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Forum Discussion
RBS50Y - Outdoor Mode vs Indoor Mode
Has anyone had experience and played around yet with these two settings to see if they get better speeds and connectivity with either one on/off? This setting option is accessable via the Orbi mobile...
Yes. It is present in the web interface.
Basic > Attached Devices > Click on The Device Name > Location > Outdoor or Indoor
I'm not surprised the User Manual doesn't mention it. There is a lot Netgear doesn't mention about their products - hence the need for this online community.
(I do not have one of these units) Under Attached Devices->Device Name, is this a binary choice (indoor/outdoor) or is it a field that could be entered by the user? (for example, you could type in "Patio", "Barn", "Gazebo", or whatever) My experience with the "Attached Devices" page is a lot of the fields are descriptive that may be of value to the viewer, but have no obvious impact on how the Orbi performs. The "orbi_dev_name" and "orbi_dev_name_ntgr" are fields that get shown on the web page, but as far as I can see they have no bearing on performance. i.e. I can change any of them to whatever I want and the Orbi still "does what it does". The only thing that seems to change is what appears on the Attached Devices page.
Maybe you could set it to "Indoor" for a day and "Outdoor" for a day and see if you notice any difference?
It is a 'radio button'. You have to choose either one or the other. It is different to the editable name field which you can rename the device e.g. "Patio", "Barn", "Gazebo", or whatever.
I have configured mine to outdoor, as it is, well, outdoors!
Where
I agree with you. This Forum is the only place where someone might offer insight into this bizzare option. Is there any way you could produce a screen shot of how this is displayed on the web interface? For example, my (only) satellite shows up like this:
Where I got to type in "Netgear Orbi RBS50" and "Satellite Living Room". What does yours show?
One experiment that might be fun to try:
On the Orbi debug page (192.168.1.1/debug.htm) check the box for "telnet". Telnet into Orbi (using whatever telnet client you have. I use Putty and have it set to record the entire session.) Set up to capture the output, and type the command:
nvram show
This will capture A LOT of the variables that affect how Orbi works. Search those results for "Outdoor" and see what the variable name is.
(Community member ekhalil has an impressive knowledge of Orbi telnet commands and provided this tip.)