I have a question that I hope can be posed to the NetGear engineers please.
I am amazed by how many customers are experiencing the drops with the Orbi Mesh Gear in spite of repeated firmware updates, plugging the units into the outlet directly, etc.
I have the RBR750 Mesh Router and Satellites
Throughout the day, they will drop connectivity. It is not my ISP.
However, I have learned that Orbi's mesh ONLY uses WiFi to sync between the Router and Satellite (even though I am hardwired throughout the house).
Do the units need to communicate throughout the day (SYNC?), and only does so wirelessly? If so, could that be causing my network to drop intermittedly throughout the day? I have reviewed so many posts on this, and the consistent variable that I have found is when there is a hardwired satellite and that it may be far enough from the Router that wireless connection may be challenged.
Is this something that can be checked with NetGear please? Thank you!
If this continues this week, i will be returning the unit.
I have seen posts recently about Beta firmware for the 750 series. If this Orbi was purchased within the last 90 days, maybe you could contact Netgear and ask for that firmware. Or, search the forum for "beta"
Thank you for the comment. I am aware of the backhaul support that you described. However, NetGear Premium support was not able to confirm the following: That upon first instantiation (a new installation) and subsequent verification, it is the wireless backhaul that is used and not wired. And that the reason for the these dropouts occur b/c of the interference or distance issues that occur. That is what I am waiting to hear from anyone that can speak to that.
From what I understand, RBS first wirelessly sync and use the wireless back haul all the time. I don't know how often the RBS touch base with the RBR or even if they do that once they are synced. I presume there maybe some form of periodic status checking that maybe happening as this provides the RBR with status information that gets reported on the RBRs UI.
When the RBS are ethernet connected, then wired backhaul is used. However, the wireless backhaul radios are still running and these are not user configurable. These remain running due to one reason is that if the ethernet connection stops or goes down, the RBS have something to fall back on to get re-connected to the RBR.
Do the units need to communicate throughout the day (SYNC?), and only does so wirelessly?
Thanks for clarifying the question.
Do the Orbi units sync throughout the day? Yes. If nothing else, they update the table of Attached Devices every few minutes. They also send ordinary network traffic between units constantly. (any broadcast packets, such as DHCP requests, ARP requests, etc.) and any packets destined for devices that are not on the same device.
Is the sync traffic only over WiFi while everything else can be over ethernet? That seems strangely complicated. What would be the gain from splitting the traffic?
Alas, I doubt very much that anyone at Netgear customer support can provide an authoritative answer to the question. (Certainly no one on the forum can). I can imagine only two ways to resolve the issue:
Get 200-300 ft. of ethernet cable and move the satellite so far away that it cannot possible sync at 2.4G or 5G and see what happens. There have been any number of Orbi users who have reported connecting Orbi satellites over ethernet, often in barns or outbuildings which are 200ft. away and often with metal walls which totally block WiFi connections. If the satellite works where it is impossible to sync over WiFi, then that would be proof for me.
With the satellite connected over WiFi, set up a WiFi sniffer in promiscuous mode. Record both 5G and 2.4G traffic for a period of time. Then, use Wireshark to see if there is any traffic between that satellite and the router over WiFi.
Both of these experiments would be a lot of bother.
I read the same posts about the 750 product having "problems" that do not seem to have solutions. I would return it and get something else.
