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Forum Discussion
Reaching Tech Support
How does a customer reach Orbi tech support? I called today and after a one hour hold, the call was answered by a rep who told me she would transfer me to the Orbi department. I was then put on hold again. I left the phone on speaker and actually left my house after about 45 minutes. When I returned 3 hours and 15 minutes later, the speaker was still on and I was still on hold. I finally hung up. That means I waited right at 5 hours for tech support to answer my call. Is this normal for Netgear and Orbi? I formerly owned the second generation Eero and the one time I called them, I got a rep on the line right away. I only switched to Orbi because my AV guy told me it was better than Eero and would do a better job with the Sonos system I use. Boy was he wrong. The Orbi loses wifi numerous times a day, causing Sonos not to work, and now I cannot reach tech support. Anyone had a better experience than me?
6 Replies
Sonos should work fine with Orbi. However, they both use the same 2.4 GHz WiFi spectrum, so you will have problems if Sonos and Orbi are not configured properly to work together.
You need to either:
1) Wire one, and only one, Sonos device to your network. Manually set Sonos to use channel 1. Manually set Orbi to use channel 11 on 2.4 GHz. (Or vice versa.)
OR
2) Wire none of your sonos devices and connect them all via WiFI.
I use approach 1) and Sonos and Orbi work together with no issues. In this configuration Sonos creates its own wireless mesh network (Sonosnet) that is independent of Orbi.
Wiring more than one Sonos can cause network loops. Using managed switches with Sonos can also cause ports to be blocked by the spanning tree protocol.
You also need to be careful not to place a Sonos unit right next to an Orbi, or that can cause problems too.
Sonos worked perfectly with Orbi...until it didn't. I think the problem is with the fact that Orbi started dropping its wifi signal sporadically about 3 weeks ago. That totally coincides with when Sonos went from working perfectly to when it started working poorly. As part of the troubleshooting, I disconnected the Sonos Boost (the only Sonos device I have wired to my network) for a few days. The Orbi system continued to have problems keeping wifi going. I did not try using Sonos during that period, as I figured it was not connected at all and would not work at all.
I read many web postings about Orbi dropping wifi and there being no fix for that. But I have a hard time believing that is the case. That is why I reached out to Orbi tech support and was even willing to pay for support. But I had to give up after waiting on hold for 5 hours and that is my beef. I am going to try again when I get home in a little while and see if I can reach Orbi tech support.
If you had a Sonos Boost plugged into your LAN, then Sonos was not using your WiFi at all--Sonos was using Sonosnet. Orbi's WiFi could fail completely and it would have had zero effect on Sonos. (The only exception would be if the Boost was wired to a satellite, and then Sonos would be using the Orbi backhaul, indirectly.)
Unless you already took the steps I described and manually set non-overlapping channels on both Orbi and Sonos, then Orbi and Sonos could conflict with each other at any time, if either one automatically changed channels to overlap with the other.
I don't know whether this was the cause of your issue, but it is a configuration step that is necessary to avoid problems.
Good luck.
