I have the Orbi RBR50 and RBS50. I have it set up as router to satellite wirelessly (no AP mode). I am interested in setting this up w/ wired ethernet backhaul. How I would do this is using a switch between the router and satellite. What I'm unable to find is would I set this up as star topology (default) or change to daisy chain topology? I assume I can still connect hardware to the satellite after the wired connections are in place? I am also finding conflicting information how it would be set up... change to daisy chain (router reboots) then turn off satellite and router (connect satellite to switch).. then power router and satellite back on? thanks for any feedback.
First make sure that your network switch is a NON managed switch. There seems to be issues with Orbi systems and Managed swtiches. What is the Mfr and model# of the switch your consider using with the Orbi?
Start with a Star configuration first. Disable Daisy chaing on the router first and reboot the router. Then I would wirelessly ADD the satellite via wireless first. Make sure you get the top led BLUE. Then connect up a LAN cable between the satellite and router. Give 5 minutes for the system to reconfigure the wired back haul. The top led should again turn BLUE. Set up a IP address reservation for the satellite ON the router.
You can do all of this in the same room as the router with the satellite. Once you get the wired working, you can then power OFF the satellite and take it to its desired remote location where your LAN cable connection is. Connect and turn ON the satellite. Should get a top led BLUE after it comes to ready.
I have the Orbi RBR50 and RBS50. I have it set up as router to satellite wirelessly (no AP mode). I am interested in setting this up w/ wired ethernet backhaul. How I would do this is using a switch between the router and satellite. What I'm unable to find is would I set this up as star topology (default) or change to daisy chain topology? I assume I can still connect hardware to the satellite after the wired connections are in place? I am also finding conflicting information how it would be set up... change to daisy chain (router reboots) then turn off satellite and router (connect satellite to switch).. then power router and satellite back on? thanks for any feedback.
I ended rolling back to 2.1.4.10. I was having a LOT of issues with this firmware. Connections would drop and then I would have to reboot the router and sats - after which, the LAN speed would drop to about 2Mbps between the router and sats.
I first tried the star topology..no success. The Orbi satellite and router had a signal per wifi analyzer app but my cell phone said authentication problems. I changed the setting in the web interface to daisy chain topology. The satellite connected back up wirelessly. I turned off and unplugged the satellite (router still on). I plugged the satellite to my switch. Plugged in and turned on the satellite. Waited about 5 minutes...checking the web interface. At first the satellite read connection as 5G then it changed to wired. Thanks so very much for your help. I hope things continue to be stable from here on out.
I first tried the star topology..no success. The Orbi satellite and router had a signal per wifi analyzer app but my cell phone said authentication problems. I changed the setting in the web interface to daisy chain topology. The satellite connected back up wirelessly. I turned off and unplugged the satellite (router still on). I plugged the satellite to my switch. Plugged in and turned on the satellite. Waited about 5 minutes...checking the web interface. At first the satellite read connection as 5G then it changed to wired. Thanks so very much for your help. I hope things continue to be stable from here on out.
So i'm having no luck at all with ethernet backhaul. I have RBR40 router and 2 x RBS40 sats.
Whenever I enable ethernet backhaul it just kills my entire system.
I have tried the following:
Upgraded both router and both sats to V2.1.4.16 firmware.
Done a factory rest and reconfigure of router and reset both sats and reconnedted them all from scratch.
Disabled Daisy chaining.
Checked all ethernet connections between router and sattelites.
Sat 1 is 1GB Ethernet connected via a network switch into my loft area to the router (Network switch is Netgear)
Sat 2 is 1GB Ethernet connected via a network switch into my office area to the router (Network switch is Netgear)
I have checked all switches are a flat network and have IGMP snooping or multicast protocols disabled.
No matter what I do or try the network just dies when I enable Ethernet backhaul.
There must be an underlying problem here as I can re-produce it everytime without fail on the current firmware V2.1.4.16.
If I remove the ethernet cables and let the satellies connect via wireless they are great and stable but my office location is a bit further out and on the edge of connectivity so Ethernet backhaul would give me a faster overall connection (if it worked).
