Orbi Pro WiFi System: Feedback and Feature Requests Page

[BretD]

Orbi Pro Wall Mount

We’d love your feedback and ideas for the Orbi Pro WiFi System for Small Business. Is there something we could do that would make Orbi Pro work even better for your business – you have our ear.

We are happy that so many of you showed up to ask your questions about the Orbi Pro WiFi System for Small Business. The Orbi Pro is now available, and we would love to get your feedback and feature requests for the Orbi Pro. Do you have a scenario, use case or clever idea for the Orbi Pro? let us know in the comments below!

[Agent-K]

We're currently looking for a WiFi solution for our small office. The Orbi Pro seemed perfect at a first glance.

Having a Mesh-Wifi would be great and other features like MU-MIMO, beamforming and up to 127 Users or even more (I've read about 256 that have been tested here) make the whole thing really sound future proof.

But after going trough the available documentation I have some second thoughts about the Orbi Pro.

In our environment we have dedicated DHCP, DNS, VPN, ... Servers. We just need a reliable WiFi setup.

I'm always skeptical about features like a mobile app for configuration purposes... Security is too often just handled as an afterthought during implementation.

It seems that the 3 different SSIDs have fixed roles that can't be used in any other way than as an admin-, employee- and guest-network.

Therefore this feature is basically useless to us. We'd need the ability to feed completely different networks to the 3 different SSIDs. For example through the different Ethernet Ports on the base station or through VLAN tags.

It's great that the Orbi Pro supports implicit Beamforming. But I'm missing some further documentation on the topic and regarding the radiation pattern:

• Is explicit Beamforming planned for the future?
• How big of an influence can beamforming have regarding the range? How would the wifi "bubble" / the radiation pattern be influenced in an example scenario?
• When beamforming is disabled, in which directions do the antennas emit the wifi signal? Is it a perfectly round "bubble" or some sort of "club" that's emitted from the front? A few pictures visualizing the radiation pattern would be great!

I understand the Orbi Pro is probably great for a coffeshop but it doesn't really seem to meet our needs as a small IT company.

I hope this Feedback is helpful and that maybe there'll be an Orbi product in the future we can use

[johngm]

You are correct that Orbi Pro is designed to give small (5,000 to 10,000 sq. ft) organizations an out-of-the-box way to stand up a standard business wifi.   It seems evident the detailed description of your deployment that Orbi Pro is not the right fit.   For example, we wanted to provide traffic separation and secure equipment isolation for individuals who didn't know what a VLAN or ACLs were.  

The next step up for customers such as yourself would be our Insight Managed access points (WAC505 and WAC510 which feature instantaneous cloud connection for remote management and event notification) or our 4 managment mode access points (WAC720 and WAC730 which feature browser, controller, or full cloud management).  

We will  continue to evolve all of these platforms to provide leadership in this rapidly moving market, but the Orbi Pro model will continue to be focused on DIY installations for less technical folks.

John

[Helacious]

Are there plans to extend Disney Circle for those who have chosen this as a large home solution?

[Helacious]

Also the backhaul feature please :-)

[johngm]

Helacious,

Thanks for your question and use of the Orbi system.  

The Orbi Pro system is specifically designed for small businesses and the Disney Circle parental content control system is design for a residential application.  We are in the process of releasing our Disney Circle support on the residential Orbi solution, but we do not have any plans to release it for Orbi Pro.  

That being said, we are investigating business traffic management and other business content management solutions for our Orbi Pro platform.   Do you have some specifics of the application you have and what you controls you are seeking?

Regards,

John

[johngm]

Helacious,

Backhaul has lots of fans.   No commitment at this point but I fear for my life if I don't bring it to my Pro customers soon.

John

[Helacious]

Well,

Honestly, I have the 4 station Orbi solution to cover 8K sqft and I have the pros.  The pros cover the home better than the 4 station solution.  

The ability to control device times, set daily usage limits per device, ability to lock devices down at certain times, and extending to those devices when the devices aren't connected to the wifi is key for us and the kids :-).

I mean we could just go get the circle but saving me 100 bucks and having it integrated into these routers would be a huge benefit.  

Hope that helps!

[Boatguy54]

These are the needs for my home.  Orbi does not satisy these.  Maybe Orbi-Pro could.

a) primary wifi network for home users.

b) guest wifi network for general use (that works as advertised, but not as implemented)

c) secure secondary wifi network for IOT devices which isolates every device from every other device and from the primary network.

d) secure wired network (at least one port which can be connected to switch) for wired IOT devices (pool, garage door opener, window shades, etc.) isolated from all other devices and networks.

