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WiFi 6 / RBR850 issues
Hi, I have an RBR 850 wired command center and one satellite upstairs. On my MacBook Pro I constantly get an issue with the WiFi connection dropping - unstable connections during zoom calls, my mail g...
I have similar setup (apart from the link speed and ISP) and on the face of it what seems to be the same problem.
I recently bought an Orbi RBR852, AX6000 setup (one router and satellite)
I've tried 2 different Intel AX200 based cards (different manufacturers) with various vendor and intel drivers but under certain loads the connection is dropped regularly - Veeam Agent for Backup (to a local NAS, plugged into the satellite) for backup and Wan Killer eventually drops enough packets to cause an issue. Ping shows the connection is solid, then every so often drops 2-3 packets. That seems to be enough for the backup\stress test to fail.
I've also tried the same loads with an ASUS AC88 - this maintains a solid connection, but it's 802.11ac - too slow. Surprisingly, even if I force the ax cards to use 802.11ac, they still drop.
Router and satellite are about 30 ft apart with a few walls inbetween too. Signal strength between the satellite and PCs is strong (much more than that from PCs to router), so PCs should not be swapping between the 2. There's no serious contention that I can see on WIFI from my neighbours.
For the moment I've plugged both PCs and the NAS into the satellite router and that solves the problems during backups, but this is far from ideal.
FW Version - V3.2.17.12_1.4.14
I'm at the end of my tether with this one. If it's a chipset\driver issue on the cards, I'll take the hit and buy another type of card, but I can't imagine these cards were released with a major flaw like this. Is there a compatibility issue between the ax200 cards and this Orbi setup?
Any suggestions greatly appreciated :)
Scotty
Make sure the adapter drivers are updated as well. Sometimes it only takes a update.
Scotty3 wrote:I have similar setup (apart from the link speed and ISP) and on the face of it what seems to be the same problem.
I recently bought an Orbi RBR852, AX6000 setup (one router and satellite)
I've tried 2 different Intel AX200 based cards (different manufacturers) with various vendor and intel drivers but under certain loads the connection is dropped regularly - Veeam Agent for Backup (to a local NAS, plugged into the satellite) for backup and Wan Killer eventually drops enough packets to cause an issue. Ping shows the connection is solid, then every so often drops 2-3 packets. That seems to be enough for the backup\stress test to fail.
I've also tried the same loads with an ASUS AC88 - this maintains a solid connection, but it's 802.11ac - too slow. Surprisingly, even if I force the ax cards to use 802.11ac, they still drop.
Router and satellite are about 30 ft apart with a few walls inbetween too. Signal strength between the satellite and PCs is strong (much more than that from PCs to router), so PCs should not be swapping between the 2. There's no serious contention that I can see on WIFI from my neighbours.
For the moment I've plugged both PCs and the NAS into the satellite router and that solves the problems during backups, but this is far from ideal.
FW Version - V3.2.17.12_1.4.14
I'm at the end of my tether with this one. If it's a chipset\driver issue on the cards, I'll take the hit and buy another type of card, but I can't imagine these cards were released with a major flaw like this. Is there a compatibility issue between the ax200 cards and this Orbi setup?
Any suggestions greatly appreciated :)
Scotty
Many thanks for the suggestions folks.
I've tried the CTS/RTS settings on both bands at 2347 with no difference. I've switched off the ax function on both bands (one at a time and then both) and it still failed unfortunately.
I've tried just about every adapter driver I can get my hands on, both from the vendors and the latest intel drivers (22.30.0) with varying degrees of success. On some driver versions when the connection drops - which can be anything after a minute under load to several hours - the cards throw a hardware error in event viewer and refuses to reconnect to wifi until a reboot or flight mode is enabled\disabled. On others, it just drops a few packets, but that's enough to cause failures.
Cards tested are -
TP-LINK Archer TX3000E AX3000 (I bought 2 which have this same issue)
Ziyituod AX200 Wifi 6 Card
All were tested in 2 different PCs and all available PCIe slots in them. I'm not buying the hardware error warning is real- unless I'm incredibly unlucky, it's not a defective card (but maybe a defective driver?)
Both have what seems to be exactly the same issue.
All power management options have been disabled on the cards in the adapter config as well, but doesn't seem to help.
OS is Win10 Home (20H2 (Build 19042.870))
I know this (particularly the HW errors in event viewer) seem to point to an issue with the cards\drivers themselves rather than the Orbi, but with 2 different card manufacturers tested, I'm wondering if it's some kind of clash between the ax200 based cards and the AX6000 Orbi? Is anyone aware of any WIFI6 cards I can try that aren't based on the intel ax200 chipset?
Only thing I can think of that I haven't tried is to get the old router out and see if those cards fail in a similar way on 802.11ac with that. I'll do that this week. That might rule out the ORBI setup entirely (and I'll take this over to the Intel forums :smileyhappy: ).
What might be helpful is...does anyone here have a setup with ax200 based cards and an Orbi 85x setup that actually works under a sustained load?
Magicboy not sure if this still seems to be the same issue you're experiencing and I don't want to hijack your original post. If this is significantly different to what you're seeing, please DM me or post below - I'll start another thread so we both have the best chance of a fix.
Scotty
FURRYe38 Reckon you were spot on. I swear I tried >5 different driver versions with no joy. Gave the latest Intel driver a go (22.40.0.7 - dated March 30th 2021).
A full 2TB+ backup ran with no issues for the first time - got nowhere near that before! I ran a continuous ping along side it and saw no packet loss at all :smileyvery-happy: I'll keep an eye on it, but seems Intel's fixed something on their end. Nothing obvious in their release notes to indicate what the problem was. Everything's pointing at an Intel driver issue in this case rather than an Orbi one though (Sorry Netgear!)
If it helps anyone else reading this forum with similar issues, the working config I have is -
Ziyituod AX200 Wifi 6 Card (Intel AX200 chipset)
Intel AX200 Driver 22.40.0.7 (with all power management settings off in the driver config)
Orbi RBR\RBS850 AX6000 (FW. V3.2.17.12_1.4.14)
Win10 Home (20H2 (Build 19042.870))
Thanks again for all your help folks!
Scotty
Glad you found one that worked. Be sure to save off a back up configuration to file for safe keeping.
Enjoy. :smileywink:
Scotty3 wrote:FURRYe38 Reckon you were spot on. I swear I tried >5 different driver versions with no joy. Gave the latest Intel driver a go (22.40.0.7 - dated March 30th 2021).
A full 2TB+ backup ran with no issues for the first time - got nowhere near that before! I ran a continuous ping along side it and saw no packet loss at all :smileyvery-happy: I'll keep an eye on it, but seems Intel's fixed something on their end. Nothing obvious in their release notes to indicate what the problem was. Everything's pointing at an Intel driver issue in this case rather than an Orbi one though (Sorry Netgear!)
If it helps anyone else reading this forum with similar issues, the working config I have is -
Ziyituod AX200 Wifi 6 Card (Intel AX200 chipset)
Intel AX200 Driver 22.40.0.7 (with all power management settings off in the driver config)
Orbi RBR\RBS850 AX6000 (FW. V3.2.17.12_1.4.14)
Win10 Home (20H2 (Build 19042.870))
Thanks again for all your help folks!
Scotty