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Forum Discussion
RBRE960B compatibility with BGW320-500
Hi, I'm currently running an AT&T Fiber connection with a BGW320-500 modem/router combo unit. First week of March I picked up an Orbi RBRE960B and swapped out my old Netgear Nighthawk for it. I i...
I've disable 6ghz wifi per your earlier post and now the BGW320 came right up. Solid white. SMH.
Sorry to hear that. But it makes me feel a bit better that it's not just me seeing this behavior.
To be honest, after struggling with it off and on for a couple months, once I found disabling the 6ghz resolved any issue... I've just left it that way and stopped putting time and energy into it. My mobile phone is my only wifi 6 device currently anyway. Haven't done any additional follow up troubleshooting at all. No issues in almost two months now with the 6ghz disabled. Tremendous waste of money though using this router without the 6g band.
I started to post on the AT&T forum about the modem, since that seems to be where the problem is. But never went back and actually posted anything after signing up. Would love to hear the results if you get any further with it. I'm not sure I care enough to keep troubleshooting at this point. Started back in like early February.
It really seems like just changing ISP and getting a third party modem would be a functional fix. But I don't have any alternate ISP options here that wouldn't make it pointless to have wifi 6 anyway.
I went over it with some more techs today as my router-modem issue apparently also brought down some of the neighbors service. Anyway, I pointed them to your post as where I found my fix. They are going to escalate it and get hold of the same Orbi router so they can replicate the issue back at ATT. I just posted to ATT's forum regarding our exciting issue also..
How close is the RBR to the ISP modem?
Doesn't ATT have a more recent model to the BGW320? Isn't there a 700 series or am I thinking of something else?
- I moved mine to the other end of the house to test, hardlined my PC to the modem, and just plugged the router into power at the other end of the house. Still knocked the modem offline. And as he mentioned, he knocked neighbors modems offline in other houses.
When I talked to AT&T, I called to ask if there were any third party modems I could use. They looked up my modem and said it was the newest they had and that the service had to use it. The tech also tried five different BGW320 when he was at my house. I'd have to assume that there's not a newer version, unless it's very recent. BaneSilvermoon Xkennw FURRYe38
I find this interesting.
When you talk about disabling your 6GHz network - are you talking specifically about unchecking the box under the entry labeled 6 GHz Wireless Settings on the Wireless tab?
This does not enable/disable 6GHz SSID - this enables/disables a separate 6GHz SSID - separate being a different 6GHz band from the standard SSID used by the Orbi. To better explain this - If my Orbi SSID is called NETWORKABC, I have a NETWORKABC SSID broadcasting on 2.4GHz, a NETWORKABC SSID broadcasting on 5GHz, AND a NETWORKABC SSID broadcasting on 6GHz.
If I enable the 6GHZ ONLY band using the 6 GHz Wireless Settings in the Wireless tab, then I get another SSID broadcasting on the 6GHz band using the name that I provided in that setting.
At least that is what MY 960 is doing.
So - just curiously - are you providing the same SSID as used on your regular ORBI network in this area - thinking you will have the same network name across all three bands? If so, is it possible that you are creating two SSIDs under the same name on the 6GHz band using same channel - thereby causing something funky to happen? If so, maybe try a different SSID name under that special 6GHz band and see if it corrects that issue.
To verify that your Orbi 960 and MY Orbi 960 are functioning the same - can you verify that you can connect to the 6GHz band using the regular Orbi SSID after turning OFF (unchecking) the 6 GHz Wireless Settings box where it says "Enable 6GHz only network" and hitting apply. If you can not connect on the 6GHz band using the regular Orbi SSID - you may need to forget the Orbi SSID in network settings, then try and reconnect using the device that is 6GHz capable. It also helps if you are on Windows 11 to verify that it is actually on 6GHz - I'm not sure all Windows 10 releases are supporting 6GHz correctly yet.
Thanks!
- Hi ,
To answer your questions, I have always setup distinct SSID names. I did not reuse my main SSID anywhere in settings.
Unchecking "Enable 6 GHz Only Network" is the only change I made to get around the issue reported here, and it was sufficient to address it.
I tried what you mentioned, used the forget network option on my phone, and reconnected and I do see the 6GHz frequency for my main SSID on my phone now; thanks for that tip, didn't know any of that. Nice to know I'm not actually losing the entire 6GHz feature.
So I guess this issue is only related to this separate 6GHz-only WIFI. I'm glad you found that you still have a 6GHz band available! It's not very well explained in the User Manual - hoping Netgear will update that some day. I think a lot of users believe you have to enable this option to GET/USE a 6GHz SSID.
I think there is still and issue somewhere - the option is there, it SHOULD be usable without taking down the connection. But I'm sure it may take some digging by NG to figure out WHY it is happening.
That's a good call out. I had noticed that the signal appeared to be registering as wifi 6 on my phone, but so does the IoT SSID (which is 2.4 and 5.0 only) so I figured it was just an anomaly at the time, or registering what the device was capable of. But looking closer at the network information, it is indeed sometimes picking up five signals off of my primary SSID, one broadcasting on channel 213. Though MOST of the time, the Orbi wifi analytics doesn't see that signal.
And no, my SSIDs all have the same name except they end in IoT, 50, and 60.
