Intermittent connectivity in a business setting

[premier87]

I recently purchase the RBK753S Router/2 satellite system from costco, for my wifes Therapy practice. There are 8 offices/therapists, and two of them upstairs are experiencing slow connectivity and occasional complete drop outs. I've attached a floor plan showing our layout with satellite locations and which offices are having issues. This is a very old house (built in 1846), so there are some thick stone walls in some places. The house in total is 3800 sq ft. Right now the router is located in the only spot we can, we'd have to run ethernet to relocate which is really challenging to potentially impossible in this house. We have fiber internet service.

No one other than the indicated offices experienced issues. One office is using a mac, the other an asus chromebook. One thing I'm wondering is if the satellites are too close together, and if I should just not use the upstairs one? The are on different levels, but essentially right on top of each other. So maybe 20ft apart. I'm wondering if they're competing. 

Thoughts?

[FURRYe38]

What Firmware version is currently loaded?
What is the Mfr and model# of the Internet Service Providers modem/ONT the NG router is connected too?

What is the distance between the router and 📡 satellite(s)? 30 feet or more is recommended in between RBR and RBS📡 to begin with depending upon building materials when wirelessly connected.
https://kb.netgear.com/31029/Where-should-I-place-my-Orbi-satellite 📡

If the building has "thick" stone walls this will be a factor in why the remote RBS in the other building is having problems. The signal has to go thru two "thick" stone walls and the signal is being degraded severly. 

I recommend if you can, a CAT6 or CAT6A lan cable installation between the RBR and remote RBS building would solve this issue. 

[plemans]

any chance you have coax ran through the home? 
or reasonably updated wiring? 

Reason I ask is you could use moca adapters (ethernet over coax) or powerline adapters. 

Stone is amazing at blocking wifi. And the satellites still need a decent signal to connect back to the primary router on. 

If its being blocked, they're going to struggle. But they do support a wired backhaul. that'd be where the moca or powerline adapters could come in. 

Sadly, the older homes with stone/plaster lathe struggle with mesh systems unless they're hardwired in. 

[premier87]

Firmware is v4.6.5.14

I'm not sure of the ONT model, its in a basement room that I don't have access to. The distance between the router and satellite 1 is about 35 ft. Distance between router and satellite 2 upstairs is about 50 ft. Distance between sat 1 & 2 is about 20 ft. The part that makes me think its not the stone wall thats causing the issue is the therapists in the offices in the lower level on the other side of that stone wall that are connecting to sat 1 are not having any issues. 

[premier87]

and no we don't have coax in the building, at least not to the locations we'd need it. I'd need to explore whether or not itd be possible to get cat6 from the router to sat 1, sat 2 would be impossible as the landlord would not allow us to run it on the exterior. 

[FURRYe38]

You can load this up and see if it helps:

https://community.netgear.com/t5/Orbi-WiFi-6-AX-and-WiFi-6E-AXE/New-RBR750-RBS750-Firmware-Version-v...

Load up the RBS first then RBR lastly. I recommend that you take a laptop with the RBS FW file on it and wire connect the laptop to this one RBS via ethernet in back to update it as sending from the RBR side may cause problems if this one RBS isn't getting good signal.