NETGEAR is aware of a growing number of phone and online scams. To learn how to stay safe click here.
Forum Discussion
Dropped WiFi Connection
I've seen discussions on this topic of the mesh system dropping the WiFi connection and reverting to 5G all the way back to 2023 but almost all of the reported issues are with iPhones. I have two Go...
I have seen flips to 5G go away once I got onto FW vers 9.13.x (forgot which specific version), AND iOS/iPadOS went to v. 26.4 - once I upgraded to 26.4, they went away for good. I think Apple was at least as much to blame as Netgear on this one.
Yes, furry is right you cannot disable IPv6 on Apple devices. But you'll see in the settings, while it has an IPv6 local address, it has no router destination so it does not broadcast anything using IPv6.
Here are some things to try at least in the Apple world (I don't have any Android devices):
- An awful lot of connection and flipping problems are due to Orbi devices being too close together, the multiple strong signals confuse devices. We see this frequently with people, they move from an older router to a 970, which has the strongest radios around - in some cases 30%-40% stronger. The satellites are placed in the same spot as with the old router, and all of a sudden there is signal contention. I wrote a paper on how to place mesh satellites in a home very specifically, let me know if you are interested and I'll post it here. In the interim, you didn't say how many satellites you have, but try going just to router, or to one less satellite to reduce signal conflict. I realize this could cause a temporary dead spot, but it will prove the point of whether it's signal contention or not. Or, I'll send my document and you can set up any satellites from scratch in the proper location. Remember, "more is not better" when it comes to wifi coverage"!
- Turn of Settings/Cellular/WiFi Assist on the iPhone. Tis will cause the iPhone to sense the wifi signal getting weaker (which it will as you walk around the house), and it will flip to cellular. Leave it off.
- Private Wifi address should be on Fixed not Rotating - the changing MAC addresses confuses mist routers, not just Netgear.
Guys - really appreciate the responses and additional insights. I am exactly the case previously mentioned, I moved from a no problem Nighthawk system to the Orbi 970 system with all devices pretty much in the same location. I switched when Netgear said the Nighthawk system was no longer going to be supported. However, I have possibly conflicting requirements for my (now) two RBE970 satellites. The old system had two satellites and I originally started the new 970 system with one satellite but I had very poor signal coverage for one area of my outdoor security system so I purchased a second RBE970 satellite to solve the outdoor weak signal problem. Things may be too close when considering the inside the house configuration. Inside the house, all three devices are approximately 48 feet equidistant from each other with a least two sheetrock walls between each device (satellite to satellite and/or satellites to router). Donawalt - please send me your paper since I should probably give my device placement some additional thought. It is a good travelling salesman problem. The iPhone settings/cellular/WiFi assist probably has a similar Pixel feature which I would believe is the "Use WiFi" and "Turn on WiFi automatically" which is decision point when a high-quality saved (and for me private) network is detected. I could easily stop using WiFi and constrain the cell phone to use 5G but I don't have the greatest cellular network signal in the world (2 out of 5 bars). It works fine but I take a speed hit for the somewhat good cellular signal strength. When the WiFi reverts to 5G, I normally see WiFi error messages as "Low quality signal" or "Loss of Internet" which for me are bogus since my WiFi is always 5 out of 5 bars (best case: -26 dBm/2.4 GHz, -35 dBm/5 GHz, -44 dBm/6 Ghz) and I've never had a loss of internet case on my ethernet cable connected Windows 11 workstation. Just knowing that Netgear is having problems takes the sting out of the situation which I could easily live with other than my wife's glucose monitoring app is having problems when it hic-ups with a "loss of signal" error message. It is a short-lived problem (it quickly recovers) but to add to the confusion the glucose monitoring app developers state that they have not certified the app's use with the Pixel 10 Pro.
I am having the same issue đ so it's not unique to you. Something Netgear needs to fix on their end and it's been happening for awhile
