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Forum Discussion
Satellites: What is the difference between RBR/RBS20 and RBR/RBS50 ?
I thought I was specifying the same exact Tri-band Router and two-satellite Orbi system for my customer that I had in my home and office and that I had installed for several other customers, but afte...
The product data sheets lay out the specifics:
https://www.netgear.com/images/datasheet/orbi/RBR50.pdf
https://www.netgear.com/images/datasheet/orbi/RBR20.pdf
The RBR50 has dedicated antennas for the 5G WiFi backhaul. Using a full 80mb bandwidth, they have a maximum theoretical bandwidth of 1733mb (which is never achieved in the real workd) whereas the RBR20 uses the same 5G antennas for both "user service" and backhaul, with a maximum theoretical bandwidth of 866mb. If usage is extremely high, then the RBR50 has higher potential capacity because although the user radios are the same, the RBR20 5G radio is also performing backhaul. (If the satellites are connected with ethernet cable,, then the back capacity is the same.)
The RBR50 has 3 usable ethernet ports on the router and 4 on each satellite, whereas the RBR20 has only (2 and 1). Honestly, many people make little use of the satellite ethernet ports, and a $30 gigabit switch will enable 8 devices to share one port.
There is a memory size difference, which may be a result of Netgear discovering that the full memory of the RBR50 is never used in the real world.
Perhaps if you describe the way the new system is underperforming someone on the forum can suggest ways to improve it.