So I would appreciate some support from Netgear in troubleshooting this issue and I am happy to help any senior Netgear engineer with diagnostics to help try and pinpoint the cause.
As I have now followed all advice from the forum and online I seem to have nothwere else to go than working with Netgear Engineering teams to find the root cause.
I am an IT consultant with 20 years experience so Netgear if you are listening and reveiwing these posts and want customer assistance if reporting issue and root cause analysis, please reach out and help!!
I only use wireless backhaul, so my advice is just what I have learned off of this site.
What switches are you using? Orbi's don't seem to like managed switcheds at all. See if for testing purposes you can remove them from the equation.
The general consensus I have seen here is to connect using wireless backhaul and let everything stabilize. Connect one satellite using wired backhaul and let it stabilize for 5 minutes or so. Then do the second. If that doesn't work, after you connect the first one wired, reboot it. Then connect the 2nd, let it stabilize and reboot it.
It says in my post that they are Netgear swiches, they are both unmanaged.
I have tried everything you say already to no avail, apart from removing the switches from the equation as if these dont work then I wont have a backhaul solution as I have too many devices to not have switches. My gut feel is that its an STP issue, as others have stated on here and that until thats fixed and ethernet backhaul is stable i'm just going to have to wait off for further firmware fixes/improvements.
Have read and re-read just about every post on this topic and have tried all advice. My post was really a call to Netgear to reach out to me to help.
I too believe this is STP related. I spent hours trying to get wired backhaul working. Doing various power up sequences seemed to work for short periods of time then the whole network would start failing ( you can also telnet in and enable STP, but it is not persistent and not sure it fully works). I finally removed my wired backhaul which was to my Guest house. I then moved one satellite to a window in the main house and one to a line of site window in the guest house. I also enabled daisy chaining. It works now, however the signal is weak. I am leaving it this way until Netgear fixes the issue. Why they just don’t come out and say there is an issue and they are working it is beyond me. I have purchased a router and three satellites, which is a significant $$$$ investment, so I would rather not just scrap it all and buy another solution.
As my RBK50 router + 3 RBR50 Satellites keeps dropping connection (50+devices) in AP mode with last firmware 2.1.4.16 (hard reset router and all satellites) I finally give up on Orbi after one year of testing.
I ordered yesterday Linksys Velop 2x3 packs and hoping for the more stable product.
Model: RBK53| Orbi Router + 2 Satellites Orbi WiFi System
My Orbi RBK50 system is working perfectly on a wired backhaul using FW V2.1.4.16.
A couple of weeks ago, I waa in a similar situation to you, leewilko. Orbis connecting fine over wireless backhaul, but the second I plugged the cable in, there was an endless cycle of magenta ovals, first one Orbi, then the other. My Orbi router is in my study, and the satellite is about 15 meters away in my family room. An ethernet cable runs from a patch panel in the study to a single outlet in the family room, and when I was having trouble, my ethernet cable was plugged into the Orbi router's LAN port 2, then directly to the patch panel, bypassing my passive 16 port switch. At the family room end there's a TP-Link 5 port passive switch, from which a cable is reserved for the satellite. Whenever I tried to establish a wired backhaul, I didn't touch the router end cable, I plugged the ethernet cable from the 5 port switch into the satellite. This event caused everything to go to sh*t.
In desperation I decided to swap the LAN port on the router from 2 to 3, and the instant I did, I noticed no magenta ovals, and right away the Web interface showed that the satelite was connected with a wired backhaul.
Had this not worked, my next step would have been to bring my family room cable directly to the satellite, and to use it as a switch for connectivity to other devices (Apple TV, Samsung Smart TV and a STB)
Two events took place that I had not experienced before.
The satellite cable was already plugged in: It was the router end cable that I used for the first time to make the connection with the satellite
I disconnected LAN port 2, breaking the connection, and reconnected through LAN port 3.
I can't explain what happened, but I'm happy it worked. Give it a try. There's nothing to lose.
Model: RBK50| Orbi AC3000 High-Performance Tri-Band WiFi System
It says in my post that they are Netgear swiches, they are both unmanaged.
