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I ended up with a 3 pack of velop. It has been so nice to be working all week long with a wired backhaul. Not a single issue. I am hopeful that netgear gets it working before the return policy is up. But as this is working and they actually have 3 years of support with some one i can talk to it just may be the orbi goes to ebay.
Netgear you brought this on by months of not admitting you caused the issue and it is taking way to long to fix it.
Model: RBK50| Orbi AC3000 High-Performance Tri-Band WiFi System
I am also out $400, and want a refund. I spent 6 months on phone support, with them. It got me nowhere, except the fact that it got me past a 90 day return window. I finally had to buy a new system, so I could have stable internet, again. Netgear, please give me my money back!
Netgear is not ,going to give you any money back. I agree we have beed screwed by them but do you really think they care. If they did they would have fixed this issue right away.
No they kept telling people to reset the system for months before admitting there was a problem.
I would love a refund it would pay for my Velop system. Buy I doubt they care enough about customer safisfaction. They are just worried about making money.
Model: RBK50| Orbi AC3000 High-Performance Tri-Band WiFi System
Pretty simple solution with a mountain of evidence (and I'm sure this post will be deleted LOL) but you know... you have a lot of people in the same situation... representing a class of consumers.... hint...
hmm, reading all these negative posts I'm betting paranoid that I might end up in the same situation. Currently I have no issues. I am not using the backhaul feature - which is likely the main reason for not having issues. I have one day left to return it and get a Velop instead. I am torn....I might need that backhaul eventually.
It seems those of you who switched believe you've made the right choice. The evidence in better customer support and warranty seems to speak for a switch. There has been no update since the OP on the subject, while it sounded like they are close to a solution. Maybe tomorrow I'll be throwing dice.
Model: RBK50| Orbi AC3000 High-Performance Tri-Band WiFi System
I’m way past my return period as I’ve had my system since the beginning. It was very stable, however as of the last month or so, it deteriorated to requiring multiple reboots daily, even with a full factory reset and the firmware dialed back to the last known “safe” level. Buffering, stability loss ... absolutely nuts. I bought a 3 mesh Tenda Nova MW6 for $139 and it rocks ... 0 loss, no buffering all over wireless backhaul even though Ethernet is supported. Slight speed loss is nothing compared to the stability gain.
I decided to start the return process tomorrow and ordered the Velop which will arrive Sunday. I have a week to compare the two before I have to ship the Orbi back. I will then make the decision which one to keep.
Cheers
Model: RBK50| Orbi AC3000 High-Performance Tri-Band WiFi System
My Orbi has been rock solid since 2.1.18, up over 50 days now and I get amazing speeds from both router and satellite (connected by Wi-Fi) I contribute this to add a little balance to the conversation.
Thanks for the update! I laughed so hard at the image of people being locked in at Netgear HQ until they get it done.
Can you give us some insight into what happened during the development process that caused these issues.
From what I read, the OS is a mash of different OS's into one. Im guessing this caused the code to become waaay harder to work with than initially intended.
any other insights would be very appreciated Thanks for the hard work Netgear!
I have been testing a discarded RBK50 for a couple of weeks. Honestly, I have not experienced any of the issues many of you are complaining about. Oh, there was once that I went from WIFI to wired backhaul and the system would not communicate. But, waiting a couple of minutes settled the system out. I have loaded firmware from the initial 2.0 release to the 2.2 beta - no problems. One thing I do is a factory reset after an upgrade. I am not in a WIFI dense neighborhood and have a s l o w DSL connection.
I have investigated the Velop and Nova mesh systems and find them lacking even though they seem to have good reviews. Lack ethernet ports and USB connections. Depend upon iOS or Android app and not web browser configuration. Works with Alexa? A real security risk!
I'll likely give the Orbi to a good home once the 2.2 firmware is released and not consider the Velop or Nova at all.
Model: RBK50| Orbi AC3000 High-Performance Tri-Band WiFi System
I have similar circumstances. I've had my RBK50 for three weeks now and only experienced wifi disconnects (multiple clients) last saturday and then a random reboot last sunday morning. I have one week left to return the system and I am considering going out today to guy a Velop 3 pack. I have been waiting for a few days to get access to the beta firmware and after I agreed to the NDA or whatever I haven't heard back and all my follow-ups have gone un-answered.
Even though i've only had a couple glitches I don't want to take chance that after next week my system will start to drop wifi and start rebooting as is the case for other Orbi owners who've owned their systems for a longers period.
We really like Circle and I'm going to have to drop another $130CAD on the Circle device and attach that to the Velop solution...which alltogether will end costing a bunch more than the RBK50.
Anyway I'm tired of worrying about whether to return or not. I just hope I don't run into issues with the Velop.
AFAIK the Circle device only has a 10/100 Ethernet port so your speeds will be maxed out at 100mbps, that was the whole reason I bought the Orbi instead. Would love to get a hold of the beta firmware to get Circle going. Router is working fine otherwise
Actually the speed of the interface for Circle doesn't realy make a difference. Latency would be more of an issue (wifi more latency vs wired). The Circle device is not an inline component so traffic does not go through it. It works by highjacking the DNS requests for managed devices through ARP cache poisoning. It does increase the broadcasts on the LAN and uses very little WAN bandwidth fromwhat I can tell. It doesn't have much impact on performance.
I bought a Velop 3pk and Circle box yesterday and have been doing lots of testing. The initial setup was very similar to Orbi and similar amount of time. I'm only using one satellite (wireless backhaul right now, i will test wired also) at this point to better compare the Velop to the Orbi RBK50. I placed the router and satellite in the same spots I had the Orbis. It took a while to reconfigure all my cams, home automation stuff, streaming devices, tablets, phones, etc.. 30+ devices, not counting PCs . I used the Speedtest app on my iPhone 7 in every room of the house and indeed the Orbi is usually faster. The roaming is similar for both brands (seemingly for iOS clients). It will maintain connection with the current node and drop to 2.4G when the second node is closer and a 5G connection would be possible.
