I reconfigured it and the problem hasn't returned.
fmalloy wrote:
my theory is it's connecting to the backhaul path. In my case it was a NETGEAR wifi dongle. I reconfigured it and the problem hasn't returned.
The malfunctioning device is not likely to have connected to the backhaul path. The 5G WiFi backhaul link uses WPA2 encryption the same as the front facing 5G WiFi. The 21 character SSID is hidden (not broadcast) and the password is a 63 character string of random letters & numbers. I suppose it could have interfered with the backhaul link in some way. (generating thousands of management frames?) but connecting seems a bit of a stretch.
If download speed is degrading over time and is restored by rebooting the router, that does argue for some device or process that is consuming bandwidth at an increasing rate and leaving less (and less) for other devices. It would be fascinating to know what that dongle was doing (technically). There are very few tools available to non-technical users to diagnose this sort of problem, which leads to the idea of "disconnect things until the problem goes away."
I am seriously annoyed that OpenWRT, which Orbi is based on, includes software to report the data used by each device and somehow Netgear did not include that functionality in their Orbi product. I am not 00% certain that the culprit would be revealed by the data reports, but it would be a good place to start. (I see reports that packets that are handled entirely by firmware acceleration do not make it into linux stats. WAY over my head.)