I'm going to be migrating from a NETGEAR R8500 to an Orbi Pro wiFi 6 mesh system. I had my R8500 set up so that all of my devices except my Play-Fi music components were connected to a wireless network on the first 5ghz radio and the Play-Fi devices were connected to a second wireless network on the second 5ghz radio. All of the devices could connect with each other with this configuration, i.e., an iPhone connected to radio 1 could control Play-Fi devices on radio 2. I'm confused as to how to use the various radios and vlan's on the Orbi Pro system to get the same type of setup. If I were to set up wireless 1 (admin) to connect most of my devices, like TV's, computers, printers, etc., and wireless 3 (IoT) for my Play-Fi devices, would all of the devices connected to each of the wireless networks be able to connect with each other and also access the devices connected to the LAN ports on the router? From the user manual for the Orbi Pro, it looks as though each of the wireless networks would be isolated and even the devices on the IoT wireless network would also be isolated from each other. It also appears that only devices connected to the Admin wirless network would be able to connect with the devices connected to the LAN ports.
Any help understatnding this would be greatly appreciated.
With Orbi Pro, you have up to seven 5 GHz and seven 2.4 GHz radios all over your house (one router and up to six satellites). For individual networks can be defined, each network is represented by it's unique SSID (network name) - this is where you select the network your wireless clients are connecting to.
What is the point for binding your Play-Fi systems just to a single radio? Leaving alone the Orbi Pro (or Orbi, or most other Mesh systems) don't offer this...
Deploying your Play-Fi to a different network would make the control from e.g. the mobile difficult, you don't want to switch between the networks just to control the music.
I think he is referring to the wireless vlan associations vs the number of radios.
According to what i just read about the sxr80 system, each device has the same 3 radios your current 8500 has. You could still use your current setup as each vlan is configurable (according to what I read in the manual) to either be isolated or not.
Remember, with a Mesh system, its same ssid and password for the whole system, not just one node (unless you set it up that way).
Hello @CaptRich The SXK80 Kit will still kind of do what you want, but you only really have access to two radio/bands with them not the three you have on the R8500.
The Orbi Pro 6 has four 'wireless networks' you can configure however only two of them
are able to be split with 2Ghz and 5Ghz SSID's on the radio/band level (being wireless2 and wireless3) you also cannot just enable a 5Ghz SSID and need to add a 2Ghz one as well which is a bit silly but kinda works in my use case.
Please also note these all still use the same two front facing radios and are 'virtual networks' the third radio is locked for backhaul unless you have the SXR80 unit on its own or with the SXS80 unit ethernet wired in for backhaul and in that case it just replicates the same 5Ghz SSID names you have set for client access across the other wireless networks and you cannot change the SSID name to split out more devices (annoying!)
On mine I like being able to split the SSID's and radios, so I have 'disabled' the wireless1 network as it cant be split (very annoyingly!) and have wireless2 and wirless3 enabled and split with different names for 2Ghz and 5Ghz on both networks and with one being on a Home VLAN and the other on Work VLAN with network isolation which both dont need to be turned on if you want the devices across the networks to see each other (Mine are also bridged behind a Firewalla Gold Router)
I belive with SSH access you can split the main wireless1 network 2Ghz and 5Ghz SSID's and maybe even the guest 'wireless4 network' and may need to look into as my IoT devices increase!
Hope the above helps and happy to answer anymore questions!
