Re: Intermittent internet connectivity outage with Orbi?

trueno · ‎2017-02-06

I can confirm that ,after disabling the implicit beamforming option, my nestcams are working perfectly. I'm waiting for a Velop but I'll probably return it as soon as it arrives.

I tried a Linksys EA9500 with 2 RE7000 and the performance was not good, although the cameras worked flawlessly (no disconnection whatsoever). The backhaul channel between the satellites is a big plus. Same placement as the RE7000 and the speed tests give me 125 Mbps, while the RE7000s go no further than 50 (on the 5ghz band).

I have 10 nestcams and 6 arlo, and they eat a sizeable amount of bandwidth during the day, so I might add another cable modem connection for the cameras and the security system alone, and leave the other one just for the computers.

B747driver · ‎2017-02-06

@trueno wrote:
I can confirm that ,after disabling the implicit beamforming option, my nestcams are working perfectly. I'm waiting for a Velop but I'll probably return it as soon as it arrives.

I tried the Velop. It has a lot of similar issues as Orbi, one of them dropping Nest Cams. I spent several hours on the phone with tech support that included channel optimization, full resets, experiment with node placement, etc. No luck. It's just not ready for prime time IMO. I don't mind doing a few minor tweaks, but Velop required more than that, much more than I was willing to do. For $500, I expect it to work pretty much out of the box. It did not, not even close, so I returned it after two days.

Since then, I've been watching this forum. Hopefully Netgear will fix Orbi's issues that have come up repeatedly here, namely that of iOS and Nest Cam disconnects. Once they do, I'd love to give it a try. Until then, I'll have to be content with my Airport Extreme. It may not have the potential of Orbi, but at least I have steady, reliable wifi without the frustration of essentially being a beta tester. I readliy admit that I do not have the technical knowledge of many here, nor do I have the time or desire to dive deep into this stuff. Just not my thing. That said, I appreciate everyone's feedback of the system's overall performance. Thank you!

trueno · ‎2017-02-06

I loved the airport extreme, specially the way you can extend the network, but the cams and devices I have are scattered around in the house and out in the yard. I even have a sprinkler controller around 100ft from the house and the performance was not good at all.

Guytech · ‎2017-02-07

I hope this might help someone. I noticed that I see nomore disconnects with Apple devices and my cameras work well too on WiFi if the 2.4 GHz band limits to 20 MHz bandwidth. If the bandwidth changes to 40MHz, some issues develop. Then I remembered that Apple's Airport routers only does 20 MHz bandwidth on 2.4 GHz, if I am not mistaken. It seems that the transition between 2.4 and 5GHz just happens smoother too. Is there any way to limit the 2.4 GHz band to 20 MHz on the Orbi?

DarrenM · ‎2017-02-10

Hello Guytech

No way to limit it to just the 20 MHz as of right now.

DarrenM

DarrenM · ‎2017-02-14

NETGEAR is aware of an issue affecting some users where wireless client devices frequently disconnect/reconnect from the Orbi WiFi network. We’re actively working on the issue and hope to have a solution soon.

Thank You

DarrenM

graphicidentity · ‎2017-02-14

I have the base router and satelite in a 2 storey house seperated by a brick wall. I chose Orbi because the marketing says you can get a strong signal even beyond a brick wall. I'm not sure if that is related but I have had very intermittent and poor connectivity with wifi all week, and I rely on wifi for work.

I've since repositioned the satelite to a different location (as close to the wall of the first building as possible, and added back the extenders I had to the second building. The wifi is now acceptable, but I would like to get a stable and reliable connection so I can permanently put my wifi behind me. I feel spending $500 on these devices should not have already caused such concern.

If there is a setting, or any other suggestion someone can offer me to help resolve this issue I'd be more than pleased.

I bought an expensive and powerful wifi mesh system. I would like to have a powerful mesh wifi system that works.

Sincerely,

Chris King

Razalus · ‎2017-02-23

I would also like to throw my hat in the ring and say my six nest cams now drop frequently after i installed my Orbi Router and three satalites.

Justin K

peteytesting · ‎2017-02-23

nest cams are a known issue that netgear is working on along with apple devices

Mikey94025 · ‎2017-02-23

@Razalus wrote:
I would also like to throw my hat in the ring and say my six nest cams now drop frequently after i installed my Orbi Router and three satalites.

