I actually have the exact same problems with my SXR80 and (5) SXS80 satellites. I bought all the satellite to essentially act as remote switches with wifi satellite capability. The wired backhaul has constant problem. With Tivo units I get constant dropped frames and lost connections. I will completely lose satellites on occasion and have to disconnect and take it to the router and hard-wire reset it by connected directly to the router and after a few hours take it back to its location. It is a **bleep**ty system without doubt.
It is actually more stable using WiFi backhaul and not using the ethernet backhaul but this eliminates my purpose of using each satellite as a "remote" switch to plug in each TV/Tivo/AppleTV/Playstation/etc hard wired.
It is actually more stable using WiFi backhaul and not using the ethernet backhaul but this eliminates my purpose of using each satellite as a "remote" switch to plug in each TV/Tivo/AppleTV/Playstation/etc hard wired.
If the system is more stable when using WiFi backhaul, the devices still can be wired to the satellites? Ethernet backhaul is a feature, not a requirement.
Ethernet backhaul may be a "feature", but it was an expectation and a requirement for how I planned to connect my 6,000 sqft home. I did not want to rely on WiFi backhaul and instead wanted the redundancy of both WiFi backhaul AND ethernet backhaul. I did not want to buy 5-port switches at every location and was willing to invest in satellites that had 2.5Gbe ethernet backhaul with 4 free ethernet ports to essentially act like a remote switch. If it was included by the manufacturer, IT SHOULD WORK!
The router has one 2.5G port which must be used as the WAN connection, plus (4) gigabit ports. Thus, satellites can be connected at a maximum of 1gigabit. (unless gigabit ports 1&2 are aggregated into a suitable switch). Each of the satellites has a 2.5G port plus that weird pair of port 1&2 that can be aggregated and ports 3&4 that are simple gigabit.
The problem description does not mention any switches in the configuration. Is it correct to conclude that the satellites are connected directly to the router? Which ports are being used?
Has the 90 days of 'complimentary support' expired on this purchase? (I would love to hear what Netgear support says about wired backhaul not working.)
Cable Modem connected to the 2.5 gbe wan port of the router
Router port #2 at 1 gbe connected to switch with 8x2.5gbe ports and 1x10gbe port
the 5 satellites are connected to the switch via their 2.5gbe ports
I tried link aggregation of the router port #2 and router port #3 using the onboard aggregation in the netgear firmware and connected into the switch, but this caused the entire system to collapse every time i tried to utilize the built in aggregation.
today, one of the satellites had to be disconnected because i could not stream live broadcasts via tivo through it. the satellite and tivo works perfectly when utilizing the wifi backhaul but the tivo mini lost connectivity to the primary tivo every could of minutes.
clearly this satellite had some kind of lag. it worked fine for a week or two then it has this problem.
occasionally other satellite exhibit the same problem and have to be disconnected and resynced to eliminate lag and stutter when trying to stream video through tivo or appletv.
it is crappy to say the least.
i am thinking about selling the router and 5 satellites and upgrading to the 960 series, but the 960 series has 1 fewer rj45 port each which really hurts when you are trying to using port 1 for ethernet backhaul, port 2 for your tv, port 3 for an appletv, port 4 for your tivo mini, and port 5 for gaming system.
the result would be having to buy switches in each room because i run out of hard wired ports.
Link aggregation requires both ends of the connection to be compatible. It might be worth examining the switch user manual to understand if it is compatible with Link Aggregation.
Aside from "that's a LOT of access points in a 6,000 sq. ft. house", I see no reason why it would not work...and be stable.
Maybe there is something goofy about the 2.5G ports?
The Orbi Pro WiFi 6 system are supporting only static LAG - said this, the requirement is a switch with some configuration or management features. Sure, mis- or unconfigured LAG on the switch side can cause operational problems.
Curious what switch (make model, firmware if applicable) is in place connecting the Orbi Pro 2.5GbE ports to form the wired backhaul. Considering there are no known issues for the Orbi Pro WiFi 6 for wired connections difficult to say more...
I was wondering what switches these are too. I've used wired backhaul with consumer and pro versions of orbi and I haven't had any issues. I do know managed switches can cause issues.
What switches are they?
If they have any "green" features (energy saving), try disabling them.
You might even check on those specific models if they have issues with orbi as sometimes its an easy fix of disabling a sevice/feature on the switches.
I know that's a lot of access points, but rather than buying a bunch of switches instead, I just bought "cheap" second hand access points off ebay and planned to use them as switches while beefing up the wifi signal with a satellite in most rooms
You could try running for 24 hours with just the ones you can hardwire in and see what happens. the goal is to rule out the switch causing the issues, not to totally stabilize the network. Finding out whats actually causing the problem is the first step.
My SRK80 system has the exact same problems. I can use the satellites with ethernet backhaul IF no devices are connected to each satellite OR I can use the satellites as switches IF wired backhaul is disconnected. Otherwise at some point today, tomorrow or 2 weeks from now one or more of the satellites seems to get confused and cannot maintain connection and starts rebooting continuously and occasionally crashes the entire network.
Basically it is a POS.
I was hoping to use each of my satellite as remote switches with ethernet AND wireless backhaul as needed, but these system is just too unstable.
IGMP and Green Ethernet protocols or seen on some managed and un-managed switches have been known to cause problems with Orbi systems. I'd test a NG GS 10x or 30x series non managed switch to rule out what you have.
