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Lcarey596's avatar
Lcarey596
Aspirant
Aug 20, 2021
Solved

Very strange Connecting Problems

Okay, I actually have a ORBI RBK753S Tri Band Mesh 6, but there is not a selection for that model.   I just reinstalled everythng from factory settings again. Set up WPA3 on router, guest network...
  • CrimpOn's avatar
    CrimpOn
    Aug 20, 2021

    The picture looks exactly correct to me.  This device is connected via ethernet (the picture of a computer screen) to the Orbi and it has identified the connection during the ethernet handshake by the Orbi's WiFi name.  It also detects the two Orbi WiFi SSID's (ORBI753S and ORBI753S-Guest).

     

    I have Windows 10 computers connected to two different Orbi routers.  One shows up as "Network" and the other shows up as "ORBI80", which matches the WiFi name on that router.  I have no idea why they are different, but they both work.

     

    Orbi WiFi names follow a long-established pattern of a company name plus "something sort of unique".  Notice that you have neighbors with WiFi names of NETGEAR93 and TP-LINK_E754.  My neighbors have names like ATTg5TqZfi and MySpectrumWiFic8-zg.  So many customers just plug in their WiFi and use it that companies have to have a way to prevent neaby houses from having exactly the same WiFi names. With 100 choices (00-99) Netgear seems to think it unlikely that random chance would put two identical names nextdoor to each other.  ATT seems to have gone to an extreme (g5TqZfi - looks like every system they manufacture has a unique name).  Spectrum seems to be similar (c8-zg implies 52 to the 4th power = 7,311,616 unique names).

     

    Every time I install a new WiFi router, I give it exactly the same WiFi name/password as the old one. That way, all of my devices connect automatically without me doing anything to them.  And, if I decide to "go back", I just reinstall the previous router and everything connects again.