Serious Satellite Connectivity Bug

I'm not sure what a mud map is but I can describe my home.  It's fairly straightforward.  I'm in Santa Monica, California, so there is a decent amount of radio interference although most of my neighbors are older and have minimal/old equipment.  1,200 SF townhouse, 45% SF downstairs, 55% SF upstairs.  Rectangular layout, router is upstairs in the exact middle with the satellites both being downstairs, one at the front and the other at the back of the floorplan.  Given that these are rated to cover 6,000 SF (3 devices) this is fairly overkill but the reason I went for this is because I wanted several devices plugged directly into each Orbi (10 devices in the living room and 2 devices in the kitchen) including AppleTVs, speakers, cameras, etc.  This way, their data is concentrated to the max speed wireless backhaul and keeps the user network less busy.

I'll point out that my HEOS system never worked reliably until I got the Orbi.  I had tried some other devices and given that I have so many nodes (10) it was a mess.  When I got the router and satellite, suddenly I had 99% rock solid performance.  This 2nd satellite I ordered is when everything started going wrong.  I bought it at Fry's.

Lights on the Orbis have only ever been blue.  I have never seen purple.  They are basically in the next room, just downstairs, given the smaller size of my place.  All materials are wood and drywall.  Thankfully these should not impact anything and like I said, with the first kit everything was good.

Speed tests have been reliable.  Getting internet from any satellite is not a problem (perhaps because it's only a single backhaul hop).  230mbps down by 23mbps up almost always.

I had an open case a few days ago under my email address, with an attached ability to open an RMA.

I have tried disabling the 5GHz radio but have not tried disabling MU-MIMO and beanforming.  I'll give that a try.

I will try decreasing the power.  I just don't think it's a connectivity problem, but more like a "firewall" or software breakage in the virtualized network connected via the backhaul.  It's not that packets drop or bars go down, it's that a whole wing of my network vanishes.

Sat1 -> Router -> Sat2

When I'm on a satellite, every device on the other satellite is invisible about 40% of the time.  That whole satellite is gone.

I have everything plugged into a satellite that I can.  This is the whole purpose of Orbi, to get a dedicated and separate backhaul.  All units in my complex are townhouses so the density is a bit lower than small apartments, by at least half or less.  I have every radio turned off that I can and plugged the devices into a port so Orbi can do what it was designed to do.  Handle as much traffic as possible on the dedicated wireless backhaul.

Reducing wireless transmit power I can see as a solution because my devices might be hopping too much.  But again, I don't even think that's the problem.  I never have trouble getting internet, or connecting to devices on the router.  It's only the double hops on the backhaul.  This seems like a software block or error and something reboots internally periodically that resets it and it works.  Interestingly enough it always works great after a power cycle.  It would be great if I could turn a satellite into ONLY a backhaul receiver that does not rebroadcast my wifi, but simply gives me bridged ports.  I have 3 main areas where devices live that can be hard wired but no Ethernet.  If I was willing to cut the walls I wouldn't have gotten Orbi.  This is the primary selling point on the box as well as logically.

Thanks @OrbiMan

I just really, really don't think this has anything to do with square footage personally.  You know why?  Because what Orbi is trying to do here is the holy grail.  This is the thing that we have all begged for, for years.  I bought Three Apple AirPorts 3 years ago attempting to use two to simply make a dedicated wireless backhaul, and then Ethernet connected the 2nd to another AirPort.  I needed my wifi access point in a particular area and did not need an extender, but I could not have users connecting to the router.  All wireless traffic HAD to go through this ideal location or I'd get 5GHz drop out because of material in one wall, which I then installed the router in the ceiling next to where the problematic material was not present (up higher).  Yes, in my current home I do not need more than one.  My router/modem are exactly placed in the middle of my space, albeit on the upper floor but still.  I know one is wildly sufficient.

The problem is that I want coverage in my courtyard and even my garage, both of which the satellites give me fairly well.  So tack on another 3K SF of exterior space and I'm not that far off from any of you larger homes.  IF you're saying the satellites need to be farther than 25' away, maybe 50' or 75' well technically I could actually try this.  Grab a little UPS and haul my Orbi out to the outside on a little table, just for a test.  I just cannot imagine this solving it.  I seriously have no issues with hopping wireless or throughput.  These work famously.  It's the double hops on the backhaul.  Satellite 1 to Router to Satellite 2.

If this was a true Mesh network and Sat1 could backhaul directly to Sat2, then maybe this wouldn't be a problem.  It seems to only be a problem with satellites AND your more typical user is not doing as much node-to-node communication.  If you just have devices that need to connect to the internet and devices plugged into the router, that all works great.

It's when a device connected to Sat1 wants to connect to Sat2 is the problem.  When I'm connected to the Router no issues.  I just walked within a few feet of my router, my iPhone hopped over and BAM every device is visible/accessible/not gray in Fing.  This is reliably reproducible every time, just sometimes you have to wait a bit for the system to fall apart, might be a few minutes or a few hours, but it always happens.  Then sometimes fixes itself, then back to the same again.

That's what I'm trying to say.  The wireless itself is very reliable and very stable.  It works great!  Just that sometimes a third of my network vanishes and cannot be pinged, in the scenarios that I described above.  Is anyone here with Netgear directly who might be able to confirm this problem?  I wish I knew it if only started with a firmware update but I'm really not sure.

Wireless connectivity to my router/modem is essentially always flawless.