Orbi RBR/RBS 850 has strong coverage, but devices drop offline regularly)

[dajw]

Greetings! I'm new here. I'm technical (as in, I know my way around the shell), but not a networking specialist.

I have had an Orbi RBK852 AX system at home for about a year now. Before that I had an older Orbi system.

My setup:

I'm in the UK, my home is modestly sized, old, and has some very thick flint and lime-mortar walls (i.e. 3ft thick walls made of rocks). The gateway and router are upstairs at the back of the house, and the satellite is downstairs in the centre of the home. It's got four upstairs rooms and six downstairs with a central stairwell. Here's the path to the internet for devices…

• "The internet"
• Broadband home router — is the gateway, handles DNS etc. (192.168…)
• Wired Ethernet
• Orbi RBR850 set in router mode (10.0.…)
• Backhaul [good signal, about 10 metres, but through some thick and solid walls in an old house]
• Orbi RBS850
• Client devices

My problem:

So the satellite consistently has a good signal on the backhaul. If I disable the satellite, I still get coverage in the room, but only as 2.4G, and the speed is not satisfactory for teams calls and remote working. All of my work is in apps like Figma, Miro, Google Docs so it is all online realtime.

With the satellite enabled I get a really nice fast Wi-Fi signal - a data rate of over 1Gbps is shown by the mac. However it sometimes just disconnects, then reconnects with a much weaker signal (which I assume means it has dropped off the satellite and joined the weaker signal from the router). I also have this issue with Nest devices - my Nest doorbell and some Nest cameras drop offline for a while then come back - similar symptoms.

It used to be that I could disable fast roaming, and that improved the issue. However this isn't an option for my system. I wondered about reducing the radio power on the satellite as it really only needs to fill in a couple of rooms but this also is not an option.

Has anyone any ideas that can help improve the reliability of my connection? Thank you.

[plemans]

Improve the backhaul connection? 

Probably would be to find a way to harwire in the satellite. Those walls are going to create problems for any wireless signal. Thats the key issue. The faster 5ghz networks is going to be getting blocked with it and its going to be either using a slow 5ghz or an even slower 2.4ghz that is sensitive to interference. 

Whether you can snake in a ethernet cable, use a powerline connection, or even use moca adapters (ethernet over coax), your best bet is going to be to find a way to direct connect those satellites. 

[dajw]

Thanks for your reply. The backhaul is very strong, and doesn't seem to fluctuate, so I would probably rule that out — though it would be interesting to know if there is a way to monitor this over time? Data is good.

I have tried powerline adapters with limited success in the property. We had a rewire done four years ago and it just doesn't workwell between floors. It isn't really feasible to hard wire them.

[plemans]

Have you tested the backhaul throughput? 

What speeds do you pay for and get at the router (hardwired)?
Then hardwire a pc/laptop into the satellites and test their speeds to see what the backhaul is performing at