This topic has been marked solved and closed to new posts due to inactivity. We hope you'll join the conversation by posting to an open topic or starting a new one.
RBR750 + 3 RBS750 satellites running in AP mode. I have a separate DSL router which acts as DHCP; the Orbi is purely wifi. We've got a fairly busy household - probably 40 ish devices.
Have had it for several years and it has mostly been solid.
About a week ago started getting issues with video calls (really poor quality / laggy) and after a quick look realised that the computer had connected to the router directly (far away, rather than the satellite which is nearby.)
Didn't think much of it short of cycling the power on the satellite.
Then next day, all wifi was down. Even connecting over Ethernet would refuse to do anything. Power cycled everything and that brought it back. Noticed that it was on the 4.* version of the firmware and managed to update it to 7.*.31.
Next day, wifi is mostly down - the RBR seemed to still be fine but the Orbi Admin panel was showing all three satellites as disconnected. Power cycled everything.
Then it happened again. This time I powered off all the Orbi, and left for a few minutes, then powered up the RBR, waited for it to be online; then powered up each RBS (starting with the one closest to the RBR and going to the furthest one, which often backhauls via one of the RBS) but each time waiting until it was online before moving to the next. Again this worked for a while, but only survived a day before all satellites are disconnected again.
Next I performed a factory reset on the Router (using Admin > Erase, etc.) and all the satellites (using the paper clip hole.) Restored a backup of the config and got everything going again.
(Sidenote: one strange thing about this factory reset. I wanted the RBR to run through its setup process after reset, and that included searching and finding the RBS. So I brought them all in to the same room as the RBR. However, the RBR would not find any of them if they were all turned on at the same time. If I just turned on one RBS then the RBR would find it almost immediately, so clearly some strange interference happening.)
(Sidenote 2: I have often wondered if I am slightly overprovisioned with the RBS and whether decreasing the transmit power on them might be a good idea.)
This survived about a day and a half before again everything disconnected, including the RBR, can only get back on wifi by power cycling everything. That was about an hour ago and in the time it's taken me to write this, wifi has gone again and I am now on hotspot.
It's unpredictable as to when it will all disconnect. What options do I have? Should I consider downgrading to a different v7 (possibly .21) firmware? Or maybe back to v4?
Thought I'd update this because things have settled down a bit. I have re-sited the nodes (mostly forced due to a Fibre upgrade) but this means the Router is now more central and I now just have 2 APs which seem to make sense.
So far I am not seeing the same issue where nodes would disconnect and then not recover.
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 wired or wirelessly connected. https://kb.netgear.com/31029/Where-should-I-place-my-Orbi-satellite 🛰
IF you have factory reset the system and still seeing problems, I'd downgrade to v.21. Others are seeing issues with v.31 that came out a couple of months ago and troubleshooting and resets don't seem to fix the problems they are seeing. So been recommending user to downgrade the RBS first, then RBR lastly back to v.21.
OK thanks. It's around 1200sqft I would guess, not including the garden which one of the satellites should be covering but it's solid stone walls etc. and I think i've got things positioned reasonably sensibly.
You say to downgrade the RBS first then the RBR... have found the two different .21 firmwares no probs... but what's the method for downgrading the satellite? Do I need to attach to it physically with a cable etc.? It looks like I can do it from the RBR admin panel > Manua Update but slightly nervous about doing it in case they disconnect / disappear again halfway through...
You can or if you have a wired PC connected to the RBR and all RBS are wirelessly connected, you can just connect to there web pages on each and send the RBS FW file to each RBS from your PC.
Ok, lets bring them to close to the RBR or some in same room as RBR or maybe one room away if you can get them all closer to the RBR and turn them on and let them wirelessly sync. Once all connected, lets perform a factory reset as seen here and setup from scratch.
Thanks... but after doing the downgrade all.3 were Connected with 'Good' so assume that means they had sync'd...? Why do we need to factory reset after a firmware up/down grade?
Ensures all is setup well and no issues that could be lingering from prior version of FW. This is a normal process should a system be downgraded. Would have to do same thing if you downgraded to v4.
Strange thing… double checked the FW on the RBS and two of them hadn’t downgraded. (And I’m sure I had done it on all of them.) So have repeated that and power cycled all to see if it makes any difference. If not will try factory reset tomorrow.
It's not any better today. The satellites keep randomly disconnecting. Again they do seem to go to blue, but that's no guarantee that it'll then be working.
For now have rebooted RBR and left all RBS off to see what happens. It seems to me that the RBR is OK and there is something going on with the RBS. If the RBR is OK for a while, then may power on one RBS.
Did you make any progress or any further findings on this? I am having exactly the same situation as you. 1 RBR750 and 3 RBS750.
Was absolutely fine and rock solid for years then all of a sudden the satellites start disconnecting. They then seem to interfere with each other; i.e. none will reconnect if any of the others are up.
