NETGEAR is aware of a growing number of phone and online scams. To learn how to stay safe click here.
Forum Discussion
Possible Fix for iPhone Dropping WiFi
I have an RBE973S system. think I have identified the reason my iPhone keeps dropping WiFi, and I wanted to share so others can see if it solves their issues. On your iPhone, go to Settings>Cellula...
RE: "Is it possible to try relocating one or two of your units so they each have a well defined mesh “service” area, and a lower percentage of mesh area overlap that can create the dropped WiFi transfers that flips back to cellular service? "
- My units had very well-defined service areas before - the router is in the center of the home at the lower level. One satellite is at the Northeast corner on the second floor. One satellite is at the Southeast corner on the second floor. The third was in the Southwest portion on the second floor. All wired.
The drops were happening in the Northwest portion - theoretically serviceable by both the central router and the Southwest satellite. But there is a refrigerator and a floor between the router and the Northwest. There are two walls and a wall mounted TV between the Southwest satellite and the Northwest space.
I moved the Southwest satellite (Wired then) to be somewhat to be centrally 'West' and 20-25 feet from the router (now wireless backhaul) - there is still a refrigerator and floor separation. There is much stronger 'overlap' between the router and the repositioned satellite but that seems to create no problems and only seems to serve to make the wireless backhaul stronger. The previously affected devices went from being sort of equidistant from the router and satellite to having the satellite sit between them and the router - there is or shouldn't be much of competition on where the devices connect to.
This satellite movement had an unexpected benefit for IoT cameras outside the house (each equally spread between satellites) - the latency to load snapshots for all cameras together on first app load on my phone reduced to 1 second vs. 5-10 seconds.
kjx , I’m glad moving a node helped your camera’s a bit.
Forget my question to you, and my suggestion about relocating nodes to “solve” drop/flip and mesh-node hand-off problems.
Much to my dismay, my satellite relocation just “relocated” my drop/flip area of my home. It did not correct the problem.
I don’t remember if you have an iPhone 15 pro max, or what Thread this info got posted on, but another Community member discovered yesterday, on his iPhone 15 pro max (that I also have) that the WiFi 6E (I.e. the new 6Ghz band on this latest iPhone) when set to “Automatic” (I.e. turned on), when the 6Ghz band of the iPhone connects to the WiFi 7 mesh system, it deletes all the IPV6 settings on his iPhone. This happens with any of his Apple products (Mac’s, etc) with WiFi 6E capability. That Community member turned all his Apple product WiFi 6E settings from Automatic to Off (which puts his devices back into 5Ghz band). I did the same thing yesterday too. I suggest you might also do the same. The decrease in speeds will drop from 1400-ish Mb to 1100-ish Mb, which is still better than hassling with drops/flip connections, and no mesh hand-offs on 6Ghz band which leaves you with a symmetrical up/down speed of 0-ish Mb!!
The other Community member and I both updated our drop/flip Open NG Cases yesterday so NG will hopefully address quickly. This may contribute to our drop/flip problem, but there are other issues going on with NG mesh-node hand-offs.
I turned off IPV6 in my 971 the day early last week when I relocated my satellite unit (other NG Community members thought IPV6 also interfered with 2.4Ghz IoT on-boarding). I’ve had problems on a few IoT’s, so I disabled it, but I haven’t re-tried again after disabling IPV6.
My flip/drops started happening again (I did have WiFi 6E on my iPhone enabled) but IPV6 was disabled for my NG network so the issue is more than wiping an Apple device of IPV6 values.
I also don’t think a NG/Apple IPV6 issue (which I had/have disabled) would cause my WiFi 6Ghz band drop/flip area to move around in my house. I think NG will still need to correct/update 6Ghz mesh node hand-off software.
Hopefully NG will resolve these WiFi 7 router issues ASAP, or I’ll be going back to my 1980’s dial-up modem!! I don’t need this 5G fiber and WiFi 7 speeds just to click-on “Add to Cart”, or read Apple News!!
Forget my question to you, and my suggestion about relocating nodes to “solve” drop/flip and mesh-node hand-off problems.
Much to my dismay, my satellite relocation just “relocated” my drop/flip area of my home. It did not correct the problem.
