Multiple AC1750 WiFi Mesh Extenders in home

So, I took the advice and purchased an Orbi system.

After spending about 3 hours setting the thing up, I find out that it too does not do seamless handoff!!!!

From another user in these forums in response to someone with problems getting seamless handoff to work, "There is no 'seamless handoff' with any consumer wifi regardless of marketing hype."

Total waste of money, time and energy!

Apparently the Eero does what I want it to do.

I have the orbi system and can walk around my home with wifi calling and not get a drop. i can also stream video and walk around. 

What firmware are you on? 

What modem/modem-router are you using other than orbi? Are you running in a double nat? 

https://kb.netgear.com/30186/What-is-Double-NAT

What speeds do you pay for?

What speeds do you get directly connected to the modem?

What speeds do you get connected to orbi?

What makes you think the seamless handoff doesn't work? 

Which Orbi system do you own? The one I got is the Orbi AC2200. Cost me $300 from Best Buy and comes with RBR40 router, and 2 RBS20 satellites. 

Firmware is 2.3.5.30

I am paying for 200Mbps and a test this morning using the Orbi indicated just that, maybe even a little bit higher. Not sure which modem it is, it was supplied by Spectrum. Never had any issues with it nor the Sagemcom router they supplied either except that it doesn't have real wide coverage.

-- I have no problem with the speed

I haven't tested directly at the modem as my computers are nowhere near the modem itself right now. Again, I don't have any issues with speed. Everything is working correctly other than the seamless handoff.

What makes me think the seamless handoff is not working is the fact that if I walk from one room with a satellite where I may have gotten -30dbm as reported by Network Cell Info on my phone, into another with the other satellite, the dbm drops off dramatically (to about -65 or so, UNTIL I turn off WiFi and then back on again. THEN I get readings in that second room with the second satellite much the same as I got in the first room. If I then walk back into the first room, I once again have to turn off WiFi and turn it back on again to get good reception. I SUSPECT the handoff MAY be taking place over several minutes but the only way it is seamless and fast enough is if I disconnect from WiFi and then reconnect once again. This is exactly the same situation I was in the other day with that Mesh Extender that I was using and which cost me half of what the Orbi cost and it is totally useless for cell phone use.

I have looked all through the Orbi setup to try and find somewthing related to seamless handoff and cannot see anything even remotely related to it. Doing google searchers, I have seen several threads where people have been complaing about exactly this and other issues with the Orbi. One real common one is the fact that 2.4 and 5ghz system IDs and passwords must be the same...according to Netgear, this is so that seamless roaming can indeed continue to work!! But......... shrug!

Sorry but I am very confused, humiliated and beginning to wish I never touched my setup to begin with. 

How far apart is the router from the satellites?  30 ft is the minimum distance. You can have them to close to each other and it messes with handoff. 

also make sure you've enabled fast roaming, beamforming, mu-mimo within the wireless settings. Enable them and reboot the system. 

One other thing to check is if you recieved the system and did all your updates in a row, sometimes it helps to factory reset and start over. Reason why is sometimes the firmware changes are enough from one to the next that it can cause issues with settings. With a new system, there's usually quite a few updates. 

I'd also give it a few days. Whenever I redo my orbi setup, it usually takes a couple days to setting down and learn/get used to which devices use bandwidth and need to be on the 5ghz from the start. After a coupe days it seems to run smoother in my experience. 

They are about 30' apart, maybe slightly less.

I will try as you suggest and see what happens.

Thanks

Should 'daisy chain' topology be checked?

If you're running it in daisy chain.

Daisy chain:   router------>satellite----->satellite

Star:  Satellite<-------router-------->satellite

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Jay968 wrote:

They are about 30' apart, maybe slightly less.

I will try as you suggest and see what happens.

 

Thanks

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With orbi, a little extra distance can help quite significantly. I'd try spacing them a little further apart. 

OK, I don't know if I should be running in daisy chain or not. I just noticed while looking for the other settings that you suggest I check that 'daisy chain topolgy' is checked.

I also cannot find fast roaming, beam forming or mu-mimo. Where would these be located?

ADVANCED > Advanced Setup > Wireless Settings.

OK so I made the changes.

I suggested earlier in the thread that I thought the handoff MAY be taking place but at a very slow pace. I am able to see it happen now, but it takes about a minute to do so wheree it may have been taking about 5 minutes before. Unfortunately, I think this is still too slow.

Anything else that you can think of that I may check to speed this up?

Well, I've now done a number of tests since making the changes in the settings.

To be honest I am really not seeing much difference between this system and what I had going on with the mesh extender yesterday. I think all I've really accomplished is that I now have two extenders (satellites) rather than just the one I had yesterday (so the extra $150 more or less paid for a second extender), plus I can now set up all my devices using one SSID whether the device is 2ghz or 5ghz. The router itself doesn't even seem to have any better coverage than my old router had.

Maybe there is still something I am missing, but I just don't see how this can be called a true "seamless handoff" system. 

Are your calls dropping? Is it creating an issue? 

You're going to have overlap. Its not going to switch the second it determines that one device is closer to another because it might still have a decent enough connection to the other sat/router to sustain whats going on. its also going to depend on the client device you're testing with. The roaming standards 802.11k, 11r and 11v are supported by Orbi but many manufacturers (intel, broadcom, etc) implement them different. So even different device are going to roam different. Even the same exact device will roam differently based on many different variables. 

You can dive into smallnetbuilders analysis on roaming. Here's the final of a 4 part series that was done. it compares different mesh systems and how well they work. You can read the final or go through all 4 series and it'll provide a lot of testable data you can look at and analyze yourself. 

https://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wireless/wireless-features/33207-wi-fi-roaming-secrets-revealed-part-4

I do appreciate your patience.

I haven't dropped calls but call quality does appear to suffer some, like when you're on a call you hear occasional garbled talk or short dropouts. Tomorrow I am going to try different placements of the router and 2 satellites to see if that helps. Perhaps if I can move them to about 35 feet or even 40 away from each other, the handoff may happen faster.

I must say that what I do like about this system is its speed on the internet. Very impressive. Plus the fact that there are so many ethernet ports that I have access to now. I like that.

So, I am not quitting. I just need to have some patience myself and see what I can do to improve things. I figure, if it hands off fast enought for you, something should be able to be improved. By the way, I have been using a Pixel 3a phone. What do you use?

mainly samsung galaxy devices. I'm on an older S8 right now because of a broken phone. 

I'd give the orbi a couple days/week and see how it performs. most places have a 30 day return policy. If you don't like how it performs, return it. Its stinks when its not working well or causing you more issues. There's been the occassional firmware version that just s*cks but it gets often enough updates that they're usually fixing problems quickly. 

I've tried multiple mesh systems from orbi, arris, tp-link, tenda and I've always ended up back with orbi. I haven't played with the newer AX orbi's but hopefully at some point I will be able to so I can help others with it .

Thanks, I'll keep you posted.

https://www.pcworld.com/article/3162400/netgear-orbi-wi-fi-router-review-its-not-a-mesh-network-but-its-good-enough-you-wont-care.html

its a 3 year old article written prior to firmware upgrades where daisy chaining was rolled out. 

Yes I know, I just wanted you to see it and comment.

I am still trying, and even removed one of the satellites in my system and spread the router and remaining satellite further apart. They are now about 35 feet away, but still do not hand off very well. 

I will do some more experimenting with placement later today.

I think what a lot of my issue comes down to is that the threshold for the handoff is just too high for my liking. Or the coverage of each AP is too large. What I am seeing is that when I walk from the satellite to the router, I am still at -55dbm or so and wanting the handoff to happen. I can understand that the system may not be doing so because it wants to see something over -60dbm or maybe even closer to -70 before it will do that handoff. Problem is, calls start to lose quality when it's worse than -50 or so.

Do you know of any way that threashold can be changed in the router's settings? I do see in there that it may be possible to lower the power of each AP. Might that help? If I can lower the power, the handoff may happen sooner, and if I experience any loss of coverage in other parts of the house, I can probably fill that in with the second satellite.

I'm not sure exactly what rssi strength it plans handoff as netgear doesn't publish those figures. 

You can try changing radio strengths. 

Is your phone connecting to 2.4ghz or 5ghz? 5ghz has much higher throughput versus 2.4ghz. 2.4ghz is also more sensitive to interference. 

You can try changing what channel the 2.4ghz signal uses if your phones on 2.4ghz. Also try watching some streaming/game play on it. If the orbi recognizes it uses more bandwidth/needs more bandwidth, it'll switch your device to the 5ghz. 

According to the 'attached devices' section in the router setup, it appears that my phone is connecting to 5ghz. 

So, just as an update...

After two days of playing with this thing, I have definitely concluded that your experiences not withstahding, it is definitely not what it is advertized as and is essentially a $300 wasted effort. It does not do seamless handoffs well, if at all

I've got the two units, the router and the satellite positioned 40 feet apart now and am not using the second satellite.

If I initiate a phone call from about 4 feet from the router, I get great call quality, but once I walk to the satellite and get to about 4 or 5 feet from it, the call gets so bad, that I hear garbled voice, dropouts, and the call inevitably drops. Looking at the signal strength, I can see between -65 and -75dbm which is unacceptable signal strength on WiFi for a phone call.

I am not sure why your system hands off so well, unless either you just haven't done the kind of testing that I have, or your phone just hands off more efficiently than mine does. I'd say that during non call testing, I must manually switch to get from the router to the satellite (or back again) about 95% of the time. If I don't do it manually, the system itself take at least 15-20 seconds to do so...definitely enough time to drop calls.

While the Orbi is a nice router in itself and seems to be fine for stationary devices, it fails miserably, at least in my situtaion, as a mesh system.

I do thank you once again for your help and patience, but obviously this product is not for me.