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Forum Discussion
RBR50 - WiFi performance issues
Like others on the community forums, I have random wifi drops and slow performance with my Orbi RBR50 (with two satellites). I run the Orbi in AP mode since I already have a firewall and router. In fact, I have a farily extensive home network with an assortment of systems and IoT devices. Everything is fine without the Orbi, whether I pull out my Netgear Nighthawk or my old Cisco AP. The Orbi is great after a power-cycle, but performance slowly degrades over time until it becomes almost unsuable from *any* device connected to the wifi -- MacBook Pro, assorted iPhones or android tablets or even simple embedded devcies that are only sending a small HTTP request every 15 seconds.
The Orbi of course shows solid connections to both satellites.
And I have tried all of the suggestions from this forum post and others, all to no avail (changing 2.4GHz channels, disabling assorted settings, etc). It also affects all devcies using the Orib, whether 2.4 or 5 GHz. And it isn't anything as simple as a saturated network connection, the uplink at the moment is runnign at only 100Kb at the moment, while my iPhone can't even downlaod a simple web page on the WiFi. Hard-wired systems all work fine. It also affect any wifi traffic whether to the Internet or other system in the house. The only thing that is consistent is that it works after a reboot and degrades over time.
I even took a walk around the house with a couple of Android wifi scanning apps and signal strengh is great everywhere.
If only this thing supported syslog (or any other sort of logging) I could get it to log to my server and see if there were any errors or other intersting messages.
I pointed my smokeping install at my Ring Doorbell (on the WiFi at 5 GHz). You can see how poor the reponse gets periodically with ping responses as high as 11 sec at some times. When it isn't bad the average is closer to 10 ms. The pair of 2 GHz devices I pointed smokeping at show similar trends, although not as bad with the normal average being around 5 ms and the peaks at 1.5 sec.
I also tried turning off one of the satellites Thu afternoon, as far as I can tell it made virtually no difference.
My Setup (DSL -> pfSense firewall -> Cisco 3750 -> RBR50)
13 Replies
Thanks, but the old router is in a box in the garage. :-) I only drag it out for testing and I power off the Orbi in that case.
What is the size of your home? Sq Ft?
What is the distance between the router and satellite(s)? 30 feet is recommended in between them to begin with depending upon building materials.
What channels are you using? Auto? Try setting manual channel
Any Wifi Neighbors near by? If so, how many?What FW was this tested with?
The house is a single story, roughly 1600 sq. ft.
The orbi and single satellite that is current turned on are about 35 feet away from each other. The second one was just about 30 feet, I have it off to see if that made any difference, which it didn't -- although I do plan on moving it one room further over to give me about 40' of separation.
I've played with channels multiple times, it doesn't make any difference. I'm in a corner house, so only have two neighbors with wifi and we're on different channels. Currently I'm showing as the only one on channel 1 in the 2.4 GHz range, one neighbor is on 6 and the other on 11. In the 5 GHz range, my wifi analyzer is showing me as the only one there with a nice broad signal centerd on channel 42. Everyone else is up on 161. However, since the problem exists both on 2.4 and 5 GHz, I don't think it's a channel issue.
I have also tried just about every combination of 20/40 coexistance, WMM , MIMO, fast roaming, and beamforming settings with no change in the problem. Daisy chain is also currently disabled (not that it matters with only a single satellite running).
I'm on V2.1.4.16. I posted in the beta thread to see if I can get the latest 2.2 and give that a try.
1600 sq ft maybe too small of a home to use the base router and satellite. The router alone can cover up to aound 2000sq ft.
Might try some testing with just the router alone and see what you find.
I presume since the .v210 has been release, might not be beta anymore. If you do get something, even the v.210, download the files first and manually installed them. Satellite first then router. I recommend doing a factory reset and set up from scratch. There maybe code changes that may conflict with older FW code with just updating and continuing which seems to give some users problems. So I would start clean and with a fresh slate after updating FW.
sjthespian wrote:
The house is a single story, roughly 1600 sq. ft.
The orbi and single satellite that is current turned on are about 35 feet away from each other. The second one was just about 30 feet, I have it off to see if that made any difference, which it didn't -- although I do plan on moving it one room further over to give me about 40' of separation.
I've played with channels multiple times, it doesn't make any difference. I'm in a corner house, so only have two neighbors with wifi and we're on different channels. Currently I'm showing as the only one on channel 1 in the 2.4 GHz range, one neighbor is on 6 and the other on 11. In the 5 GHz range, my wifi analyzer is showing me as the only one there with a nice broad signal centerd on channel 42. Everyone else is up on 161. However, since the problem exists both on 2.4 and 5 GHz, I don't think it's a channel issue.
I have also tried just about every combination of 20/40 coexistance, WMM , MIMO, fast roaming, and beamforming settings with no change in the problem. Daisy chain is also currently disabled (not that it matters with only a single satellite running).
I'm on V2.1.4.16. I posted in the beta thread to see if I can get the latest 2.2 and give that a try.