I have tried everything you say already to no avail, apart from removing the switches from the equation as if these dont work then I wont have a backhaul solution as I have too many devices to not have switches. My gut feel is that its an STP issue, as others have stated on here and that until thats fixed and ethernet backhaul is stable i'm just going to have to wait off for further firmware fixes/improvements.
Have read and re-read just about every post on this topic and have tried all advice. My post was really a call to Netgear to reach out to me to help.
So...my experience with 2.1.4.16.....it sucks. This is worst firmware upgrade than before. My internet connection was more stable before the upgrade. I was using before 2.1.4.10. It was a lot more stable. There were constant drops on my andorid phones but the laptop always worked good.
Now....I have 100Mbits connection and I am constantly getting no more than 30 on my laptop. While laptop before worked 100% good now it sucks. Orbi sucks. Yes if I plug and unplug orbi I get back 100Mbits but not for a long time.
I honestly belive the orbi project is run by a bunch of interns and students that do not know wtf are they doing.
Please spear me with unplug that unplug this...reset and stufff...This is a **bleep**ing joke by orbi team. The Netgear orbi team do not deserve to be called programmers, software developers or titles like that. They are a disgrace to the software and coding world. Period. If I were their manager I would fire the whole department and build things from the scratch with a new professional team. I cannot believe the level of this insanity. If netgear wanted to destroy the brands name on purpose then I belive they are doing a great job. Kudos to the orbi team!
Model: RBK53| Orbi Router + 2 Satellites Orbi WiFi System
Mine Orbis work perfectly on FW v2.1.4.16, in fact its the best FW yet. I’m satisfied. Now why is it so, when you are having so much difficulty? Either yours are faulty, configured incorrectly, or it’s other factors in your environment that are letting you down.
Your rant at the Orbi organisation is undeserved when you consider the number of people out there for whom ther Orbis work as advertised and who don’t complain.
Why not try harder investigating if the locations where you site the Orbis is optimal? Do you use the Netgear Genie’s device map to troubleshoot connected devices? Is your Orbi router in router mode or AP mode? What device, if any, is between your internet wall socket and your Orbi router? If it’s another router, and your Orbi is in router mode, this is a recipe for disaster.
I suspect you may have imperfect infrastructure on which you expect the Orbis to Plug ‘n’ Play
Sorry for being provocative. The purpose of a forum like this is for people with a common interest to share their experiences and help each other.
Model: RBK50| Orbi AC3000 High-Performance Tri-Band WiFi System
So can someone answer when will Netgear code that allows components of other Netgear products to talk to other Netgear products? My sattalite and main unit have a NetGear r8000 switch between them and sattalite always shows as an attached device why? R8000 is a Netgear switch and Orbi is a Netgear product. Yes I have tried resetting with paper clips rebooting, reinstalling from scratch have given up sick and tired of this useless Firmware game that has been going on for a year now still not fixed!
Honestly though, returned mine in costco but I'll buy it again if ever they fix the code and I still have a need for it. it was fast when it works, for now the ac5300 is very stable and a used ac68u (refurb 70.00), has same coverage (with aimesh), its a little more complicated for the wife to operate but it is what it is
when I had the orbi, it was the same technique i used (one you described) but I also made the sat .2 and .3 and started dhcp at .5.
fyi. I didn't see a difference between managed and unmanaged switches, thought i had better luck with ver x.x.x.16, I have the cisco 24 port 3560 and asus or netgear switches and at one point, experimented at length with each device and see which will trip the orbis. Even made the 3560 flat and made it as dumb as it can be, still orbi gets confused on bootup between wired and wireless and other things.
@@cheshbr wrote: I suspect you may have imperfect infrastructure on which you expect the Orbis to Plug ‘n’ Play
It's not neccessarily bad infrastructure though.
From my own experience I think there have been, and probably remain, devices that have incompatibilities with the Qualcomm wireless. There appear to be problems with certain ISP devices too and there appears to be problems with wired backhaul.
As you and others have said, the first thing that needs to be done is a reset to factory defaults and re-configure from scratch to rule out the possibility of nvram corruption or incompatibile nvram configuration remanants from previous firmwares before declaring there is in fact a problem with the firmware.