For now, just disable "implicit beamforming" and your Nest camera disconnects will go away.

Retired_Member · ‎2017-02-24

And Android devices.

stavrosg · ‎2017-02-25

I was pleased with the performance through brick myself. Too bad i cant keep a connection,

MeGrimlock · ‎2017-02-26

I have been using the Netgear Orbi system for quite some time, and I absolutely love it. I was using a Linksys EA9500, and Linksys even sent me a Velop 3pk to try out to review, and I came back to the Orbi. The Orbi is simply the best whole home solution for fast, strong connections I've ever used. I have the two Orbi setup in my 4K sq ft home, one router and one satelite. I had been using a Ring Stick up Cam outside my front door and connectivity was never an issue with the Orbi, the issues I had with that camera were on the Ring side. I purchased the NEST outdoor cam and installed it yesterday, and while I love it much more than the Ring, I also noticed that the NEST cam would go offline about 4-5 times during the day. The camera is only about 15 feet line of sight away from the base router, outside above my front door, separated by drywall and some exteriror wood trim. I contacted NEST support and talked through it with them, even told them I use an Orbit system, and their only solution was to send me a new camera. I was doing some research online today and found this forum. I read through most of the posts, and I found that after I too disabled Beamforming on the Orbi, my NEST cam has not gone offline once since. So short term work around successfull. I also see that NetGear is aware of this issue, so i'll continue to monitor this forum for any future solutions in the firmware.

Retired_Member · ‎2017-02-26

They took it back. Made an exception. I showed them all the issues the Netgear orbi was having (this forum, my ticket with support), and the manager approved it. Last time I took something I didn't have to talk to a manager, but this time it required it as the normal employee didn't want to do it. Either way, I got the credit, and now own the Eero system running. I already set it up and have no issues at all so far. It's fast everywhere in the house, and all my devices have a solid signal with no drops.

amoney805 · ‎2017-03-07

Wow, still no fix?!! I was getting ready to order the orbi until I read about the issues with nest cam. Any eta on a fix? Otherwise its google wifi for me.

Retired_Member · ‎2017-03-07

Yea, no fix and every eta was never right. Been waiting since December. I have up and went eero.

Mikey94025 · ‎2017-03-07

You should never depend on an ETA or promise (engineering has great difficulty predicting the future). If the product doesn't meet your needs as-is, don't buy it or return it. If you must have Nest cameras and implicit beamforming then don't get the Orbi.

For me, the OP, I disabled implicit beamforming and this completely eliminated my Nest camera disconnects. I've had zero disconnects since Nov and don't have any wireless connectivity or speed issues with my Orbi with implicit beamforming disabled.

amoney805 · ‎2017-03-07

What is the purpose of "beamforming"?

adaptdabull · ‎2017-03-08

I'm having this same issue with or without beamforming on my Orbi with two satellites. Happens to my Dropcam Pro camera, and Nest Protect fire alarm (but perhaps other connected devices such as Hue lights and Wemo switches). This is unaccpetable. Just bought the router, and was enjoying it before seeing these issues, and may need to return.

TomMac · ‎2017-03-08

@amoney805 wrote:

What is the purpose of "beamforming"?

think of it as simply aiming the signal to where your device is ; directional ( as opposed to just a big circle of signal )

Mikey94025 · ‎2017-03-08

@adaptdabull wrote:
I'm having this same issue with or without beamforming on my Orbi with two satellites. Happens to my Dropcam Pro camera, and Nest Protect fire alarm (but perhaps other connected devices such as Hue lights and Wemo switches). This is unaccpetable. Just bought the router, and was enjoying it before seeing these issues, and may need to return.

Sorry to hear this - Yes you certainly can't live with that behavior. I'm surprised -- AFAIK the workaround of disabling Implicit Beamforming has worked for the Dropcam/Nest camera owners (and Ring). I myself have Dropcam Pro, Nest, and Nest Protect devices.

You can return or try further fiddling to find the difference. Have you upgraded to the latest firmware (though I don't recall any improvements/changes related to Nest camera disconnects)? You can also try different wifi channels. Others also disable MU-MIMO (but I never had to do that).

alkizz · ‎2017-03-11

My 2 cents - It's probably nothing to do with beanforming but QOS / WMM instead. I'll test some things out and see.

alkizz · ‎2017-03-11

Playing around on the Orbi and the Internet.

