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Let me make a quick correction before everyone gets all up in arms. Satellite placement will need need to be taken into account to get blanket wall to wall type coverage to wifi devices. Using the backhaul with Ethernet just elongated the degradation you may get by having to may obstacles between floors or walls or whatever or locations etc.
I agree with you on people wanting the speed of the wireless backhaul threw Ethernet so lets complicate this even more and allow teaming of two ports to give us even faster link speed of 2GB, Then add a managed switch that allows teaming and we good to go.
Requesting wired backhaul, please add this feature! This feature would turn Orbi into the best wifi/wired solution for many many users that have a mix mash of devices. Which is everyone these days.
I am actually thinking of returning the Orbi becasuse of the lack of this feature. The Asus RT-AC5300 is actually cheaper and will give me the same functionality and potential same signal quality.
I am actually thinking of returning the Orbi becasuse of the lack of this feature. The Asus RT-AC5300 is actually cheaper and will give me the same functionality and potential same signal quality.
i can tell you that the rt-ac5300 wont give you the same overall coverage in a large house , the whole concept of orbi is to provide whole home wifi where standard routers couldnt , plus the sat gives you access to ethernet
In a crazy series of events, tried the Asus 5300 and it was smoking fast. However the damn crappy software kept locking me out after every simple feature change and was enough to return 2 of them.
So now i am back on Orbi until my return days are near over... I will likley just return Orbi, use the crappy ISP wifi router until Netgear gets their Duck in a Row.
I would run out and instantly buy another orbi satellite and do the same setup in another area of the house. This would clean up the need for having mutiple switches and rat nests of wires.
Why can't we have a full wifi and wired solution in a package like this? They are 99% of the way, they need this one feature to make it the absolutly best all in one home networking solution.
I've added Ethernet Backhaul into my list of Candidate Features for a future Firmware update. I can't yet commit to a delivery date, but wanted to acknowledge that this is a valid use case and something we're looking seriously at.
The main reason I could think of to provide it, is to make it user friendly.
I haven't set up the ubiquiti unifi AP's, but it looked like a lot of low level telnet sessions are required due to the UI not being very complete.
Also, ubiquiti's setup I believe requires a radius server to do roaming, and you have to do a lot of backdoor commands to get it to work.
I might take a stab at going that route and bring these orbi units back. Was just hoping to save time. Which the orbi definately does. And it works pretty good for what it does.
I'll probably go and purchase a set of unifi AC1300 AP's and set them around the house and see if I can set that up and do some wifi tests.
It looks like the Unifi 802.11AC AP's are $133 each, x 3 = $366, please cost of cloud key (83.95), plus cost of USG (108.99), for a total cost of $558.94 for enterprise grade equipment.
So the netgear stuff is cheaper, so if they could implement ethernet backhaul that would be AWESOME.
Your knowledge of the Unifi, is way off.
You do not need Radius to roam. WPA passwords work fine.And it's quick Also, you don't need to telnet to configure. The controller has a UI that more than does the job.You can also use a phone app to conifgure the Unfi AP's. But the controller makes more sense, as some features are missing from the Unifi app.
I have two UAP AC Pro's running idevices andriods and intel, with a Cloudkey controller. Configuring guest networks with vlans is a snap. All you need for a router is an Edgerouter ERX (I prefer the ERX-SFP), which I mostly use on my home network, or the EdgeMax PoE5. The USG may be the way to go, for someone who is CLI challenged. No issues roaming with any of the devices. Fine tuning of Tx power, correct channel selection and minRSSI will go a long way in achieving a stable wireless environment.
At the end of the day, it depends what you want. A wireless network that works, or one, that sort of works. All in, I think the Unifi / Edgerouter kit is still cheaper than the Orbi, or one of those monstrosity routers..
Since all the competition are offering wired backhaul I am sure it will be included in a future Firmware if Netgear want to remain competitive with others with the Orbi
I am not sure why you are arguing against it? Why would you not want this, unless you didn't have the means to implement it? Also looking around, it seems to be the most wanted feature to the point that Netgear responded above you.
Not every customer will have the full speed of the backhaul working perfectly, it does not make sense to cut those people out.
For some people the Orbi works perfectly in their environment as is so adding this feature of Ethernet backhaul does not appear necessary for their use cases. The plus side that some appear to miss is just because a feature is introduced (such as Ethernet backhaul) doesn't mean that you have to use it. It would be great to get Ethernet backhaul and the user gets the option to connect or use wireless or a combination of both. Then everybody wins.
Not everybody necessarily wins. Features don't come for free. Netgear has to expend resources and effort to develop them. But what are the costs and who bears them? Perhaps the costs are low and Netgear eats them on the hopes that they will be offset by increased sales. Or the costs are high and Netgear passes some or all of the them onto customers. How much would they be willing to pay for this feature? How many people would use this feature? How many sales are lost to competitor's products due to lack of this feature?
I'm sure Netgear is thinking very hard about this.
I would very much like the wired backhaul feature it gives me great versatility a highly desired feature and I am not the only one wanting to see this feature offered in a future Firmware at some point.
I admit, UAC-AC-LITES are tempting, even the PRO version is. Unfortunatly, outside the U.S these devices are double the price. For example I would require 3 of them, and the controller, which ends up being about the same as Orbi.
If orbi added the wired backhaul in the future, it would be the better option as its a standalone router with more ethernet ports.
This is totally an options though, I am actually thinking about switching reguardless of price.
I agree with petey, not sure why you would even buy an orbi in the first place if you were going to use ethernet back haul..Makes no sense, you would end up with better wifi just using AP's from ubiquiti or other other similar APs. Orbi is a great product, but its strength is really for cases where you CANT run cat drops for ethernet backhaul. So yeah, Once you get the feature you will realize oh silly me I should have just bought real APs, and saved money since now I have paid $400 for essentialy a router and two APs that I cant mount anywhere. When I could have bought a router and two AP's for $350 that I can mount anywhere, and had more features.
That said since the orbis released I have been using them in an apartment, and they have been a phenomenal product for me. We just bought a new home, and move in april, it is already wired with cat6 so the Orbis are getting replaced with Unifi APs when we move in.They served there purpose, and I have no complaints.
I suspect that they are focusing first on critical issues affecting many, many people (e.g., iOS disconnects) before adding lower-priority features requested by a small set of people (even if they repost every week).
