Hi I’ve had a 2 satellite Orbi system since February and for the most part I’ve had a good experience. I first had to force the 2.4g channel to 11 (least crowded) and set my sonos net channel to 6. I’ve enjoyed very high speed, amazing coverage, and great stability.Then 2.0.0.74 auto updated on my system and my WiFi became unstable and nearly unusable. The only way my system works right now is to have my satellites turned off. I’ve power cycled every component and forced a resync with the satellites. They dutifully connect, glow blue and everything works for a few minutes. Then the satellite stop transferring data to the base and any device connected to a satellite stops working. The light on top of the router doesn’t light red, or change in any way. I made no changes to the location of the satellites.Does anyone have any suggestions on how to regain the previous stability that I enjoyed?It would also be helpful to see a real-time connection strength between the base and satellite.

Orbi tries to use 40 MHz channels on 2.4 GHz. Unless you have checked 20/40 MHz coexistence, the two will interfere with each other using 6 and 11. So, you'd be better off using channel 1 for Sonos and channel 11 for Orbi, or vice versa.

Thanks for the advice, but before Tuesday this week I could stream unique uncompressed streams from Deezer to 6 sonos speakers without dropouts, while the kids were watching YouTube and playing Forza. So although there might be interference it must not have caused enough lost data to be a problem. When the ORBI works it is amazing at how much data it routes without hiccups to 20 plus devices. But when a satellite drops the whole system crumbles. If there was a way to troubleshoot the signal strength, I could at least begin to troubleshoot the issue.

I would try moving the satellites and router closer together to see if that helps. Some firmware updates seem to have reduced the range somewhat, causing people to need to adjust placement of their Orbi. I assume you are connecting only one Sonos device via wire. If you connect more than one with a wire that can cause issues. You should download a program like Acrylic WiFi onto a laptop to measure and plot the signal strength of your satellites and router. This will help assess coverage and placement. You can also check if there are other access points interfering on the channels you used, which is critical. There is a free Home version and a Pro version for $40.

It is possible that your 2 satellites have become daisy-chained ? That feature was added in the latest firmware and enabled by default You could try disabling the daisy-chain feature in the advanced wireless setup to ensure that the connectivity from the satellite is direct to the router. I second st-shaw's suggestion on Acrylic WiFi . I use the free version on a laptop and it works really well

Oh - I am also curious about your Sonos setup. Do you see much benefit of running the Sonos over its own dedicated wifi ? I recently changed mine so that the sonos uses the Orbi wifi and it seems to work just fine apart from the old Sonos controller no longer works but we generally use the iphone app to control it anyway... again, just curious about your experience.

Satellites disconnect | NETGEAR Communities

14 Replies

st_shaw
Master
Sep 28, 2017
Orbi tries to use 40 MHz channels on 2.4 GHz. Unless you have checked 20/40 MHz coexistence, the two will interfere with each other using 6 and 11. So, you'd be better off using channel 1 for Sonos and channel 11 for Orbi, or vice versa.
- 1993rx7
  Tutor
  Sep 28, 2017
  Thanks for the advice, but before Tuesday this week I could stream unique uncompressed streams from Deezer to 6 sonos speakers without dropouts, while the kids were watching YouTube and playing Forza. So although there might be interference it must not have caused enough lost data to be a problem. When the ORBI works it is amazing at how much data it routes without hiccups to 20 plus devices. But when a satellite drops the whole system crumbles. If there was a way to troubleshoot the signal strength, I could at least begin to troubleshoot the issue.
  - st_shaw
    Master
    Sep 28, 2017
    I would try moving the satellites and router closer together to see if that helps. Some firmware updates seem to have reduced the range somewhat, causing people to need to adjust placement of their Orbi.
    
    I assume you are connecting only one Sonos device via wire. If you connect more than one with a wire that can cause issues.
    
    You should download a program like Acrylic WiFi onto a laptop to measure and plot the signal strength of your satellites and router. This will help assess coverage and placement. You can also check if there are other access points interfering on the channels you used, which is critical. There is a free Home version and a Pro version for $40.

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Satellites disconnect