[jnaks]

I would love to see support (RBK and/or Pro) for Link Agregation. 

[Boomerang3]

SNMP support would be great.  I'm use to monitoring just basic traffic stats with PeakHour4 on OS X.

[Asturia]

Can we expect the same problems as the Orbi home users are experiencing now?

Because that would really be the reason for me to switch to another product.

[johngm]

Asturia,

could you be more specific about the issue you are concerned with.  Currently the Orbi home products are 4.3 star rated product and I am not aware of any epidemic issues.  I am using it in my home and I have been very satisfied.   

John

[Asturia]

Basically I'm concerned about the issues discussed in the following threads:

https://community.netgear.com/t5/Orbi/OrbiOS-2-1-1/td-p/1476960

https://community.netgear.com/t5/Orbi/Announcing-availability-of-OrbiOS-2-1/td-p/1447612/jump-to/fir...

[johngm]

Asturia,

thanks for the clarification.   Orbi Pro is on a separate software release schedule and therefore is not subjected to issues which may show up in the standard Orbi releases.   In this case of common functionality we will typically release on the Orbi product first to reduce the likelihood of a service disruption for business customers.  

John

[SteveCo]

Ethernet backhaul is a must have. Also, support for Alexa. We use Alexa quite a bit in our small business and would be nice to just be able to tell her to turn off a network (such as guest) when we leave.

[schumaku]

• Ethernet backhaul (using direct and infrastructure, including 802.1Q VLAN support)
• Full guest network isolation (by 802.1Q VLAN ... required for a Insight switch and AP integration anyway)

Thank you @johngm for asking and listening!

[Jiheffe2]

The Employee Network without LAN access is mostly useless, this should be clearly pointed out instead of just touting 3 SSIDs (http://www.netgear.com/orbi-pro/features.aspx). Good example of misleading advertising. I'm pretty sure a lot of people were disappointed, upon unboxing and iconfiguring this system, to find out the this Employee network is useless to them.

See also here: https://community.netgear.com/t5/Orbi-Pro-WiFi-for-Small-Business/Employee-network-clarification-nee...

This can easily be solvedc with a firmware release.

[schumaku]

Right away in the same context, the Access List (MAC filter) must be specific per SSID - not router/AP-wide. One might want to configure a trusted MAC list for one network, but certainly don't want to do the same for the guest network. Somewhere in between would be the employee network (but of course at least allowing LAN access). 

[Unshakeablesalt]

So as someone who has only just got Orbi Pro, a killer feature would be to not require a separate base station for my Arlo cameras - such that the outdoor cameras I currently have don’t need the cane station a) living in a hostile enviroment and b) needing an additional power supply

[johngm]

Unshakeablesalt,

This is a very difficult lift from a technical standpoint, so I can't make any promises but suffice to say it is one of the things we know customers want and it fits perfectly with the use model of OrbiPro and Arlo.  

John

[schumaku]

John certainly knows that some selected Nighthawk routers had the capability to serve as an Arlo Base station. Why ever, this feature was revoked a longer time ago already. My limited understanding is that the standard compliant timing for a Wi-Fi station differs from what is implemented on Arlo - here things are optimised towards low battery usage on the cameras.

Amazingly, we were able to read that the MR1100 (Nighthawk M1 mobile router and hotspot) has got Arlo Base Station capabilities these days.

[Pwebb]

I'd really like to see:
* Ability to send logs to remote syslog receiver
* Far more advanced web content/block scheduling controls

Thanks,
Pete

[Unshakeablesalt]

Well after living with the Orbi Pro for a few months now,  I'll update my request from above

Still on the list is the Arlo integration,   but something I have been missing from the solution it replaced is the logs to the remote syslog server.

I run a SIEM/Splunk solution and I'm missing some of that vital insight of who is knocking at the door - so the ability to send logs is a higher priority for me at the moment.  

The other nice to have is like pwebb too - a bit more capability on the blocking.  eg,  the ability to block from GeoIP data.  Far too many Chinese/Russians are hitting my ports (which at the moment I'm having to block at the forward destination) - which if they could be blocked at the router would be a nicer thought. 

[Pwebb]

For content filtering, I was somewhat suprised the Circle wasn't included like it is in the non-Pro model. Is it in the roadmap to add Circle to the Pro line?