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Ok, after several page refreshes I was FINALLY able to get the main router and satellites firmware downgraded to V1.9.1.12. What an ordeal.
Now, after rebooting everything the main router is on the older V1.9.1.12 but the two satellite routers are back to the V1.12.0.18. They somehow upgraded themselves even though I logged into both of them and changed the nvram settings.
Crap. I'm giving up now. This is just not worth the hassle. Tomorrow I'm taking these back to Costco and will try a single router approach. Thanks for everyone's feedback and help.
Yup, that's what I used. I modified those 3 specific settings on the satellite and did the "nvram commit" when I was done. For some reason, the satellite firmware upgraded to the newest version after I rebooted the satellite devices.
No spaces in my WIFI password- wish the problem was that simple.
I was told the same thing, but it didn't make a difference. Also, as someone else pointed out, not supporting spaces as part of a password would make the router non-compliant with basic wi fi standards.
So I _thought_ things were good w/ V1.9.1.12, but I discovered a few problems:
1. None of our Macs could properly connect to the wifi. They would always get a "self-assigned" IP of 269.something and not be able to access the Internet (despite being "connected" to the wifi). Some kind of DHCP issue it seems.
2. Our Apple TV couldn't connect to the Internet - same problem with 269.* IP address as the Macs.
3. The speed would start okay (around 115 Mbps down) but deteriorate over the course of a few hours - down to like 40 Mbps.
After discovering these problems, I tried the 1.10.whatever and 1.11.something firmware versions too, but the problems remained.
Despite its terrible flaw of dropping satellite connection, the V1.12.0.18 firmware fixes all of these issues. Of course! Ugh. My satellite is located in a detached home office and the three wired computers I have in there depend on it for their Internet. So my current options are to have good wifi speed, wifi to the Macs and a working Apple TV (on the latest firmware) or a connected satellite (on the older firmware). Sigh.
Maybe I'll try the factory reset thing on V1.12.0.18 and just hope to not lose power.
This really sucks. I was looking at the Linksys Velop but in all the reviews I found they say the Orbi is better. C'mon Netgear, get this fixed already!!
You don't have to look at Amazon reviews, you can look at the tech reviews on the internet for the Orbi and Google WiFi. As to "fakespot", I haven't found it helpful. I don't really know what sort of algorithms they use, but as far as I've experienced, they aren't much good. Maybe they'll get better, or maybe I don't look at the sort of products where it would be helpful, but they've been wrong most of the time that I looked at their results. Gave up on them after a few tries.
Fair call. Tech reviews are notoriously awful for products like this because they generally represent short term use at a single point in time for a product that changes over time. The same applies to customer reviews really.
I am also gettign frequent disconects on 1.12.0.18. Is the best option to just wait for an upgrade or jump through all these hoops to downgrade?
It's been out for about 6 weeks, so it's up to you. No word from Netgear on if they're aware of how bad, or widespread it is, or if a fix is on the way.
So, I seem to have fixed my issues on the latest firmware (1.12). After going back and forth a number of times and playing with various NVRAM settings, I decided to start from scratch. Here's exactly what I did:
Enable telnet and sign into the router.
nvram erase
nvram commit
reboot
Items 2-4 above are commands to enter into the console. Once it's rebooted, sign into the admin panel and then restore firmware defaults.
After doing this, running latest firmware, my WiFi and wired speeds are super fast. I'm getting over 900Mbps wired on Speedtest, and my iPhone 7 Plus is regularly exceeding 300Mbps down and goes over 400Mbps up.
I strongly suspect that corrupt NVRAM settings are the source of these problems. Whether it's bad defaults or perhaps corruption when upgrading, the end result is pain. I also think the QoS implementation is the main source of the problem. As others have noted, re-running the Speed Test seems to help things, but I think the key to a working 1.12 installation is to NEVER RUN THE SPEED TEST. The instant you run it the router saves the results and the problems set in. If you reset to defaults and never touch the speedtest settings you may find it improves things.
As always, YMMV. Hope this helps somebody.
Model: Orbi High-Performance AC3000 Tri-Band WiFi System (RBK50)
@scornwell I was referring to tech reviews on places like Tom's Guide, etc. - not Amazon reviews. I'll take them all with a grain of salt, but still, the Orbi does seem to be the better hardware - especially for my needs, where having the built-in 4-port ethernet switch on the satellite is really nice.
For others, like @alberts wondering about hardware replacements, I've been there, done that. Before I discovered that the V1.12.0.18 firmware was problematic, I just figured there was something wrong with my satellite (since we still had wifi w/ good performance from the router). So I purchased a new satellite. Didn't help - I could never get that new satellite to sync with the router. So, "The router must be the problem," I thought. So I then purchased a brand new RBK50 system (consisting of the RBR50 router and one RBS50 satellite). That worked fine for a few days, then the satellite stopped syncing, just like before. Ugh! At this point I searched more and found this thread - so I plugged in my old router/satellite, did the factory resets and downgraded the firmware. And lo and behold, the satellite started syncing again. (but there were other problems with the older firmware, which I discovered later - see my previous posts)
@nxc that's very promising, thanks for the post! With the nvram erase, etc. that you did, is your satellite connecting/syncing correctly with the router, on the V1.12.0.18 firmware?
One advantage to using the Orbi as an AP is that when you do a factory reset or clear nvram to get a fresh start, there's little configuration to be done. So I have less temptation to restore a saved configuraton file that might itself be corrupt. I agree that simply flashing a router time after time without ever resetting and renewing one's configuration settings is an invitation to problems. While I don't see the need to do this for every flash, especially since Netgear doesn't say that it's required, it is good to do this when problems come up. If only to verify that problems are really firmware problems as opposed to accumulated nvram corruption problems. No router is immune to those.
@nxc To clarify, which particular sort of problems were you having?
I had a variety of issues. At least once a day the satellite would disconnect. I’d see it flashing the light for a bit as it fixed itself. Sometimes it needed a manual reboot to reconnect. In general, I was seeing very slow wireless and wired speeds. WiFi speeds would top out around 60-70 Mbps. Wired would reach around double that. After reflashing and testing a variety of things it seems to be to be squarely a problem with QoS settings. Regardless of what I tried, once I ran a Speedtest, problems started. Even messing with the Speedtest results in NVRAM wouldn’t fix it. Obviously I’ll need to watch and see what happens, but everything is flying fast and reliably now.
@OrbiMan it is not only the signal strength as bogus as100% for ALL devices but also all show as wired and NO link speeds did Netgear even test this?
I suspect they didn't test it. Sounds like no one is reporting it is working as intended.
Once I got everything set up finally (originally my closet with my eletronics seemed to be killing the signal) everything mostly worked, except I had the two white flashes over and over forever. I downgraded to the previous version.
@bsemerick the issue with the Orbi app for Android and iOS is still there and can be reproduce on demand all devices show as wired, with 100% signal strength even wireless show as wired I have mentioned this to Netgear Engineering and Moderators several times in many posts DarrenM even acknowledged Engineering is aware but no fix or ETA mentioned been 2 months or more
@bsemerick the issue with the Orbi app for Android and iOS is still there and can be reproduce on demand all devices show as wired, with 100% signal strength even wireless show as wired I have mentioned this to Netgear Engineering and Moderators several times in many posts DarrenM even acknowledged Engineering is aware but no fix or ETA mentioned been 2 months or more
Ah I see. I'm new to Orbi, so all I know is the experience with my setup this weekend. On my iPhone it shows the correct wifi/wired devices and the wifi strength, even remotely. So far so good.....