I don’t remember if you have an iPhone 15 pro max, or what Thread this info got posted on, but another Community member discovered yesterday, on his iPhone 15 pro max (that I also have) that the WiFi 6E (I.e. the new 6Ghz band on this latest iPhone) when set to “Automatic” (I.e. turned on), when the 6Ghz band of the iPhone connects to the WiFi 7 mesh system, it deletes all the IPV6 settings on his iPhone. This happens with any of his Apple products (Mac’s, etc) with WiFi 6E capability. That Community member turned all his Apple product WiFi 6E settings from Automatic to Off (which puts his devices back into 5Ghz band). I did the same thing yesterday too. I suggest you might also do the same. The decrease in speeds will drop from 1400-ish Mb to 1100-ish Mb, which is still better than hassling with drops/flip connections, and no mesh hand-offs on 6Ghz band which leaves you with a symmetrical up/down speed of 0-ish Mb!!
The other Community member and I both updated our drop/flip Open NG Cases yesterday so NG will hopefully address quickly. This may contribute to our drop/flip problem, but there are other issues going on with NG mesh-node hand-offs.
I turned off IPV6 in my 971 the day early last week when I relocated my satellite unit (other NG Community members thought IPV6 also interfered with 2.4Ghz IoT on-boarding). I’ve had problems on a few IoT’s, so I disabled it, but I haven’t re-tried again after disabling IPV6.
My flip/drops started happening again (I did have WiFi 6E on my iPhone enabled) but IPV6 was disabled for my NG network so the issue is more than wiping an Apple device of IPV6 values.
I also don’t think a NG/Apple IPV6 issue (which I had/have disabled) would cause my WiFi 6Ghz band drop/flip area to move around in my house. I think NG will still need to correct/update 6Ghz mesh node hand-off software.
Hopefully NG will resolve these WiFi 7 router issues ASAP, or I’ll be going back to my 1980’s dial-up modem!! I don’t need this 5G fiber and WiFi 7 speeds just to click-on “Add to Cart”, or read Apple News!!
I have been doing some more testing on this issue, iPhone 15 Pro Max (happens with my iPad Pro 2024 too), Orbi 970. The issue is, seemingly when the device is attempting to go from 6GHz to 5GHz or vice versa, for example entering the house or moving between Orbi devices, the phone flips to 5G instead of staying on WiFi.
I have tried now, with the WiFi 6E setting - Auto and Off; IP Address - automatic (via DHCP) and manual (outside DHCP address range) - all combinations of these 2 settings - and the 5G flips continue.
I have also noticed the WiFi 6E setting and the Settings/Cellular/Wi-Fi Assist setting will CHANGE! on its own! So I am testing now with WiFi 6E off, a manual address, and Wi-Fi Assist OFF. I am trying to watch those carefully to see when they revert to the opposite setting. I have ruled out hard resets and Settings/General/Shut Down, they don't cause it. I am think now it's coming back into the house, but not immediately - in a minute or to. I usually check the WiFi symbol immediately upon entering the house and it is on.
This is very confusing to get to the bottom of...
Hi, I would also like to quickly share my thoughts and insights gained from Reddit. Can you try to have a fixed channel for all WiFi bands (not sure for which you can set fixed channels, at least for 2.4 GHz for sure) and can you disable the 20/40 MHz coexistence? This helped me with my (retired) Orbi 850 system to significantly reduce the drops.
Additionally, have you figured out if drops also occur if the Orbi system is in AP mode (access point mode) and the routing is done by another device, such as, for example, a Firewalla?
Looking very much to hearing your experiences!
speedmatters to answer your questions from my network:
1) The Orbi's do run on a fixed channel, configurable on the router admin page.
2) You can also disable 20/40 coexistence, which I (and many here I think) have done.
3) I don't have another device to act as router, hence being able to put the Orbi 970 in AP mode.
I will say, I have now completed 3 days with NO 5G flips! For me, I turned off Wifi Assist under cellular, 6E is Off, and Private IP address is off. In testing, having any 2 of the 3 off seemed to still let 5G flips occur; only when all 3 are set do I see total success (so far). We'll see if it continues!
