NETGEAR is aware of a growing number of phone and online scams. To learn how to stay safe click here.
Forum Discussion
What do I do when orbing has made my wifi worse
I recently purchases an orbi rbr50 with 1 satellite. Setup was great everything seems ok. But for some devices and some parts of the house wifi is much worse.
eg we have solar and the solar controller connects via wifi. The device itself has a built in AP mode to do setup. The AP mode of the controller, inside a metal box outside our house pushes a better signal to the rest of the house than the orbi does to the controller itself.
I can get all bars connecting to the AP of the controller all over the house.
The controller itself barely finds the wifi, it only gets 2 bars when I move the orbi closer to it than I'd rather have it. And this isn't the only bad device, laptops and ipads in certain spots are also bad.
It's like the wifi is stronger, but about 1/4 of the size of the old crappy all in one modem/router.
What do I do? I'm outside the 90 days as I've spent ages fiddling with things, but I feel like this has been a collosal waste of money.
Cheers,
Nick
6 Replies
- There must be something wrong. Radio transmission is one of the best features in Orbi.
- Have you done a wifi radio scan in your place to find the occupied vs available radio channels?
- What band and channel does the solar controller use?
- What channels are set in Orbi for the 2.4 and 5 GHz bands?
- Have you changed anything in the transmission power level settings in Orbi?
- What settings do you have in the Advanced Wireless settings?Thanks for the replies :
Yes, I've done a scan using Wifi Explorer on the mac. On 2.4ghz there's a few very faint networks that appear, but the only two significant ones are on channel 1 and 6 and so the auto setting finds channel 11 which is pretty clear. on 5Ghz it's set to 36 and that seems to be clear.
The solar controller is on the 5ghz band, but can connect on either.
I haven't change the transmission settings, they're set to 100%.
By default in advanced everything is turned on. I have tried turning off Fast Roaming, made no difference, and Enable 20/40 MHz Coexistence, which also made no difference. Turning anything else off made things worse.
The device is connected to the main orbi, not the satellite, which is fine because the satellite is in the opposite direction. The satellite is in a line of sight inside the house, aroiund 5-10 metres away. The controller is closer than that, but with walls in between.
WPA security is set to WPA2-PSK.
Apart from turning things off, and making it worse, I can't see that it's a configuration issue. It could be either the fact that there are walls in between or other interference, but that would explain the fact that both the cheap dsl/modem/router had better wireless and the controller itself gets a better connection to a device that's further away than the orbi.
I'm happy run any kind of technical testing if it helps.
Cheers,
Nick
What happens if you temporarily disable WPA on the Orbi? Does the one device connect then? Re-enable WPA and TPIK then test. The try WPA2 and AES only.
Seen some IoT issues with these devices and Orbi.
Can review these to see if this helps:
https://community.netgear.com/t5/Orbi/Orbi-and-FEIT-2-4GHz-IoT-wi-fi-bulbs/m-p/1664260/highlight/false#M45442
https://community.netgear.com/t5/Orbi/Orbi-Home-Wifi-amp-LA-Crosse-Weather-Station-Alarm-Clock-2-4GHz/m-p/1680357/thread-id/48008
nickorrme wrote:
Thanks for the replies :
Yes, I've done a scan using Wifi Explorer on the mac. On 2.4ghz there's a few very faint networks that appear, but the only two significant ones are on channel 1 and 6 and so the auto setting finds channel 11 which is pretty clear. on 5Ghz it's set to 36 and that seems to be clear.
The solar controller is on the 5ghz band, but can connect on either.
I haven't change the transmission settings, they're set to 100%.
By default in advanced everything is turned on. I have tried turning off Fast Roaming, made no difference, and Enable 20/40 MHz Coexistence, which also made no difference. Turning anything else off made things worse.
The device is connected to the main orbi, not the satellite, which is fine because the satellite is in the opposite direction. The satellite is in a line of sight inside the house, aroiund 5-10 metres away. The controller is closer than that, but with walls in between.
WPA security is set to WPA2-PSK.
Apart from turning things off, and making it worse, I can't see that it's a configuration issue. It could be either the fact that there are walls in between or other interference, but that would explain the fact that both the cheap dsl/modem/router had better wireless and the controller itself gets a better connection to a device that's further away than the orbi.
I'm happy run any kind of technical testing if it helps.
Cheers,
Nick
What is the distance between the router and satellite(s)? 30 feet is recommended in between them to begin with depending upon building materials.
What channels are you using? Auto? Try setting manual channel 1, 6 or 11 on 2.4Ghz and any unused channel on 5Ghz.
Any Wifi Neighbors near by? If so, how many?
What WPA security modes are you using?Try enabling Beamforming and MIMO. Under Advanced Tab/Advanced Settings/Wireless Settings
nickorrme wrote:
I recently purchases an orbi rbr50 with 1 satellite. Setup was great everything seems ok. But for some devices and some parts of the house wifi is much worse.
eg we have solar and the solar controller connects via wifi. The device itself has a built in AP mode to do setup. The AP mode of the controller, inside a metal box outside our house pushes a better signal to the rest of the house than the orbi does to the controller itself.
I can get all bars connecting to the AP of the controller all over the house.
The controller itself barely finds the wifi, it only gets 2 bars when I move the orbi closer to it than I'd rather have it. And this isn't the only bad device, laptops and ipads in certain spots are also bad.
It's like the wifi is stronger, but about 1/4 of the size of the old crappy all in one modem/router.
What do I do? I'm outside the 90 days as I've spent ages fiddling with things, but I feel like this has been a collosal waste of money.
Cheers,
Nick
