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Orbi system - Faulty LAN / switching design - Will NG ever fix it?
Issue - Orbi system with 2 satellites (R1, S1, S2) will randomly drop LAN communication between segments. e.g. devices connected to S1 (both wired/wireless) won't be able to ping devices on S2 (or ...
The satellites are on the wifi backhaul.
My house conduits are rather tightly packed and drawing a CAT6 unfortunately will be a rather expensive and time consuming exercise .
I really doubt though that the issue is with the switching hardware. Network Switches are a very stable technology by now.
Also, I had no issues as long as I was on a 2 device setup.
I do believe that the LAN routing tables on the Orbi hardware get confused with 3 or more devices -
In a normal wired AP setup (say ubiquiti or even a basic cheap TP link), if i had 3 APs in a star formation with the central switch (say S1), a packet from a device on AP1 going to a device on AP2 would go : AP1 -> S1 -> AP2
I suspect the orbi stack maybe trying to optimize by routing packet directly :
i,.e. RBS20 -> RBS50 which obviously fails
instead of RBS20 -> RBR50 -> RBS50
Hi superczar , it looks like this is the most recent thread detailing your LAN / ARP issues. Are your devices still losing the ability to see each other? I'm shopping for a mesh kit and if I go with Orbi, my setup would probably look a lot like yours. I'm very worried about buying a kit that seems to be fine at first, but starts exhibiting this sort of behavior once the return period has elapsed. LAN-to-LAN traffic is very important to me, and I don't want to be stuck spending hours debugging what sounds like a longstanding firmware problem.
superczar I wanted to address your concerns.
I have been installing and servicing Wireless mesh systems since they came out. Comparing the Netgear Orbi to the competitors, I have found the Orbi systems are more powerful, stable and seem to give the best WIFI speeds over the competitors. And not to insult anyone, as it is not my intention, but 90% of wireless mesh problems are not the fault of the system, but rather, not in any order, connections, install and configuration, wiring, ISP device, switches, placement, interference, purchased used without testing, and more. To add to it, their are users that should just hire someone to install their system. I'm a big "Do It Yourselfer", but I would pay rather someone, for many things I don't understand.
Regarding the Orbi brand, I installed a competitor's AC2200 5000+ sq ft 3 device system in my home. It was great and covered quite well. I was very happy, but it never gave me excellent WIFI speeds. They were good but I knew they could be better. Then I installed an Orbi system, in a huge warehouse, and could not believe the coverage. So I replaced my 3 device system with an Orbi RBK50 3 device system. The speed and coverage difference was enormous. I could not be happier. The only complaint, that I don't use, is their support is as terible as the competitors. And to be honest, you get better support from the forums than you ever get from the manufacturer. Speaking for the Orbi forum, there are so many knowedgeable people participating, that you can see most issues get resolved.
Thanks, that's a helpful perspective. I'm sure that 99% of users have no problems, they just aren't coming here to tell us about it. I don't mind "do it yourself" that much, but I get resentful when I spend hundreds of dollars on gear, set it up "as intended", then it still breaks through no fault of my own and I'm stuck spending my limited free time troubleshooting. I get plenty of that in my day job, so I want something that "just works" at home. In this case, I think "just works" is not so much a matter of having somebody set it up right, it's down to what the vendor is shipping.
I tell my Do It Yourself customers to follow the instructions Verbatum. The issue they have that comes up quite often is the connection from the ISP to the Orbi router. This is the most important starting point. The other frequent problem is when they buy used, and the seller never reset the system. They just unplugged and sold it.
superczar , Furry was asking about the unmanaged switches because there are known firmware issues on the Orbi's with switches supporting 802.3az aka Green Ethernet. As of now i have only seen reports when wired ethernet backhaul is used in conjunction with 802.3az. This might be worth investigating for your issue too.
This is My setup and I can ping through my LAN with no issue. Wireless Backhaul
Sonos play 1 [Ethernet] --> Netgear gs108v3 --> RBR50 --> RBS50 --> Windows 10 PC [WiFi 5.0]
Synology server [Ethernet] --> Netgear gs108v3 --> RBR50 --> RBS50 --> Windows 10 PC [WiFi 5.0]
Epson Printer [WiFi 2.4] --> RBR50 --> RBS50 --> Windows 10 PC [WiFi]
Netgear gs108v3 does not support 802.3azI find the best switches to use, unless some other features are required, are the inexpensive Netgear ProSafe Gigabit switches. They are plug and play and require no setup. They just work flawlessly.
WIth the workaround mentioned (sticking to FW 2.1.4.16), the system has been reasonably stable of late.
Regarding the other suggestions on the switches, I am not using any energy savings settings on the switches.
All devices were brought new and they have gone through multiple full resets for any old setting to have any detrimental impact.
I have no complaints regarding the speed, roaming behavior and performance.
The system does indeed work better than any other router/AP I have used when it works.
However I do maintain the firmware has some deep rooted flaws.
If I hadn't plonked so much money on this system already and if I could start again, I would have looked at something else.
Most people who have a reasonably simple network will not notice issues - but if your use case includes larger than usual number of devices or a lot of LAN traffic, there is a good likelihood you will run into problems.
So to recap, which mfr and model # switches are you using with the system now? Helpful to know this for anyone else looking or having problems. Not all switches are made the same I believe. There maybe differences between brands as well. I try to keep to one brand of switch through out the configuration to maintain some sort of uniformitiy. Have a mixed brand of switches in play may also be causing odd problems as well. I have tested two brands and keep these separate when I decide to swap brands.
As far as I an tell, having lots of devices online doesn't present a problem for me, though I have about 30 devices. RBS are all wired behind switches. v16 has been the most stable to date IMO.
superczar wrote:WIth the workaround mentioned (sticking to FW 2.1.4.16), the system has been reasonably stable of late.
Regarding the other suggestions on the switches, I am not using any energy savings settings on the switches.
All devices were brought new and they have gone through multiple full resets for any old setting to have any detrimental impact.
I have no complaints regarding the speed, roaming behavior and performance.
The system does indeed work better than any other router/AP I have used when it works.
However I do maintain the firmware has some deep rooted flaws.
If I hadn't plonked so much money on this system already and if I could start again, I would have looked at something else.
Most people who have a reasonably simple network will not notice issues - but if your use case includes larger than usual number of devices or a lot of LAN traffic, there is a good likelihood you will run into problems.
I have a little over 70 although majority are IoT devices with minimal traffic - not sure if this has anything to do with number of devices anyway.
I did some rewiring on my network last month (although nothing to do with this issue) and now there are 2X TP Link SG108e switches on the network
