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Forum Discussion
The network keeps going down again and again
I’m experiencing the exact same issue, and honestly, this is beyond frustrating. The network keeps going down again and again. Resetting the system helps — but only for a few hours. After that, t...
I feel for you. My solution ended up being to take the loss (an huge loss) and I switched to an eero system. It has worked beautifully and was half the price.
My experience with the Orbi system was beyond frustrating. I can’t believe they can even continue to sell this system - especially hearing it is STILL having these issues.
I well never buy another NETGEAR product again after the experience I had.
Hope you are somehow able to resolve it!
afight I read your posts, the only thing that makes me wonder is in your initial post you said:
"I had the RBR50 with one satellite for many years and it worked perfectly. Then one day, it started dropping connections and slow connections. I upgraded to the RBE971 (with one satellite) and the problem has continued, if not gotten worse. "
Logic would conclude that the problem is not the network if the same problem occurs on two totally separate systems. That said, if the Eero is working fine, we'll never know the answer to that one! Hope it keeps working for you.
donawalt Yeah, I thought the same which is why I brought my isp into the mix. Used their router for a week and there were no problems. Zero issues with the eero system. Has worked perfectly since the day I put it in and has ever since. Other users (includingurs2025 ) all over the internet with the same issues I experienced (wish I would’ve read a few forums before purchasing).
Given all these data points logic would conclude it was the Orbi system ;)
afight I suspect something else. While it won't help you, I just finished sending a long writeup to engineering making a suggestion of much better diagnostic/error logs that users can see in the system. While I sure can't prove this, what I see in your scenario I have seen a bunch on these forums; I think it's over saturation. Let's look at your systems over time:
I don't have access to signal strength of various networks, but I can infer signal strength from coverage per spec. You went from:
RBR 50 - 2000 square foot coverage per node (router or satellite) TO:
RBR971 - 3300 square foot per node TO:
EERO. Now I don't know what EERO you have , but if I look at what I think are the two top of the line systems, EERO MAX 7 offers 2500 square foot per node, and EERO PRO 7 offers 2000 square feet per node.
So you went from RBR50 to a system with 65% stronger implied signal strength, dropping back to a system with the original signal strength or less. And, 6600 square feet of coverage in a 3000 square foot house is massive saturation overkill.
The other thing I suggested was to bring back the ability to reduce power level in the Orbis - on older systems we could easily tell a customer to "set the power level to 60%". That would have been a trivial change for you, and if my theory here was right, your problem goes away. You can then decide on you own time whether to re-do the network topology in your home, or just keep it running like that. For some reason, they took that out of the router UI. Bring it back!!!
I know in my case, I have an old house with concrete floors, basement (where the router is) and 3 more floors above - all with 15 foot ceilings. I can get good signal from the satellite on the 1st floor, in my office on the 3rd floor near the other end of the house! And I can see the signal from the router, even though it would be unacceptably low strength. That was pretty amazing when I sampled signals.
It's just a theory - maybe this is the cause, maybe this contributes to the cause, all the more reason why some concerted effort in better failure information for customers could be invaluable. But your case study is far from unique, and once I re-placed my Orbis based on walking around with a freeware signal strength detector to determine proper placement, my system was rock solid (I came from an older Orbi 850).