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Forum Discussion
RBR20 Firmware update and stability issues with Circle enabled
At the beginning of March, I updated the firmware on my RBR20 & RBS20's; the new firmware was v2.6.2.104 and, as far as I can tell, the previous one was 2.6.1.36. Immediately, everyone in the house was having problems. My four, remote students were having constant issues and I was having issues with both Zoom and Teams calls for work; the kids were also having stability & lag issues with multiplayer Xbox games. After doing a factory reset on the Orbi, things were generally stable for again for remote schooling, but my work videoconferencing was still suffering as was the online gaming.
One of the trouble-shooting steps was to re-enabled the access point on our internet modem. Any devices connected directly to the modem's access point had zero issues which pointed directly to the Orbi as the problem.
Part of the reason I bought the Orbi in the first place is that it included Circle; prior to the Orbi I had been using a standalone Circle device. In the last couple of weeks, I have experimented with disabling Circle entirely. As long as Circle is disabled, everything is fine: no video conferencing issues and no online gaming instability. The interesting thing is that, even if I move a device into the Circle's "Unmanaged Devices" category, instability issues persist. So, in the last few weeks, I've been disabling Circle at the start of the day and re-enabling it in the evening when Bedtime scheduling would start to kick in.
What a hassle, right? So, while the Orbi factory reset definitely helped, things are still worse overall since the firmware update at the beginning of March. Realizing that Circle is the source of the remaining problems, I have one more thing to try. When I did the initial factory reset, I restored Circle's setup using a backup from the Circle app. I'm planning to try doing another factory reset and then setting up the Circle again from scratch.
Since I have a bit of a workaround in place now, I figured I'd put this out there and see if anyone else has had similar issues with Orbi and Circle and gotten things sorted out. Before the update in March, I have to say that my experience with the the RBR20 had been nothing less than stellar, but the road since then has been rough and I've started wondering if it wouldn't be more productive to replace the whole setup.
Thanks in advance!
6 Replies
btgrant wrote:Before the update in March, I have to say that my experience with the the RBR20 had been nothing less than stellar, but the road since then has been rough and I've started wondering if it wouldn't be more productive to replace the whole setup.There is zero dollar cost to manually loading the previous firmware on the Orbi. (Labor cost, but not money).
It is a continuing mystery why some Orbi owners experience no issues with the latest firmware and others have constant problems.
A manual update involves downloading firmware from the Netgear support site for the RBR20 and RBS20
https://kb.netgear.com/000062432/RBR20-Firmware-Version-2-6-1-36
Unpack the zip file to extract the *.img files for router and satellite.
Log into the Orbi administrative web interface http://orbilogin.net
Select the advanced Tab, Administration, Firmware Update, Manual Update Tab.
Then follow the directions to upload the firmware files.
(I, personally, prefer to connect directly to the satellite web interface (same login credentials) and do the Firmware Update directly on the satellite.)
Thank you for the suggestion. I did try backing off to a previous firmware w/out any results; I can't believe I left all that out. Long story short, because I was pretty sure I was on 2.6.1.36 before the "upgrade" to 2.6.2.104, I manually installed 2.6.1.36 on both the router and satellites; this was before the factory reset. At this point, I suppose it wouldn't hurt to go back further than 2.6.1.36, though I'm not sure which one that would be. Getting the firmware files for 2.6.1.36 wasn't very straightforward if I remember correctly.
The reason I think that 2.6.1.36 was the most recent version that was stable for me is that I checked for updates on a pretty regular basis and would update whenever they were avilable. I guess I learned my lesson there...
I have no explanation as to what could cause some users to have zero issues with a specific Orbi firmware and others face constant serious problems. But, it is obviously the case because there are so many posts that begin with... "I updated firmware, and NOW..."
Factory Reset and reconfigure seems to work a lot of the time. If it does not, however, there seems to be no other solution but to go back.
I have one Orbi RBR50 that is running 2.3.5.0 from summer 2019 and working fine. (It is 3,000 miles away and I won't update the firmware until I can be there in person to deal with the results.) My other Orbi RBR50 is on 2.7.2.104, also with no issues.
