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Orbi AX router still needs firmware bugs fixed - latency, and slow satellite streaming
I have an Orbi RBK842. There is severe latency in connections between my mobile devices and the router. This latency happens when connected with either the router or satellite. Also, the connection...
I think I identified why the Orbi AX series wasn't working out for me. The Orbi AX doesn't allow toggling "Enable OFDMA in 2.4 GHz" or "Enable OFDMA in 5 GHz." When toggling this option "ON" in my Nighthawk, my mobile device latency goes up to about 2 seconds just like I observed in the Orbi AX. When I toggle this "OFF," latency is in milliseconds.
Orbi should add the ability toggle this on/off since some older devices, such as Apple TV 4K and iPhone X, do not support OFDMA, which likely leads to latency in some important scenarios.
I think I identified why the Orbi AX series wasn't working out for me. The Orbi AX doesn't allow toggling "Enable OFDMA in 2.4 GHz" or "Enable OFDMA in 5 GHz." When toggling this option "ON" in my Nighthawk, my mobile device latency goes up to about 2 seconds just like I observed in the Orbi AX. When I toggle this "OFF," latency is in milliseconds.
Orbi should add the ability toggle this on/off since some older devices, such as Apple TV 4K and iPhone X, do not support OFDMA, which likely leads to latency in some important scenarios.
You can disable AX mode. Orbi doesn't support OFDMA.
- That’s true, AX mode can be turned off. But then, what is the point of having an AX router... Guess it makes sense I downgraded to a lower tier AX router.
The Nighthawk has AX enabled but OFDMA disabled and I don’t get the same latency that I saw on the Orbi AX router.
Thanks for the help.
FURRYe38 wrote:Orbi doesn't support OFDMA.
I find this confusing. The "solution" was to turn off OFDMA on the Nighthawk and the Orbi does not support OFDMA.
That seems to mean "off" means something different on Nighthawk than "not supported" means on Orbi.
Perhaps Orbi and Nighthawk use different chip sets?
I may have read it wrong but this is how I read it. Turning off OFDMA fixes the latency problem in Nighthawks but the Orbi AX router has no way to toggle OFDMA off.
If the Orbi doesn't have OFDMA, then it isn't a true Wifi 6 router.
Jetdrive wrote:If the Orbi doesn't have OFDMA, then it isn't a true Wifi 6 router.
I don't know about "true WiFi 6", but it is pretty clear that the Nighthawk X6 DataSheet clearly mentions OFDMA and the Orbi AX product DataSheet does not. Seems like if the Orbi included that feature, it would have been highlighted as it is on the Nighthawk DataSheet.
So, I'm still confused. "turn off" does not mean the same thing as "doesn't support to begin with.."
Doing a little research and it appears the Orbi AX does support OFDMA.
The Orbi kit is a 12-stream, tri-band AX6000 system that supports the latest Wi-Fi 6 technologies including WPA3 encryption, 1024 QAM, and Orthogonal Frequency-Division Multiple Access (OFDMA) data transmissions. It also supports 4x4 MU-MIMO simultaneous data streaming and signal beamforming and can reach maximum data rates of up to 1,200Mbps on the 2.4GHz band and up to 2,400Mbps on each of the two 5GHz bands.
Edit: Now I'm confused. These specs came from a review by PCMag. Not sure why Netgear wouldn't list OFDMA in their own literature as a supported protocol. So maybe it doesn't support it.
- Yes, I was 99.99% sure Orbi AX supported OFDMA but didn’t want to get into a community board debate. I believe the standard approach for Orbi AX routers is to enable OFDMA when AX features are turned on.
In the Nighthawk, OFDMA can be turned off while still enabling AX features.
Orbi AX routers need to support toggling OFDMA on/off to allow for what might be latency issues with devices that don’t have AX WiFi chips (like my iPhone X and Apple TV 4K). Either that, or fix the latency issues.
Also a separate issue, I noticed that the single SSID 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz approach in Orbi AX (but that can be toggled on/off in Nighthawk) led to minor disconnects in continuous pings and small data transmissions from my computer to a server. Orbi seems to check if a device should be connected via 2.4 or 5 GHz and when transitioning between the two causes disconnects (the disconnects happened to my devices even when not moving the physical location of the devices).
If I were to adopt Orbi in the future, having the ability to toggle the single SSID feature on/off would be a must. I cannot have occasional disconnects with servers I connect to.
Thanks for the help!
