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wheaties82's avatar
wheaties82
Aspirant
Mar 22, 2022

Re: Orbi speed issue

I have a similar issue.  I have full 1GB fiber internet (up + down) from my ISP.  When I initially reboot ORBI RBR850 and do hard wire speed tests (ookla) I see ~850Mbps download and ~860 Mbps upload.  After 20 minutes my download speeds drop to ~600Mbps and my upload drops to ~50Mbps!!! 

 

I have 2 RBS850 satellites connected via hardware Cat5E backhaul.  All speed tests are conducted from a hardwire laptop directly connected to the RBR850 router.  All devices are running the latest firmware 4.6.7.13 (I've tried downgrading to several past versions, same issue repeats on all).

 

I have performed full factory reset on all devices with firmware upgrades and reconfigured settings manually (no backup file uploads).  The issues still persists.

 

My ISP claims the issue is between the ORBI router and their ONT Calix Gigapoint 803G fiber device.  The Calix device has a small ARP table and clears it every 5 minutes.  Per their diagnosis the ORBI device needs to send an ARP request every 5 minutes to stay in sync with the ONT.  Netgear does not expose the ARP table timeout request setting so there is no way to do this.  As a result the ONT ARP table doesn't know how to route traffic and results in the severely degraded upload speeds...

 

TBH I am not sure I buy their explanation 100% - don't understand why it only affects the upload so severely but not the download (there is a degradation of download speed, but not nearly as bad as the upload).  They are bringing me one of their WiFi Routers to do additional diagnostics later this week - we'll see what that yields.

 

Would like to get attention on this issue as it seems to be unique to the RBR850 line - I had the RBK50 system just a month ago (same hardware backhaul setup, same cables, same router config) and it never had a performance issue with upload or download speeds.

3 Replies

  • FURRYe38's avatar
    FURRYe38
    Guru
    Mar 22, 2022

    What is the Mfr and model# of the Internet Service Providers modem/ONT the NG router is connected too?

     

    How are the RBS connected to the RBR using ethernet? Directly to the back or is there a LAN switch or wall jacks in between them? 

     

    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 📡

     

    What channels are you using? Auto? Try Auto and 48 on 5Ghz. Or try setting manual channel 1, 6 or 11 on 2.4Ghz and 40 to 48 channel on 5Ghz.
    Any Wifi Neighbors near by? If so, how many?

     

    Has a power off for 1 minute then back ON with the ISP modem and router been performed since last update?
    Be sure to restart your network in this sequence:
    Turn off and unplug modem.
    Turn off router and computers.
    Plug in and turn on modem. Wait 2 minutes for it to connect.
    Turn on the router and wait 2 minutes for it to connect.
    Turn on computers and rest of network.

  • CrimpOn's avatar
    CrimpOn
    Guru
    Mar 22, 2022
    wheaties82 wrote:

    My ISP claims the issue is between the ORBI router and their ONT Calix Gigapoint 803G fiber device.  The Calix device has a small ARP table and clears it every 5 minutes.  Per their diagnosis the ORBI device needs to send an ARP request every 5 minutes to stay in sync with the ONT.  Netgear does not expose the ARP table timeout request setting so there is no way to do this.  As a result the ONT ARP table doesn't know how to route traffic and results in the severely degraded upload speeds.

    Sounds like complete hooey to me.  The Calix has no IP address.  It is just the equivalent of a modem which passes data between the ISP and the customer router.

     

    On the older RBR50 product, the debug page has an option to record LAN/WAN traffic. (http://orbilogin.net/debug.htm ) I often record for while, save the zip file to my computer, and use Wireshark to look at the lan.pcap and wan.pcap files.  If the Orbi is sending any ARP requests, they will show in the wan.pcap file. Setting a display filter to 'arp' (lower case) will get rid of the rest of the traffic.  The Orbi will never ARP the IP address of the Calix because it doesn't know it's there.  It should ARP for the MAC address of the Gateway IP it got from the ISP.