Can ANYONE confirm that they can acheive 900mb (or so) WAN to LAN ethernet download speeds THROUGH the Orbi router with a laptop hardwired to the router via CAT 5e cable? Not talking wireless. I am specifically referring to hardwired ethernet. I am reading on the internet that the Orbi chokes at 460mb WAN to LAN even when connected to a Netgear CM1000 Docsis 3.1 modem. Tech support says that the Orbi is "fully 1gb capatible" but some rather trustworthy web sites are saying otherwise. Anyone?
Model: RBK50| Orbi AC3000 High-Performance Tri-Band WiFi System
Its didnt for me. I purchased Arris SB8200 modem to suppor the Orbi but the highest speed achieved was 450mbps WAN. Yes for LAN connection with capable devices. I agree with most people with 450 mbps. Netgear is full of bologny. Orbi hogs up 1.7 gbps just for communication between satellites. I wish there was an option to manually balance that. I had to return the modem and downgrade mu internet speed. Wasted time off work and a Saturday. It was a headache. Thanks Netgear for being transparrent.
Model: RBK50| Orbi AC3000 High-Performance Tri-Band WiFi System
I have 1G service (though not xfinity) and it works for me when hardwired. There is *some* speed degradation when going through the router (vs direct connect to Internet, as in right into the optical terminal) but that should be expected on a device like this. It has it's own processing / nat / etc to do and you will not get true 1G service when going through it.
Also the speed tests inside the orbi are worthless in this case because you cannot select the test server. So you need to do the tests from the computer, just FYI. Also make sure you select a server that is with your own ISP and is local, to get more accurate results.
Besure when your setting up the Orbi router, that you don't enable the speedtest app, traffic meter and access controls. These will inhibit the router from achieving 900+-Mb on 1Gb ISP services.
Also test speeds via wired connections. Wirelss speed testing maxes out at about 400-600Mb depending on client Mfr design.
Wanted to close out this thread at least on the initial topic. Here are my conclusions:
Went out to Costco and bought the RBK53. Great deal BTW. So the router and 2 satellites. Set them up appropriately. So far they have worked as advertised. Speedtest indicates over wireless anywhere in my 3300 sqft home between 400mb and as high as 600mb depending on where I am. Certainly acceptable. It also depends on the wireless device. For example my iPhone X screams as fast as 600mb just about anywhere in the house where as my older Laptops, even at 5ghz run between 400mb-500mb. Again, certainly acceptable.
Here is the stupid thing. When connected to the RBR50 via 1gb ethernet running the Speedtest app on the laptop I consistently get upwards of 850mb to as high as 940mb which means the Orbi is capable of 1gb speeds WAN to LAN. However, if you run the speed test that is built into the router, unlike in my X10 R9000 which is 100% accurate, the speeds reported by the Orbi are absolutely WRONG - in some cases as slow as 200mb or even less. It seems to me that either the Orbi router can't discern the proper location and therefore the proper endpoint server to connect to for speed testing or worse, the speedtest client built into the Orbi is crap, i.e. broken. Bottom line you can't rely on the speedtest built into the Orbi to tell you how fast your WAN to LAN connection really is. Plug in a suitable laptop to the ethernet and try it from there.
I would be interested in feedback from other users to confirm what I have found. Hopefully others can repro this issue. I would love to see this fixed in a future firmware release. What sucks is that I had previously returned TWO Orbi systems, at the request of Netgear support, before purchasing this 3rd setup because I previously thought the speeds were flawed when running on my 1gb Xfinity service.
Thanks for reading!
My Setup: Xfinity 1gb Service, Netgear CM1000 32x8 Modem, Orbi RBK53 System
In general, speedtests that run ON a router are unreliable. This is because the router is optimized to pass packets THROUGH the router, and is not optimized to be an endpoint itself.
I have an RBR50 that I use in AP mode. Testing using iperf3, the RBR50 can achieve 940 Mbps download throughput WAN to LAN. Doing so requires multiple parallel data streams. Some speedtests, like the one on dslreports, use multiple streams.
