Orbi functionality with dead RBR50 and only RBS50s?
Hello. New to Orbi, have had a true mesh network at home for over 10 years. I have a question about Orbi's functionality. It appears to me, based on the network map the Orbi app creates, that if your RBR50 dies, you lose your entire Wi-Fi network. ie the satellites can't function as individual APs in a mesh network. Is my understanding correct? If so, then the Orbis don't create a true Wi-Fi mesh, but rather some weird star topology. A true mesh would have each of the Wi-Fi providers, for want of a better term, function as independent APs that cooperate with each other to create a mesh, including redundant Wi-Fi backhauls between APs within range complementing their wired backhauls.
Re: Orbi functionality with dead RBR50 and only RBS50s?
you're correct in that you do need at least 1 orbi router. it acts as the controller.
It would have been nicer if it'd been designed like some of the other mesh networks that any of the satellites can be reassigned as router. I'd imagine a lot has to do with orbi being first to market when mesh started for consumer devices and then the trend just continuing.
Re: Orbi functionality with dead RBR50 and only RBS50s?
But in an environment where one already has a router this a bit rediculous. Open-Mesh has had products on the market for over 10 years that perform as I described. The Orbi hardware is perfectly capable of handling a true mesh, and there are a number of opensource projects that have done all of the heavy lifting, all Netgear would have to do is slap a pretty GUI on it and voila, a far superior product than the RBR50/RBS50s. Oh well, on it's on me. I had read Tom's Hardware's review from last November that warned of the star topology, but the reviewer was told Netgear was in the process of releasing a firmware update that would turn the Orbis into a true mesh.
The router can handle up to three satellites, but each satellite communicates directly with the host router in a hub-and-spoke arrangement, rather than in a true mesh topology that would let data pass from one satellite to another. (A Netgear representative told us the company was working on a firmware update that would enable satellite-to-satellite communication.)
I should have checked to see if this had actually been released. Thankfully I bought my RBK53 from Costco. 🙂