And if it's decided there is a problem with the firmware it's not straight forward for Netgear to fix it.
Wireless related problems are very likely out of the hands of Netgear to fix. They would need to log a fault with the board manufacturer (or perhaps the distributor of the wireless development kit they are using) and wait for a fix which might not come for a long time.
I'm not sure about ISP modem problems, they might be able to fix those and generally the router manufacturer is expected to fix them even if the ISP device is badly behaved.
Wireless backhaul, don't really know whose responsibility that would be to fix either, hopefully it would be Netgear.
The thing about this is there are often closed source components in the development kits, particularly the wireless drivers, which means that Netgear has no way to debug and fix those problems.
For the parts of the firmware they have source code for it's resonable to expect them to be capabile of fixing problems themselves.
But we have no idea what parts of the firmware they have source code for (except very liklely the web interface and most utility programs, such as DHCP server, web server, etc.).
So it's not as easy to attribute blame as most posters seem to think!
Owning an ORBI system is an exercise in frustration. Clearly the systems has bags of potential, but as of today, totally unrealised. Whilst the development ecosystem is in this state of complete disarray, the competing mesh systems will start to gain traction. All they have to do is work. Performance comes a distant second to speed.
In reply to JMU1998, post 359, you mention a Netgear r8000 switch, but when I inquired, the R8000 is a router, and the S8000 is a switch.
Unmanaged home network switches are simple plug and play devices that move packets of data around a network. They have no configuration interface or options, and are brand-agnostic and quite homogenous. I have a 16 port Netgear switch and several TP-Link 5 and 8 port switches on the same network and none cause any issues. A properly functioning unmanaged home network switch won’t be your problem.
What device is between the internet wall socket and your Orbi router? Is it a modem, modem/router, cable modem, etc? If you plan to put a router there, then you must either put it into bridge mode and disable WiFi if you intend to use the Orbi router in router mode, or leave it as a router, disable WiFi, and put the Orbi router into Access Point (AP) mode. You can’t have two devices performing router functions on the same network.
May I suggest that you restart your Orbi setup as follows.
Place all your Orbi devices in the room where your internet connection first enters your house
Plug the Ethernet cable from your internet source into the yellow WAN port on the Orbi router
Insert one end of another Ethernet cable into a non-yellow Orbi LAN port and the other end into your computer. Do not cable connect the satellite
Open the Orbi web interface using Orbilogin.com
A wizard will take you through the basic setup. During this stage, the wizard will try to connect to the satellite in wireless mode
if you plan to choose AP mode, do so now, and you are almost finished, otherwise continue setting up in router mode. For this you will need to set up your DHCP IP address range and DNS entries. I have no experience in router mode as I prefer AP mode.
If your router connects satisfactorily, you could rerun the firmware upgrade to v2.1.4.16, satellite first.
Open the web interfaces for the Orbi router and satellite. For this you will need to find the IP address for each device.
Look at the list of attached devices. If you have been successful, you should see the IP addresses and MAC addresses of attached devices.
Use the Netgear Genie’s Network Map to assist in troubleshooting
Hopefully at this point you will be functional
When your system is stable, you can try a wired backhaul
Other matters to consider
i always reserve IP addresses for specific devices in the DHCP table. This locks in a fixed IP address per device.
The router’s attached devices list will attemp to name them, a much easier task if IP addresses are reserved during the configuration of DHCP.
Model: RBK50| Orbi AC3000 High-Performance Tri-Band WiFi System
i always reserve IP addresses for specific devices in the DHCP table. This locks in a fixed IP address per device.
The router’s attached devices list will attemp to name them, a much easier task if IP addresses are reserved during the configuration of DHCP.
Interesting, I used to do that but found that too many domestic routers have limitations on the number of reservations allowed. I found it easier to reduce the DHCP IP range and manully set the IP addresses of a fair number of my devices, mainly fixed devices, TVs, receivers, computers etc.
As I have a speadsheet of devices with IP address and MAC address it works fairly well, particularly when I need to reset to factory default and re-configure, 😉
