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Wifi extender for Orbi RBR50?
I have stability problems with one pair of Sonos speakers wifi connected to my network. All other Sonos speakers in various locations throughout the house work fairly well. My system is an Orbi RBR50...
I would expect the WiFi signal strength standing about 3-4 feet from an RBR50 to be in the range of -32dB to -35dB. A reading of -45dB seems a bit low. (but still "excellent") a reading of -75dB counts as "not good".
If the problem has disappeared, then moving the speaker 12 feet appears to be the solution.
A total of four Orbi units will cover quite a large area. It would help to have more information about these "dropouts".
In response to the specific question: " Is there an Orbi specific extender, and if not, would a Netgear extender work with Orbi?", the answer is:
- Orbi satellites are (by definition) the Orbi specific extenders. So, no, there is not an "extender" specific to Orbi systems.
- Any WiFi extender, from any company, will function as an extender when connected to an Orbi system. Netgear, TP-Link, etc. etc. The difference between "extenders" and "satellites" is that devices roam seamlessly between Orbi satellites. They do not work this way when connected to WiFi extenders. For a WiFi speaker that remains plugged into electricity in one spot, it might actually be a solution to connect it to a WiFi extender which broadcasts a different WiFi SSID than the Orbi network. If only that speaker is connected to this WiFi extender, then it will never attempt to connect to anything else.