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Forum Discussion
Poor WiFi performance on mobile devices orbi rb30
Hi I am getting more and more hassle from my family about how slow the WiFi is. I have 200mb fibre and a RB30 kit. Static devices ( desktops, Sonos, virgin boxes and TVs are all fine and rock solid. A...
Ok so now both my internal and external streaming quality is going down the toilet. Is that due to changes I have made. I have rebooted orbi, NAS and affected TVs with no impact.
Hard to say without knowing what you changed, whether you moved things, and what the current settings are.
When you last posted, your problem seemed to be that the iPhones were thrashing back and forth between the router and satellite, due to overlapping strong signals from each of the Orbi devices. I don't know where you are at now, whether you disabled fast roaming, or moved the devices to make one Orbi signal stronger than the other.
But, if too frequent roaming is still the issue, you should be able to solve it by adding a satellite close to where you are having the issue. That way your devices will always have a strong signal to hold onto.
- I have move the satellite further away and dropped the signal strength to 75% on 5ghz and 2.4ghz.
Enable 20/40 is on
WMM is on.
Daisy chain is off.
Beamforming is on
MU-MIMO is off
Fast roaming is on Based on the symptoms you described, I would try it with fast roaming off. You want your devices to stick to one AP since those that already do that were working. I would also download Apple’s Airport Utility for the iOS devices and do a WiFi scan. Look at the RSSIs your phone is seeing for the different Orbi units. You will get a report by MAC address. You want the nearest Orbi to show -60 or way better and the other Orbis to be below -70.
- Made no difference. Watching what should be 4k Dolby Vision on Netflix. Bouncing from 480-1080 all the time.
Assuming your issues are on wireles devices... If two or more Orbi WiFi signals are usable and about equal where your devices are, then fast roaming may not make a difference.
You need to take a quantitative look at the signal levels received by your device, using the Airport Utility or a WiFi scanning application on a desktop, to see what's going on. Then decide where to go from there.
It's standard industry practice to design wifi cells so that the signals do not overlap higher than -65 or -70 dB. This is necessary for proper roaming operation. This is done by AP placement and/or by transmit power level adjustments.
- Yeah I know. Now wondering if I can reposition my router and get rid of satellite altogether.
The house is basically square. I have put the router and satellite in diagonally opposite corners so lets say bottom left and top right.
If you divide the square into 4 smaller squares, the TV is at the top right corner of the top left square. Therefore the TV is more or less equidistant ffrom the devices.
I will move the router to where the TV is and get rid of the satellite. Just hope the router has a enough power to reach my office which is a room built into the garage in the bottom right square.
Cheers You might have better luck with the router and satellite more towards the center of the two squares. If they are in the corners, then 3/4 of their radiation pattern is directed outside. Having them closer would also improve the backhaul connectivity.
In any case, if you move the router to the TV, then you should be able to put the satellite down close to the office. Then devices in the office should see a stronger signal from the satellite.
Good luck. I hope you can get it sorted out.
So, removing the satelitte and moving the router as close to the middle of the house as possible has fixed my streaming issues and improved connections with all but 1 mobile devices* significantly. Only problem now is my office and one bedroom are right on the edge of 2.4ghz range and no 5ghz there.
I think I would probably be OK if I could adjust the power of the Router and Satelitte radios independently, but I can't see that happening. I expect I will dust off my powerline adapters at the weekend to improve network availability in the office and bedroom. Kind of defeats the point of Orbi though doesn't it!!
*The outstanding mobile device is a iPhone 8 Plus which is wierd as I have another 8 plus and it is OK. I have observed that iPhones in general aren't as happy as android devices. I ran speedtest from the app on both ihpnes and my Pixel 2 xl in exactly the same place at the same time several times and the Pixel generally had 10x speed of the iPhones.