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Forum Discussion
Setting up a new Orbi RBE772
I just ordered a new Orbi 772 system, to replace my older Nighthawk R7800 router. What exactly are the differences between the main Home network and the other two, IoT and Guest? Specifically, what ...
I have an iPhone 15 Pro Max. I believe it was the first version to use Wifi6E (the first 6Ghz band offering). I think the new IPhone 16 (maybe only pro versions?) are WiFi7 capable (which also uses the 6Ghz band to achieve much much faster speeds than WiFi 6E.
With that said, in my iPhone settings when I select the Orbi Main SSID, there is a Wifi6E option that allows me to toggle it off. This effectively limits my phone’s (15 Pro Max) capability to connect to WiFi at 2.4 and 5Ghz bands. I’m not sure if the latest iPhone 16’s Wifi7 has a similar capability, so there may be other ways to “turn off” a WiFi band, and not put the responsibility on Netgear.
I think some of the more “senior” (I use that term in only the most flattering of ways!) Community members were helping others on this Community when some of the previous Orbi units were developed and introduced with the capability to turn-off (or it might have been the capability to turn the WiFi power down a bit??), but it no longer matters as NG has discontinued offering any option to turn off/down any WiFi band. Thus, they gave us the 2.4Ghz IoT.
With that said, in my iPhone settings when I select the Orbi Main SSID, there is a Wifi6E option that allows me to toggle it off. This effectively limits my phone’s (15 Pro Max) capability to connect to WiFi at 2.4 and 5Ghz bands. I’m not sure if the latest iPhone 16’s Wifi7 has a similar capability, so there may be other ways to “turn off” a WiFi band, and not put the responsibility on Netgear.
I think some of the more “senior” (I use that term in only the most flattering of ways!) Community members were helping others on this Community when some of the previous Orbi units were developed and introduced with the capability to turn-off (or it might have been the capability to turn the WiFi power down a bit??), but it no longer matters as NG has discontinued offering any option to turn off/down any WiFi band. Thus, they gave us the 2.4Ghz IoT.
Roc1,
thank you so much for sharing all of this good information on the Orbi system!
I will apply it to my new Orbi next week, when I will be setting it up. The IoT is a new thing for me, as the R7800 does not have it, and so is the lack of being able to select the band (which is in the R7800).
I am hoping that, if I assign the same SSID and password to the IoT network as I have in the R7800 2.4GHz network, I may be able to avoid re-entering the credentials in my IoT devices, when I switch to the Orbi.
It is a common practice to make the WiFi credentials on a new system exactly match the system which is being replaced.
- This allows every WiFi device in the house to connect automatically to the new system without any configuration at all.
- It also allows the user to "go back" to the previous system simply by plugging it back in and turning off the new system.
I have kept the same WiFi credentials for almost 25 years and changed WiFi systems a number of times over the years.
Once IoT devices have successfully connected to a WiFi system, their "problem" no longer exists. (When power is interrupted, they reconnect automatically.) It is only the initial setup that is a problem, and only for specific IoT devices. I have an entire box of Smart Plugs and all but one was easy to set up. (That one was frustrating.)
I would probably count up how many WiFi devices there are and assign the primary WiFi network so that most devices connect automatically and there are fewer to mess with. (Nah. I will keep my primary WiFi network the same forever!!!)
- Giovanni_L, you make a good point about using the same SSID on your new NG equipment as you’re currently using.
I’m a senior community member (not to be confused with a senior NG Community member!) and I’d forgotten how I got into having both IoT and Main SSID 2.4Ghz devices. This might provide insight if you too experience this, and if you can benefit from my solution.
I started out onboarding everything to the IoT 2.4 GHz band. But then I noticed strange things were occurring between my 971 Router (70% of my IoT devices should connect to the closer Router), and my two 970 Satellites (most of my IoT’s were connected to the Satellites which were located much closer to the Router).
Multiple members of these WiFi 7 Router threads joined the NG Community as we were early adapters to NG’s WiFi 7 products. NG had several issues early on with the WiFi 7 mesh node/system. This is why I was so versed about using the iPhone settings to turn off the 6Ghz band as many of us could only use 5Ghz band for multiple months as a work-around after installing the new system. The Community (through trial-and-error) developed several work-arounds until NG released a software update that appears to have fixed most all of the early issues.
What I’m about to describe was never formally submitted to NG as an issue related to IoT and it could have actually been related more to my specific mesh system environment (I.e. home construction or home electronic WiFi interference, neighborhood WiFi interference, etc) rather than NG mesh issues, but I did not want to “un-onboard” all my IoT’s to see if I could definitively prove what I observed, and how my work-around corrected the issue for me.
After much heartache, I finally finished connecting the IoTs to my mesh network. I then started noticing that most of the devices with the weaker IoT 2.4Ghz SSID WiFi connection were always connected to a Satellite node and not the closer Router node.
It appeared to me, that the IoT SSID was only operational from the two Satellites and not the Router (I never confirmed this “officially”). But, I had no desire to re-onboard even one device just to confirm a NG node/mesh issue requiring a software release.