This is day two so I can't comment on stability (dropped connections or internet). The Velop forums also show users having dropped connections and reboot issues so it suffers from similar issues the Orbis are having with the latest FW. Velop owners are also saying that speed gradually decreases over time and reboots are required to restore speed. I haven't seen that issue in the Orbi forums. Anyway things aren't that much better on the Velop issues side, alot of angry postings there too about the amount of time being taken to resolve issues.
My initial feeling is that I may actually stick with the Orbi. I've had a couple of issues with it with dropped wifi connections and one reboot in three weeks. I just fear regretting it later on. One of the major reasons, funny enough, is that the Velop web interface sucks, no advanced config, no stats, no VPN solution, logging, etc. The devices page is nicer in a way but devices frequently show as being offline (long time issue for Velop). Other little things too, way too basic. The iOS/Android app however is better IMO than Orbi's. Mind you not by much. They're both lacking.
Anyway I'm going to keep testing the Velop. I have 5 days left to return the Orbi.
I'm still hoping the moderators/engeneering will provide me the 2.2 beta but no one is getting back to me...
I have been experiencing very irritating internet connection loss multiple times during the day on both satellites since 2.0, and can verify that they persist in MR 2.1 as well (2.1.2.18) . Is there any chance that I could get access to the 2.2 beta?
Model: RBK53| Orbi Router + 2 Satellites Orbi WiFi System
I just received the 2.1.3.2 Orbi Beta Firmware Today. After asking Netgear support if I will be notified of future Beta updates, they said that I would have to find that information out through the community boards or specifically ask Netgear support if there is an updated beta version available to download.
Model: RBK53| Orbi Router + 2 Satellites Orbi WiFi System
@j1nwrote: I just received the 2.1.3.2 Orbi Beta Firmware Today. After asking Netgear support if I will be notified of future Beta updates, they said that I would have to find that information out through the community boards or specifically ask Netgear support if there is an updated beta version available to download.
Looks like they fed you a line. Next release is supposed to be in the 2.2 series like the current beta 2.2.0.30. Have no idea where they came up with 2.1.3.2 as the highest rev is 2.1.2.18
I hope you have better luck than i did with 2.1.3.2 I got it last week and after updating and resetting my system. I had just about finished the setup and the internet dropped.
Took me 1 1/2 hours on the phone to get this. And it is not even any good.
Model: RBK50| Orbi AC3000 High-Performance Tri-Band WiFi System
strange, I posted a reply and my post disappeared...
Starbucky, I can confirm your findings.
I tested a Velop (2pk) side by side with the Orbi and the bottomline is that the Orbi is better in handling roaming clients. The connection on the Velop would go down to fair with very weak signal before it switched me over to the next node which was right next to me. It then switched to the 2.4GHz rather than the 5GHz as well. Lots of spots in the house with bad signal because of that. Under identical conditions with the Orbi, I never lost the 5GHz connection and the signal is always excellent throughout the house, seemlessly switching between nodes. Sure enough, this is one of the hotter topics in the Velop forum with a number of users with that exact problem - not even mentioning other threads with internet connection issues. Lots of angy users, just like here.
I will probably stick with the Orbi and return the Velop. I will test this one more time. Overall the signal and client handling seems to be much better on the Orbi - at least in my house.
cheers
Model: RBK50| Orbi AC3000 High-Performance Tri-Band WiFi System
I totally agree. I did some thorough testing with one satellite to compare to the Orbi and then added the second Velop satellite last night in our upstairs hallway. Adding the second satellite took over an hour, it just wouldn't complete sinking and kept telling me to bring it closer to the router... I ended up having to basically put it right next to the router. I rebooted the entuire system a couple of times to see if my various devices would connect to their nearest satellite and they just wouldn't. I have 7 Dlink cloud cameras and they didn't connect to their nearest AP and worst of all a basement camera insisted on connecting to the second floor satellite with barely any service making it essentially non functional. As I sit at work this morning two of my other cameras aren't connecting remotely. I also have 5 Chromecast Audio throughout the house and all of them connected to the router rather than their closest respective satellites. Those are some of the stationary devices. Our phones and tablets also wouldn't roam well at all. I tried wired backhauil too and it didn't make any difference, in fact it messed up the devices page identifying all wired clients as connected to one of the satellites when they are in fact connected to a gigabit switch on the router... All said, in my case the RBK50 2pk is much better than Velop 3pk. I'm packing up the Velop tonight and re-installing the Orbi, keeping my fingers crossed that I continue to have minimal issues.
I have been experimenting with a velop. So far all is working properly and I do connect to the closest node. I did notice this did take some time for this to work correctly. As the setup is all done wireless and after I moved to the correct place in my house and used wired connections. I had to renew connections from some devices to get them to switch to the closet node. Not sure if swicth while roaming i will have to test that later. But I have not noticed any problems from where devices are. There is not much roaming from room to room.
But I really hope that netgear is close to a solution for the orbi. i do have a long return policy as i got directly from linksys. Hmm that return policy is as long as netgear gives for tech support. maybe netgear should look into customer safisfaction. As I am not satified that my orbi does not work right.
Model: RBK50| Orbi AC3000 High-Performance Tri-Band WiFi System
So it looks like Velop is an inferior product after all.
I have had no major issues, except for one minor problem - satellite having lots of active network sessions (3198/65536) even if unused - visible on satellite debug page. I reported that. But it does not affect stability in any way.
