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Orbi Mesh Wi-Fi with Wi-Fi 6 For The Gigabit Internet Home - #NETGEARCES2019
Orbi Whole Home WiFi just got even faster! NETGEAR is continuing to lead the new era of Wi-Fi. To kick off CES 2019, we announced plans to pair award-winning Orbi Wi-Fi with the latest Wi-Fi s...
I realise your post was meant to be helpful, but the Orbi is supposed to be a consumer product, not one that requires in depth knowldege of networking terminologies and how to analyse your network. If you can't take it out of the box and plug it in, then either it isn't fit for purpose or it is being sold to the wrong type of customer. Either way, Netgear is culpable, and it is regrettable that some customers are defending them and their shoddy products. I agree with other posters that it is outrageous for them to be launching a new product having let down their exisiting customers so badly with the current one.
I now have a stable 2 satellite Orbi system, but it's running old firmware and it took me several months of effort, a few different versions (including betas), many combinations of settings and satellite placements to get to where I am.
The main problem with Orbi firmware releases is a clear lack of a formal test methodology, particularly regression testing. New features and bugs are fixed in isolation, but then other things break and older bugs return. I would bet my pension that the developers are signing off on their own work packages and that nobody is doing rigourous end to end testing of the entire system against a formal plan. Nobody apart from Netgear's customers, that is, and I didn't sign up for that.
You should make a new post to post your experineces. This thread was about the new Orbi MESH system and WiFi 6 protcols that it supports. Nothing to do with current products.
Make a new post and post your experiences there please.
Thank you.
NickC4555 wrote:
I realise your post was meant to be helpful, but the Orbi is supposed to be a consumer product, not one that requires in depth knowldege of networking terminologies and how to analyse your network. If you can't take it out of the box and plug it in, then either it isn't fit for purpose or it is being sold to the wrong type of customer. Either way, Netgear is culpable, and it is regrettable that some customers are defending them and their shoddy products. I agree with other posters that it is outrageous for them to be launching a new product having let down their exisiting customers so badly with the current one.
I now have a stable 2 satellite Orbi system, but it's running old firmware and it took me several months of effort, a few different versions (including betas), many combinations of settings and satellite placements to get to where I am.
The main problem with Orbi firmware releases is a clear lack of a formal test methodology, particularly regression testing. New features and bugs are fixed in isolation, but then other things break and older bugs return. I would bet my pension that the developers are signing off on their own work packages and that nobody is doing rigourous end to end testing of the entire system against a formal plan. Nobody apart from Netgear's customers, that is, and I didn't sign up for that.
Of course, we wouldn't want to put people off buying the new products by letting them know how bad the current ones are, would we?
That might be a harsh overcharacterization of Netgear quality and products -- I respectfully disagree with you and offer my experience so far:
My personal experience is that the Orbi RBR50 is a very good product -- I have An RBR50 and two RBS50s in a very large home with up to ~130 devices at any time including a large Sonos constellation, security cameras, DVR/NVR, Nest doorbells, garage doors, smoke detectors, thermostats, Pentair swimming pool controllers, bluerays, hue lights, alarms, smart televisions (at least 7), home theater amp, laptops, gaming desktops, Ipads, androids, iphones etc. Everything works great -- even under such heavy demands. As an early adopter of technology, I obviously like adding more and more.
I use both dynamic and static IP addresses in my architecture as well as port forwarding and IP reservations.
The entire system runs smooth as silk and delivers massive bandwidth to all corners of the property, both inside and out.
Granted, there are additional firmware & software capabilities I would like to see, but overall I am highly satisfied and a proud owner.
Remote management works well. I dont use Circle!
Once set up properly, the Orbi system is the fastest and best routing and wireless solution I have used... And I have tried a lot including Linksys, Cisco, Luma (ugh!), and others.
In my view, the biggest issue with these systems users experience is setting up improper interfaces with other routers, switches, modems and not understanding proper routing & architecture principles. Networking can be complicated and some legacy devices can be problematic -- but I dont see that as a failure of Netgear... it is the nature of evolving technology.
When the new Orbi is released it will have issues like every other high-tech product. I will still probably get it!
Chuck_M wrote:
Once set up properly
What does that mean? I am assuming you mean much more than installing per the documentation and default settings that ship with the device. Perhaps you mean after spending time in these forums to learn things like enabling daisy chain is really disabling and vice versa?
Chuck_M wrote:
When the new Orbi is released it will have issues like every other high-tech product.
Boy I don't know what you are buying, but this product is amongst the worst I have ever purchased in terms of rapid fire firmware fixes that broke more things. Most high tech products I buy work great. I used Asus routers for years and never looked at one of their forums or called their support for a problem.
I would be willing to bet that the Wi-Fi 6 is much smoother, the Netgear engineering team undoubtedly made a terrible design decision that was not easily fixed with the current product, one that they will rectify with the Wi-Fi 6.