Each IoT device manual provided an easy method to change WiFi networks (eg. in case you had to change the SSID on your IoT’s when installing your new NG system). Since the devices were already connected to one SSID (the Orbi-IoT), it didn’t involve any re-onboarding, it just involved going into the IoT device settings and inputting the new WiFi SSID (Orbi-main) plus it’s password.
So I wanted to try moving my weaker signaled IoT’s from the Satellite’s 2.4Ghz IoT network (Orbi-IoT) to the 2.4Ghz (Orbi-main) network to see if they would connect to the closer Router. Thus, I now have mostly Orbi-main 2.4Ghz connections and a few Orbi-IoT 2.4Ghz connections (for the few IoT devices located closer to a Satellite, they had a strong signal, I didn’t move them off the IoT SSID).
Here again, I’m not sure why my original IoT SSID configuration after onboarding was concentrated on Satellite nodes regardless of signal strength. Anyway, when the IoT device reconnected to the Router (using Orbi-main SSID) 2.4Ghz network, the signal strength maxed out.
With all this said, it might someday be an advantage to having all my IoT devices connected to an IoT specific SSID, but today, it’s nice to have full signal strength with no IoT device drops.
Hopefully, the new NG firmware, or my “one-of” home environment, will not cause any Satellite-node-only IoT-SSID connections when you move your IoT devices onto your new NG network.
Roc1 wrote:
It appeared to me, that the IoT SSID was only operational from the two Satellites and not the Router (I never confirmed this “officially”). But, I had no desire to re-onboard even one device just to confirm a NG node/mesh issue requiring a software release.This would be contrary to my experience with Orbi systems. Fortunately, there are a number of ways to confirm that the router and each individual satellite are broadcasting every WiFi SSID that is configured on the system. i.e.:
- The primary SSID, which is always broadcast on both 2.4G, 5G, (and 6G if the unit supports 6G)
- The Guest SSID on both 2.4G and 5G (if Guest WiFi is enabled)
- The IoT SSID on whichever bands are enabled (2.4G, 5G, or both)
Windows users can download WiFi Info View (free from Nirsoft at https://www.nirsoft.net/utils/wifi_information_view.html )
This program displays every WiFi access point that the computer detects, but there is an an Advanced Option to show only specific SSIDs, channels, etc.
Android users can choose from numerous WiFi Analyzer apps which will display every WiFi access point and most of them have an option to "group" access points by SSID.
It would be really helpful to document whether this 770 system behaves like every other Orbi system.... (or not)
p.s. An "aside......"
Ironically, this was one of the factors which cooled my interest in the IoT network. When WiFi was "relatively new", there were articles describing how the "Beacon Frames" broadcast by WiFi access points affect the network. One article speculated that having 14 WiFi access points using the same 2.4G channel would render it inoperable because they would consume so much bandwidth just saying, "I'm Here." (at 10 Beacon Frames per second, 14 access points would broadcast 140 beacon frames/second.)
I have one router and three satellites. With each access point (router and satellites) broadcasting the primary, guest, and IoT SSID 10 times/second, that would be 4 times 3 times 10 = 120 Beacon Frames per second!)
- CrimpOn, thanks for your reply.
I have one RBE971 Router and two 970 Satellites, not the 770 you referenced. I do not have Guest WiFi enabled. So it appears I will have 3-nodes X 2-SSID’s X 10-Beacon_Frames or 60-Frames_per_second. Would this be enough to possibly “push” IoT devices from one node (Router) to one of the Satellite nodes?
I’ll download your WiFi Analyzer onto a Windows laptop (why does Apple not “play nice”??) in the next few days and see if the IoT SSID is currently broadcasting from all 3 nodes. If it is working correctly now with the latest node software update, then what I experienced will not occur for any of us going forward.
I tried so many different network hardware and architectures over multiple attempts per device to onboard these IoTs, I cant confirm why it my devices didn’t originally connect (logically) to the closest node (Router), but chose to connect to a more distant Satellite node with a much weaker signal. After I changed the SSID WiFi connection for most all of my IoT devices from Orbi-IoT (2.4 GHz) to Orbi-main (2.4Ghz), the weaker signal IoTs that originally connected to a “distant” Satellite re-connected/migrated to the closer Router node and the IoT signal strength jumped from 1-bar up to 3-bars.
If the IoT SSID had been broadcasting from the Router node when I initially onboarded, why did my devices connect to the weaker signal, more distant Satellite nodes (rhetorical question!)? This led me to believe the IoT SSID was not working (or working properly) from the Router node. I’ll update after I get WiFi Analyzer results.
With the earlier mesh node “hand-off” issues on the 970/971 series, I never felt comfortable that the node software (or maybe it was the Orbi App software) accurately reflected which of my 3-nodes and which connection type (hardwired, or wireless) each IoT device (or even my iPhone 15 Pro Max) was connected to.
After the latest firmware update, I do feel comfortable now that the node and connection type shown for Connected Devices do reflect accurately in the Orbi App. I assume the displayed Orbi App data gets to us from a NG cloud, and there still appears to be varying time-frames (a few seconds to sometimes having to close and reopen the Orbi App) after a devices node connection moves for an accurate reflection.
