That’s it. After years of connection issues and promises of improvement with firmware upgrades only to be left waiting for another firmware upgrade to fix the previous issues , I decided to return the RBK53. Thank goodness for Costco and their generous return policy!!!
Of course. Google for "Best WiFi System", then check out the user forums for the leading products. People seem to rate Linksys Velop, Google WiFi, TP-Link Deco (M5 and M9), and several others. People on this forum own Netgear Orbi and are well acquainted with its strengths and weaknesses. People who own the other products may be in a similar position.
@Hsc1102 wrote: That’s it. After years of connection issues and promises of improvement with firmware upgrades only to be left waiting for another firmware upgrade to fix the previous issues , I decided to return the RBK53. Thank goodness for Costco and their generous return policy!!!
Any recommendations?
That's too bad. If you return it due to firmware issues, I believe you'll all the others face the same problem. They key is stay away from manual updates. If your system is working, why upgrade the firmware?
I've used multiple mesh networks. I'll rank them from my experience. Again, this is just my experience, it isn't scientific.
Here's how I'd rank what I've used.
1. Orbi RBK53
2. Arris W31
3. Orbi RBK43
4. TP-Link M9plus
5. Tenda MW6
This are the systems I've used so I can't speak to how the other wifi mesh systems work or reliablity. I will say that they've all had issues. None have been perfect.
Smallnetbuilder does reviews and ranks systems. there's great reviews there and its worth looking/reading through it a bit before buying your next system.
I've been on some 'fairly stable' firmware versions before, but netgear just never seems to get it right. This day and age with the complexity of technology all companies experience issues with a version of their firmware, but it just seems like netgear was never able to get it right. One version, I would have continuous connectiveity at slower than expected speeds and other versions I would have fast speeds but it would constantly disconnect especially when I am on a conference call for work. This is not what you expect for a ~$400 system that promises fast speeds and big range. Seems like firmware limited the ORBI's potential.
I would second the fact that there is something fundamentally off about the Orbi firmware.
I still love the hardware and no other router/mesh comes close in performance when the system works fine.
However the way the firmware distribution is managed + the inherent bugs in the code base (I presume) make the experience far less positive than otherwise.
My initial setup a year ago took over 2 days of trubleshooting before I got it stable
Adding a new satellite a few weeks ago broke a lot of things and took almost a week of hit & trial to get things back to normal (Eventually settled by setting Orbi as AP , downgrading firmware to 2.1.something and blocking internet access to all Orbis - to prevent auto updates)
Oh, and each time it reboots (say after a power failure), the whole network takes severeal minutes to come up and hours to fully stabilize. Short Brownouts and blackouts are fairly common in my town and I had to eventually move the Orbi power to a small UPS to avoid this
I think there is a lot more happening on the layer 2 switching on the Orbi than what happens on a traditional router and something about it is off
I would second the fact that there is something fundamentally off about the Orbi firmware.
I still love the hardware and no other router/mesh comes close in performance when the system works fine.
However the way the firmware distribution is managed + the inherent bugs in the code base (I presume) make the experience far less positive than otherwise.
Please keep in mind that the only firmware pushed to users automatically are ones with major revisions. All others are up to the users. May not be a 100% fool proof system, but if your network is working and you login to the router and see that a update is 'available', shouldn't you ask yourself..."why?", unless you like living on the edge and particiapting in NGs new beta test group.
I would second the fact that there is something fundamentally off about the Orbi firmware.
I still love the hardware and no other router/mesh comes close in performance when the system works fine.
However the way the firmware distribution is managed + the inherent bugs in the code base (I presume) make the experience far less positive than otherwise.
My initial setup a year ago took over 2 days of trubleshooting before I got it stable
Adding a new satellite a few weeks ago broke a lot of things and took almost a week of hit & trial to get things back to normal (Eventually settled by setting Orbi as AP , downgrading firmware to 2.1.something and blocking internet access to all Orbis - to prevent auto updates)
Oh, and each time it reboots (say after a power failure), the whole network takes severeal minutes to come up and hours to fully stabilize. Short Brownouts and blackouts are fairly common in my town and I had to eventually move the Orbi power to a small UPS to avoid this
I think there is a lot more happening on the layer 2 switching on the Orbi than what happens on a traditional router and something about it is off
In my case I had zero intent or wish to go to the latest firmware. When adding a simple extra satellite broke my existing LAN, I had to go through a 100 hoops ( including updates to a minor non push revision) before finally settling on a forced downgrade to 2.1.4.16 ( and assigning static IPs to the Orbis + blocking internet access to them) to get things working.
On a side note, I have gone through plenty of home networking equipment over the last almost two decades. Enough to lose count of but there is none that I have seen that’s so capable yet so problematic
