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Forum Discussion
Is the 'connected devices' view in the app broken?
Hello,
I have a 3 story home, ground floor my RBR870 is placed and the other 2 floor both have an RBS, the network map shows how the devices are connected.
What is not logical:
RBR (ground floor) is connected to first floor iPad
RBS1 (1st floor) is connected to 2nd floor Energy socket wifi device
RBS2 (2nd floor) is connected to ground floor front door doorbell
In all of the above cases there is a Orbi device much closer and should have a much stronger signal strength. Especially the doorbell where the connecting to the ground floor RBR would be expected. If not the RBR then connecting to the 1st floor Orbi would be a so much more logical option then the 2nd floor Orbi.
Question is here, is the devices view broken in the app or is something more principal broken where devices do not connect to the strongest/closest Orbi device and therefor have slower connections?
If it is the second, that would be a serious flaw in the working of the Orbi Mesh system.
network configuration
15 Replies
I have a 970 and have not noticed this behavior, although I will say the device list can be wonky at times, plus it has a lag of reporting the correct info - but no more than a minute or two. But at other times, I have seen it say WiFi-connected devices are wired, and I have seen connections reported to the wrong Orbi - like you are seeing. Often times for me, a reboot fixes this.
That said - the path of wireless signals can be deceiving. To be sure, have you tried using an app to actually see what the signal strength, in dBm, is from each Orbi device near your doorbell and socket (which I presume are stationary!)?
If you have a Mac, I use the free app from the App store WiFi Explorer Lite - it's excellent and simple to use. You will see real time what the signals are, just walk your Mac over near the doorbell and wait a minute. If you only have Windows PCs, I am sure there are free apps that do the same thing - you need to see dBm.
Unfortunately, using an iPad or iPhone won't work - Apple restricts that wireless data from the network to be gathered by apps, it appears.
If the dBm measurements are close, since there is variation in the signal strength over time (you can see some fluctuation watching WiFi Explorer Lite), that when the doorbell made its decision to connect, that Orbi was the strongest device; later on, another device had a slightly stringer signal, but not strong enough to switch. If you think about it, there needs to be some number of dBm improvement required for a device to switch (5 dBm? we don't know) - otherwise, with normal fluctuations a device would be ping-ponging between devices all day.
Now, if any of your devices are connected say at 2.4GHz to a further-away Orbi, and there is a 5GHz connection from a closer Orbi, that's much more of a concern.
What FW version are you on? A new FW update just came out in the last 2 weeks for the 870, 10.5.17.3.
I saw I had an update this morning, now remotely updating the devices.
The release notes would be nice to see if there are any fixes in that area.
Crasje I thought you would enjoy this, I found it in one of my bug reports on the device list. Everything on my network was wired and attached to the router! So while I gave you some things to dig in to if you are so inclined, my advice would be not to worry about it if the network is otherwise running well - connections solid, speeds good, etc.
I have learned not to trust the device report if something there is odd or in conflict with other data, objective or subjective, I perceive about my network!
I am going to see what connects to what when I restart the strangely connected devices. See if they then still connect to the wrong device.
I now have a 2.4hgz electricity socket thing (i can remotely control) on the second floor in my home office that is connected to the ground floor router.
No wonder the linkrate was 1mbps this morning and 43 mbps now. Anything else on the same floor has at least 500-700mbps (I have a 1 GB i-net connection)
Update, i bought a 3rd satellite and placed it in the back off my living room so I have wifi in the backyard.
today i was watching F1 as i walked on my terrace and after 3 meter i lost connection because my ipad didnt switch from the router to the satellite. So thats another 600 euro thrown away because the Netgear software has issues (my opinion).
Within the last month, I recently installed an Orbi 970/971 network for a client (6 satellites). Beside the problems of satellites and number of attached devices being inaccurate, I too have reason to believe the "mesh roaming" is not working properly. Reason I believe this, is that I can walk to another room which is very far from the prior room and conduct a speed test (also observe the number of WiFi bars on the iPad Pro). Each time I turn the WiFi on the iPad OFF then ON, and retest, both the signal strength and speed test results are much higher - most ofter more than twice the speed! I also combined this with observing what devices were attached to each satellite to see whether the client device was in fact 'handed off'; it was not in half the cases.
As for the nodal graph presented in the app it is unclear what exactly is displayed. I mean that there are two primary connection types PHYSICAL and LOGICAL. Certainly the physical topology can influence the graph, i.e. "daisy chaining the satellites" would result in a string of satellites as you have AND the UI being a physical representation. Alternately, if there were a Layer 2 LAN switch serving to connect all the Orbi devices rather than seeing the satellites arrange in a star-topology with the router being in the center, you still might see the 'string of satellites' because the UI is displaying a logical view AND the system has not settled on preferring the physical backhaul over the wireless backhaul. The convergence time for the router and satellites to display as they are truly wired and operating has taken DAYS in this network. NetGear support admits this is a 'known bug' but my greatest fear is that the fix will not come in time before this customer discontinues our relationship.
As donawalt said, there are free wifi signal strength apps available. I use a professional tool but I started out using an inexpensive android tablet with a free app - it provided me with dBm measurements.
Given the effort and troubles I have had in the past 3 weeks with this installation, I clearly believe there are very many serious bugs in the Orbi RBE970 system. I do installs for a living with over 100 ASUS installations and recently starting to roll out Orbi. I have 4 Orbi systems installed without issues to this day but this new RBE97X series has been a total disaster.
Its unfortunately a worse issue as you think. If i shut down & restart stationary devices (like a wifi controlled wall socket) it will connect correctly to the strongest/closest satellite.
If I check however a few days later, the devices are connected illogical again.
I bought an extra satellite and places it next to the doors to my garden so that I would have a good connecting with my 4k ring video camera mounted to my house just 2,5 meter away overlooking the back yard, but the device connects to a much farther away satellite giving me max 145mbs
New Orbi app updated:
https://community.netgear.com/discussions/en-home-orbi-app/new-orbi-app-versions-and-updates/2308199/replies/2460203
I installed the update and actually I think it improved. I have just one very big anomaly. My ground floor living room is 14 meters long, my router is about 3 meters from the front and 1 satellite is placed in the back of the room for having wifi in the back yard.
For some reason my Ring doorbel (front of the house) is connected to the ground floor router at the back of the house. While the backyard ring video cam is connected the router at the back of the house (2,5 meters away).