First, to restate the issue I'm dealing with and think most in this thread are too:

1. Nest Camera randomly goes into an offline state. This means I cannot view live video and the camera is not recording. In other words, the camera loses connectivity to the Nest Cloud to upload live video.

a. I have not noticed the camera dropping from the "Attached Devices" list on the Orbi but will confirm if this is the case or not (if it happens again).

After some research,

1. Beamforming doesn't make sense to me why it would cause random Nest Cam disconnects.

2. WMM doesn't seem like it would be the problem either, because as far as I can tell it would only affect Nest Cam if it lacked QoS Standards (I refuse to believe it would)

3. On my old nighthawk router, beamforming, QoS, Nest Cam, everything worked great. The nighthawk had many more settings for QoS than the Orbi but I don't have the nighthawk any longer so I am unable to confirm my previous settings.

4. Once signing into an Orbi Router, you can still see some of the legacy settings pages if you know where to look. For example:

5. I believe (only a hunch to be verified later) that the "Enable Upstream QoS" setting is the most likely culprit. On my Orbi that setting was turned on and the "Uplink bandwidth" Maximum was set at 512 Kbps. This means Orbi would be prioritizing upstream data packets based on (in my case) incorrect information.

6. From Nest's support website here - https://nest.com/support/article/How-much-bandwidth-will-Nest-Cam-use - Nest Camera can at times use 1.2Mbps at 1080p Resolution - much higher than 512 Kbps

7. I disabled Upstream QoS because changing the uplink bandwidth was not allowed (assume because its a legacy feature)

8. Next steps are

a. Wait and see if Nest Camera goes offline (happens several times per day since installing Orbi)

b. Check if it's listed in the "attached devices" list on the Orbi

1. if it's on the list then it could be reasonably assumed it never lost LAN connectivity and it's a Nest problem or a Orbi settings problem

2. If it's NOT on the list, then back to the drawing board

alkizz · ‎2017-03-12

Getting more confident that Upstream QoS could be the culprit.

1. Information found here - https://kb.netgear.com/23852/How-do-I-enable-upstream-quality-of-service-QoS-to-optimize-gaming-on-m...

2. When I look at the Upstream QoS rules all the attached MAC addresses were set to "normal" meaning they were all competing for upstream bandwidth from Orbi at the same priority.

3. If Orbi thinks that 512Kbps is the upstream limit, then it will allocate that to the attached devices equally. If Nest Cam is trying to push video to the cloud I can easily imagine scenarios where it's attempt would fail, and thus, it goes offline.

4. Other general thoughts somewhat related:

a. It appears Netgear reuses old firmware code. I make this assumption based on the "hidden" router configuration pages I've been able to find.

b. It appears explicit/implicit beamforming and QoS are realted in some way. I'm not technial enough to understand, but found several research articles on the internet that led me to this assumption.

c. If the feature of Upstream QoS is still a functional element of legacy firmware code, its limit was set at 512kbps.

d. If Netgear reuses code -and that code is functional -and beamforming is related to QoS then it is a guess that disabling beamforming can have some affect on QoS which might explain why this workaround has been effective for some. It might also explain why a firmware update on this issue has taken so long.

e. THIS IS ALL GUESS WORK - I am only trying to make reasonable assumptions but could be completely incorrect.

5. Anyone else interested in testing this as well? My Nest Cam had 57 disconnects over the last 30 days. So far it's only been about 9 hours since I made the change but Nest has been stable. It would be interesting to see results from others if anyone else who has numerous disconnects wanted to try. I'm a little nervous about providing the URL to the setting publically because I don't want to be resonsible for lots of bricked Orbi's in case this causes issues in the future. If you want to test this out send me a message.

Mikey94025 · ‎2017-03-12

Nice theory & detail, I hate QoS and don't have it enabled, nor was it on by default for me. Do you recall turning it on or ever trying the speedtest?

Wait, I just looked at your screenshot in more detail and I don't believe you have QoS on. You have WMM enabled, which is the default and which always should be on for maximum performance. WMM is not the same as explicit QoS ("Turn Internet Access QoS On") which is disabled by default. So your settings match my own.

Still, let us know how your experiement goes.