Also use of good quality LAN cable is recommended. CAT6 UTP works best.
The switch is TRENDnet TEG 24-port RJ-45 Gigabit Ethernet GREENnet Switch (TEG-S24Dg)
This answers one question. Unmanaged switches do not support Link Aggregation. Attempting to use that feature on the router/satellite when the switch does not is simply not going to work. (One would hope that the switch would test the connection and report the incompatibility.
Page 153 of the User Manual describes this and remarks how an incorrect setup can cause problems:
Another potential issue is the "Green Ethernet" feature. I have not experienced this myself, but there have been reports on the forum about Green Ethernet causing problems for router/switch connections.
This is just a crazy suggestion, but what happens if only ports 3 or 4 of every Orbi device are connected to the switch? (not the 2.5G port and not ports 1 or 2)
The switch is TRENDnet TEG 24-port RJ-45 Gigabit Ethernet GREENnet Switch (TEG-S24Dg)
Difficult to operate network infrastructure with very green switches doing interesting things sometimes.
All I can say at this point is that this switch does not allow a static LAG config, and can't be purpose configured to support a VLAN trunk for serving a backhaul for multiple network and VLANs. One would assume tagged frames will be assed properly, but no security segregation can be done.
The same problem exists for both switches whether the 1gbe trendnet or the 2.5gbe sodola; neither are managed switches.
And the problem is that everything will work fine for 2 days or 27 days, but then out of nowhere, one satellite will start to lag resulting in video stutter and/or loss of sound and frame rate on one of the tv's with either the apple tv or tivo. it clearly is an is issue with the satellite.
A disconnect and power cycle results in either everything working again OR crashing the router/satellite system entirely as they all start rebooting and resync'ing.
The system works much better and more reliable if the SXS satellite are connected for WiFi backhaul only.
I recently completed a complete factory reset of the SXR and 5 SXS satellites. Within 3 days one of the SXS satellites started to lag and video on either the TiVo or apple TV connected to that SXS. When I pulled the ethernet cable and allowed the SXS to work on wireless backhaul only, it worked perfectly.
Next day I pulled the power on that SXS and reconnected ethernet cable to allow that specific SXS to reconnect wired backhaul and within 30 minutes it started stuttering on video again and lost connection to the master TiVo. I pulled the ethernet cable and it worked perfectly once it reconnected.
Basically the ethernet backhaul on these units is a major problem.
I can only question if I upgraded to the 960 or 970 if it would experience the same problems.
Or I ditch most of the Netgear cr@p and just go back to hard-wired ethernet for almost everything and buy switches at every remote location.
Now that we know wireless SXS work. Time to narrow down the ethernet backhaul.
Any chance you can connect the one SXS that seems to fail on ethernet back haul and connect it directly to the back of the SXR, WITHOUT any LAN switches in the mix? Need to establish that the SXS can work with ethernet backhaul with out any switches in the mix.
Might help us to have a diagram of the lay out of your home and there the SXR and SXS are placed as reference. Put where the switches are located as well.
"Next day I pulled the power on that SXS and reconnected ethernet cable to allow that specific SXS to reconnect wired backhaul and within 30 minutes it started stuttering on video again and lost connection to the master TiVo. I pulled the ethernet cable and it worked perfectly once it reconnected." If this is happening, then sounds like either a cabling issue or a switch issue maybe causing the problem.
Need to narrow down there the problem is coming that is causing the one SXS to fail. I would not be too quick to blame NG on this just yet until all as been exhausted.
I have the 30 series Orbi Pro and haven't seen any Ethernet backhaul issues to date, however I only use NG, HP and D-Link branded non managed switches. My 970 series work just fine with both RBS ethernet backhaul connected. XS505M and GS110MX work great with the 9 series.
Each and every time any one of the SXS units starts to lag or goes into perpetual reboot, I disconnect it and take it back to the SXR and connect it via ethernet backhaul and let it resync for a couple of hours before taking it back to its normal location.
I guess the question is, if I connected several hard-wired ethernet devices into the SXS while hard wired into the SXR how long could the SXS maintain a persistent ethernet connection without going into reboot.
The problem is, I would have no way of knowing. Sometimes the problem shows up 2 hours later or 2 days later or 2 weeks later. There is no repeatable "event" other than eventually any one of my 5 SXS units will start randomly having connection issues and either goes into disconnect, reboot, reconnect, ad nauseam, and sometimes brings the whole system down where all the SXS units and the SXR unit starts rebooting to try to resync.
IF the SXS are maintaining the connection and operating correctly while directly connected to the back of the SXR, then you put back in the remote location and it fails, tells us that there is a problem at the remote location and ethernet connection between the SXR and this remote location and something in between these two points is causing the SXS to fail and misbehave. If the SXS is failing or getting into a reboot loop, it's telling you that the ethernet connection to the SXR is not good and it's trying to get a connection to the SXR, thus it's behavior is probably rebooting trying the wireless connection first, getting a connection temporarily here, then since it's ethernet is connected at this location, it then tries to connect here and is failing, thus starting a bad reboot loop cycle. Once the ethernet path is made clear for the SXS, then I would presume the SXS would start working correctly. Again, I'd remove the switches you have and put in place some NG branded non managed 1Gb switches to help you narrow this down. Also cabling could be at play here as well.
Something to check into as well, find a friend for family member that you could take the system to and see if the problem follows. Would be telling.
