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Forum Discussion
Problems switching in Mesh
Since two years I have a setup with one router (RBR850) and three satellites (RBS850). All satellites are wired to the router.
This should be set up as a mesh network, so that my devices automatically switch one from to the other.
The reception is great in the house, every room has full reception. However, the switching between different satellites does not work well at all. Very often after I moved through the house, my iPhone or Macbook says it's connected to wifi, but shows 5G instead. Then none of my wifi functionality is available, e.g. control Sonos. After waiting for a couple of minutes, it does connect to wifi again and everything works perfectly. Could anyone tell me what could be set up wrong?
All my firmware is up-to-date. V4.6.14.3 for the router and satellites.
Our floors are solid concrete. So wifi does not go through. For a short time the satellite on the top floor was turned off. This caused the reception to be near-zero on that floor. So removing satellites is not an option.
(I started a topic about this last year, which has been closed now. We did quite some renovations and I hoped it might have changed after this, but still the same. So that's why I am reopening this topic)
9 Replies
What is the Mfr and model# of the Internet Service Providers modem/ONT the NG router is connected too?
Be sure your using a good quality LAN cable between the modem and router. CAT6 is recommended.What is the size of your home? Sq Ft?
What is the distance between the router and 📡 satellite(s)? 30 feet or more is recommended in between RBR📡 and RBS🛰️ to begin with depending upon building materials when wirelessly connected.
https://kb.netgear.com/31029/Where-should-I-place-my-Orbi-satellite ‌‌🛰️How are the RBS ethernet connected to the RBR? Directly behind the RBR or is there a LAN switch in between? Brand and model # of the switch.
CAT# cable used between the RBR and RBS?
What channels are you using?
What other wireless devices do you have connected in the home?
It's up to devices to pick and choose where they connect too. Something Orbi doesn't control.
Our internet modem is a Connect Box (DOCSIS 3.0).
We've renewed our cables during renovation and they are all CAT6.
Our house is about 2800 square feet. The distance between router and satellites is usually more than 10 meters, except possible when going through floors. But as the concrete pretty much blocks all signal, it shouldn't interfere.
All except one of the satellites are connected directly to the router. The other one is connected through a tp-link TL-SG105.
My 2.4 GHz channel is 11 and my 5 GHz channel is 40.
There are quite some other devices connected to the wifi:
- Kitchen appliances
- Apple TVs
- Playstation 5
- Nintendo Switch
- Air Conditioning
- Amazon Alexa
- My girlfriends laptops and phones
Any progress on this?
Gotrah wrote:
Our internet modem is a Connect Box (DOCSIS 3.0).
We've renewed our cables during renovation and they are all CAT6.
Our house is about 2800 square feet. The distance between router and satellites is usually more than 10 meters, except possible when going through floors. But as the concrete pretty much blocks all signal, it shouldn't interfere.
All except one of the satellites are connected directly to the router. The other one is connected through a tp-link TL-SG105.
My 2.4 GHz channel is 11 and my 5 GHz channel is 40.
There are quite some other devices connected to the wifi:
- Kitchen appliances
- Apple TVs
- Playstation 5
- Nintendo Switch
- Air Conditioning
- Amazon Alexa
- My girlfriends laptops and phones
- This happens when I move from ground floor to 1st or the other way around.
Only floor where I have two is ground floor. Where I have my router wired to my internet provider router (in a closet near frontdoor), and a satellite in the area we live.
One thing that might be worth mentioning, is that when I move between these floors I will pass the router. So maybe it’s causing issues that it goes from satellite, to router and to the other satellite within 15 seconds.Please give feedback to the question presented so we can better help you and get a better idea of what you have setup.
Gotrah wrote:
This happens when I move from ground floor to 1st or the other way around.
Only floor where I have two is ground floor. Where I have my router wired to my internet provider router (in a closet near frontdoor), and a satellite in the area we live.
One thing that might be worth mentioning, is that when I move between these floors I will pass the router. So maybe it’s causing issues that it goes from satellite, to router and to the other satellite within 15 seconds.
Gotrah wrote:
my iPhone or Macbook says it's connected to wifi, but shows 5G instead. Then none of my wifi functionality is available, e.g. control Sonos. After waiting for a couple of minutes, it does connect to wifi again and everything works perfectly. Could anyone tell me what could be set up wrong?
I have a suspicion that the concrete floor is causing a situation that the Apple networking software is not designed to handle. Would it be possible to experiment with turning off cellular data. (Can iPhone do that? This Macbook probably does not have LTE capability, correct?) Does the behavior change when LTE data is not an option for the iPhone?**
There are internet standards for how mobile devices change from one WiFi access point to another. IEEE 802.11k, r, and v. (Wikipedia has articles about them.) I believe they are enabled by default on modern WiFi systems.
What I think is happening is the transition is not gradual. In most scenarios, as the mobile device moves, the WiFi signal from the current access point begins to fade away while the signal from a different access point becomes stronger. At some point, the device will device to change access points and will send management frames announcing, "I'm leaving that one" and "I want to associate with this one". With the concrete floor, the iPhone or Macbook may just suddenly "lose the signal" and the iPhone may switch to LTE data (which may also have a punk signal) before discovering that there is another WiFi access point with an SSID that it knows.
Investigating this sort of thing is not trivial*. What i would do is configure a WiFi adapter in monitor mode set to the current WiFi channel and record all of the management frames which involve the iPhone. (Wireshark can capture management frames and a display filter can be used to isolate the frames from the iPhone.) The iPhone or Macbook may show one pattern of management frames when walking around the ground floor and a different pattern when going from one floor to the other.
* "incredibly frustrating" may be a more appropriate description of the process. I found that some WiFi adapters simply cannot be put into monitor mode. Some will do monitor mode on Linux but not on Windows. Getting Wireshark to capture correctly, etc. etc.
** Another experiment might be to invite someone to bring an Android phone over and see what happens going between floors. I would expect the guest WiFi to show the same behavior.
