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Forum Discussion
Ongoing: devices that do not show as connected to WiFi on RBR850 system
Hello, this has been an ongoing issue from time to time over the last 2 weeks. FURRYe38 has been very helpful so far in helping me try some things. The original problem was my wife's iPhone SE appear...
Thanks FURRYe38 , let us know how it goes! Maybe a setting will help. For me, this is the second morning with 1 satellite, and the iPhone on the second floor is off the internet. I tried pinging it, and nothing. So I think it's really off, but in sleep mode. I am running out of ideas, I know now the signal is not great on the second floor, I will probably try and place the 2nd satellite somewhere else on the 2nd floor, but I am curious to see how your tests and findings go.
For me, it's always the second morning - things run great for about 36 hours and then it reverts back to dropping devices that move around the house. It's like the algorithm in the mesh is not quite working, and the device gets lost between radios or something, I don't know..
UPDATE: I decided to add back in the 2nd Satellite on the second floor. I placed it a little closer to the door, same height, in BR 1 as before. I figure, if I am going to get periodic disconnects, I might as well get excellent signal on the second floor. I think I have a pretty good setup: Router is near NW corner of the house in basement; satellite 1 is NE corner on 1st floor; satellite 2 is South edge on 2nd floor. Pretty spread out! All lights are blue on sync.
I hope some of FURRYe38's testing, or anyone else, might find a tweak to improve this, like power or something. I really think there is an issue in the mesh somehow, what I did this morning was set up the 2nd satellite RBS, use my Macbook to measure RSSI and Noise (thereby calculating signal-noise ratio, SNR), then use my iPad to measure speeds. Things got a lot better of course, yet it never did show the iPad connected to the 2nd floor satellite as reported by the Orbi app. And, at one point, the Macbook was showing SNR of 52 consistently, yet the Orbi showed the laptop was connected to the Router in the basement! No way. Eventually it showed the MAcbook connected to the 2nd floor satellite, but maybe 5-10 minutes later.
Maybe Netgear folks will see this thread and/or already know their mesh algorithms need some more tweaking, or maybe it's just an app bug in reporting connections, who knows what radio the devices are truly connected to!
Results: (before: 1 satellite on 2nd floor, router in basement; after: adding 2nd floor satelllite. Measuring Ookla d/l speeds.
BR1 - 28 SNR before, 52 SNR after; 130 Mbps d/l before, 655 Mbps after
BR 2 - 26 SNR before, 29-30 SNR after; 80 Mbps d/l before, 458 d/l after
BR 3 - 10 SNR before, 36 SNR after; 45 Mbps d/l before, 545 Mbps after
Living Room 1st floor (did not measure SNR) - 195 mbps before, 465 mbps after
(Note: I found that closing doors of rooms didn't change any of the test results at all! Good to know, and consistent with what we have been told that usually only things like metal and concrete stop the signal).
Please pass all this on to NG support. This needs to be reviewed by them. If your still having problems with just 1 RBS in play, this should be working with two. There maybe sometihng going on with iOS and FW as well.
PROBLEM SOLVED!
Sorry for all the analysis, but this problem really piqued my curiosity!
This is working as designed. After reading a lot of material, the key was this - The WiFi Multimedia Extensions that the Orbi supports (and is configurable on/off - see Advanced/Advanced/Wireless Settings, "Enable WMM (Wi-Fi multimedia) settings" for both 2.4GHz and 5GHz) ALSO includes a special kind of POWER SAVING mode now!
From Netgear's own site:
"The Wi-Fi Alliance has added Power Save Certification to the WMM specification. Power Save uses mechanisms from 802.11e and legacy 802.11,to save power (for battery powered equipment) and fine-tune power consumption. This feature of WMM to save power might cause disconnects under certain conditions."
This quote derives from a brief explanation from Wi-Fi Alliance's own web site.
I suspect that this requires cooperation/certification from both the router and the device. This is because the certification provides an indication that the certified product is targeted for power critical applications like Mobile/Smart Phones and portable power devices, i.e. devices that require battery/recharging. I doubt you will see this on networks with older routers, which is why this is new to me since my prior router was a ~2005 era Google WiFi.
So my working theory was the iPhone goes into a hibernate mode yet is still listening for WiFi data based on WMM. My wife gets very few emails or anything else that sends notifications. So her iPhone is the device that this happens to a lot - whereas my iPhone gets a lot of notifications, emails etc. during the day, plus as soon as I pick it up in the morning to look at it, it's not sleeping any more so quikly out of hibernate/WMM. Her phone needs the Home button to be pressed to light it up, so she could wake up, eventually carry the phne downstairs, and leave it on a table for an hour before checking it - all the while it's remained in WMM/hibernate.
Now I had to test it - I waited for the orbilogin.com to report my wife's phone is not on the network. Once that happened (it was sitting on a table on the 1st floor, which does have very good WiFi signal), I stood next to it, sent my wife's phone a text message, and it lit up right away with the text notification, PLUS I could see clearly it was on WiFi. When I have looked at this in the past, I would just pick up the phone, press the Home button, and it very briefly had the cellular icon before it quickly switched to the WiFi icon. So today, I ras soon as I saw the text message come in, I quickly refreshed orbilogin.com's device list, and her phone was 'active'!
So I think that proves my theory. I guess, to be 100% sure, (or if anybody else wants to try this), I would do 2 more things:
1) Turn off cellular, so in the test it only gets the Text Message if WiFi is active. (Of course, I don't know if the WMM/hibernate still happens if there is no cellular service; does that force the phone to rely more on WiFi?). I really do believe it was on WiFi and not on cellular however, from visual inspection.
2) Go into orbilogin.com, and turn off Advanced/Advanced/Wireless Settings, "Enable WMM (Wi-Fi multimedia) settings" for both 2.4GHz and 5GHz). My theory is that the 'disconnects' or more accurately stated, the WMM/Power saving would no longer occur on any device you are having the issue with.
Cased closed as far as I am concerned! What do you think? đ
So did you have WMM enabled before or disabled. I believe by WMM is enabled by default. So it's enabled now and things are now working as expected?
FURRYe38 I do have WMM enabled, and I have never turned it off. I am comfortable leaving it on once I knew that the behavior was correct, even though it appears the iPhone disconnects from WiFi- it actually hasn't. I guess if someone didn't want to see that happen, they could try turning WMM off.
Ok, just checking to see what you have been using.
Seems like that maybe a iOS and intereaction with Orbi then. You seem to have been the one that posted about this. I haven't see anything from what I have experienced. Thought I do have a older iPhone. :smileywink:
