Background: I had one of the earlier RBK50 router/satellite pairs for years with no problems, but I wanted to have VLAN capability so that I could compartmentalize my IoT devices from my main home wifi. So, I bought a SXR30 and SXS30 pair with high hopes.
It has been nothing but infuriating frustration. I'm plagued with continual wifi dropouts lasting from 4-10 seconds (I'm monitoring this with a non-stop ping process trying to ping the router every second). Just long enough to make any remote-desktop apps, Slack, and messaging apps grey their windows and display "Network Unavailable". Mercifully, my Mac Mini will recover and reconnect. My MacBook and iPad just drop their WiFi connection, altogether, until I go to WiFi Settings and manually reconnect. These dropouts, when they're happening, will occur about 30 seconds to 4 minutes apart... for hours. Then, sometimes, I'll be able to go for half a day without any problem, then the problem starts up again. I haven't been able to correlate the problem with any particular time of day.
My router and satellite are positioned exactly where the old RB*50's were. Router in the garage, satellite about 40 feet away with a wall between them.
Right now, I have unplugged the satellite, and the problem seems to be at bay, for now (but I've only been testing this configuration for about 15 minutes), but that leaves me with two new problems:
I now have some connected devices listed as having a poor connection in the admin console.
I was using the wired ethernet ports on the satellite to provide network to some wired-only devices in my office. So, without the satellite, I would now have to go buy a wifi-to-ethernet bridge and an ethernet switch.
Any suggestions on how to fix this before I return all of it and go sulking off to my old, trusty RBK50?
Not saying this is the issue but you moved from a triband system with a dedicated backhaul to a dual band system without that dedicated backhaul. that might be part of your issue is the lack of that dedicated backhaul.
Easy test? Pickup a cheap 50-100ft ethernet cable and hardwire in the satellite. Its not permanent but just for testing to see if it stays stable with the satellite hardwired in. It could be the connection between the router---satellite isn't great and when you're saturating it, its dropping. (just guessing)
If that fixes the issues, I'd look into picking up a half decent powerline or moca adapter (ethernet over coax) to hardwire in the satellite. Or you can use that cable to hardwire it in if you can hide/sneak it through the wall.
