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New - RBR750 / RBS750 Firmware Version 4.6.5.14 Released
Enhancements:
Adds support for the RBS350
Security Fixes:
Fixes security vulnerabilities.
For more information about security vulnerabilities, visit https://www.netgear.com/about/secu...
WOW, this morning about 2am i decided to update my two ORBI RBS satillites first. and that went ok, till a fantom ORBI showed up in my Orbi App. i then proceeded to update the RBR750, that went well till it said it was online but it wasnt. i followed the directions according to Furrye38, (ty) and i unplugged the sats and then the router, waited 2-3 minutes then i plugged in the router and then the sats and waited........it took a few minutes and the router came online then the sats followed. it still took some time for all my devices to get back on line (about 60), which is normal thing that has been happening. then today was the test. we had some heavy thunderstorms roll in, these south florida storms alway knock out some power or damages some weak transformers to were the power goes on and off real quick. it happened 3 times in a half hour i also have the comcast modem and the RBR750 plugged into a surge and battery back up. the weakest like here is the sats, no battery-back up for them and they used to take forever to re-sync but after the upgraded firmware last night, WOW, the ORBI's came right back online which shocked me, i thought i would need to reboot the sats. but no input from me and the whole system came back online quick. i am no IT guy here but this is a major inprovement from the previous firmware that almost killed the ORBI system. thanks to all here on this forum, i have learned alot from here.
I would personally not buy this mesh system. The issues people are suffering have been around a very long time and you'll be sent down a rabbit hole trying to resolve them.
That said not everyone who bought this mesh will have problems, but I personally wouldn't take the risk especially considering the high price for these, and there are other products with similar range and speed that don't lock you down so much, so at least with others if there are issues you can usually find a working firmware
EvilHomer80 wrote:I would personally not buy this mesh system. The issues people are suffering have been around a very long time and you'll be sent down a rabbit hole trying to resolve them.
That said not everyone who bought this mesh will have problems, but I personally wouldn't take the risk especially considering the high price for these, and there are other products with similar range and speed that don't lock you down so much, so at least with others if there are issues you can usually find a working firmware
Oh thats disapointing, I was hoping its just an issue with this current firmware, was really set on this mesh system as well, but the main thing for me is stability, I dont want silly issues that require reboots or internet dropouts while Im streaming something for example.
It is a shame. To be honest on paper the Netgear Orbi is an incredible mesh system and I had an amazing time with the RBK50 but wanted to dip my toe into wifi 6 as more devices become available to support it. However in practical use the RBK50 was a lot more useful.
For full disclosure, my Orbi 753 is working pretty well. It has its hiccups but its been up and stable for months now. However for that to happen I had to downgrade the firmware to 3.x. On all versions of 4 I've had issues with the satellites disconnecting. You don't always notice it, but if you were streaming something whilst connected to a satellite you would and both myself and wife sit on zoom calls most of the working day so it was obvious it had problems.
Downgrading to 3.x is not especially difficult, but its much harder than it need to be. Search this forum and you'll find details on how to do it. It involves hacking the HTML a bit on the admin page. Netgear also auto installs updates, so you have to immediately block them. I suggest doing this before you downgrade. To block the updates there are two approaches you can find on here but they are not always fully successful. One involves downgrading to a version that allows Telnet then using commands to update the configuration, the other relies on a downstream router between your internet connection and the orbi to block access to the auto update servers.
So in summary:
- The issue is clearly firmware because on 3.x I have no such problems, so at least its fixable
- Netgear have been painfully slow to fix the issue and a couple of interim updates did nothing to fix the stability of mine. I think this has been going on the best part of 2021
- Some had success by disabling certain features. I disagree that this is acceptable as you are buying a premium product
- Netgear support is beyond terrible to non-existent, but this forum is useful with a lot of good people trying to help
- I would not buy this product again and have been removing netgear items from my network
- Even to get it to work, you need to do a lot of hacking about. This product is meant to be for consumers, its designed to be set up by the app and with auto updates, just forget about it. However the opposite is true, you will be forever tinkering to try and get something resembling a stable connection
- Ideally you want another router between orbi and outside connection. Kind of defeats the whole point of the Orbi and makes it a very overpriced access point instead
There are many other mesh systems, most of which are probably not designed as user friendly as the Orbi, but given Netgear have failed here, but worse don't let you access detailed settings to try and fix it yourself, I'd opt for something else if I was buying now.
I personally think the only way to make products better is for the consumer to speak with their wallets and purses. If a product is still selling and people put up with the issues then there is little incentive to improve it