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Orbi WiFi 7 RBE973
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Orbi, roaming and sticky clients

HansHansen
Aspirant

Orbi, roaming and sticky clients

Hi there,

 

we would like to have overall wifi over two floors with reliable roaming, but dont't need incredible fast speed. Instead we hope to get rid of "sticky client" problems we had in the past with our mobile devices in combination with several powerline wifi sets. Regarding Orbi I'm confused about conflicting customer assessments ranged from very good to extremely poor. I read a lot of discussions about seamless wifi coverage in the past and it was often said that the location of the access points matters and that mobile clients will roam better when the overlapping areas of the wifi signals are reduced. For me this general opinion is in conflict with the wifi backhaul technology, because it probably relies on strong overlapping wifi signals to achieve stable and fast backhaul communication. Furthermore the wifi backhaul seems to operate at 5 Ghz, so the 2,4 Ghz wifi should overlap even more due to shorter wavelength. And another general opinion was that roaming between access points is always a client decision and the mesh system can only make roaming more attractive for the client, but it still depends on the wifi capabilities and some client side tresholds.

 

So what can I expect from Orbi in this respect? Is it enough to ensure overlapping signals and good overall wifi coverage and then I will get rid of sticky clients and gain stable wifi for sure?

 

I read that all the Orbi satellites need a direct connection to the Orbi base station. Is this still true? I ask, because the most stable WAN connection for the Orbi base station is not located in the middle of the mesh and we would like to feed the mesh with the most stable internet access.

 

Do I still have to do some kind of research to find a matching number of satellites and locations? I mean, most devices have some kind of shaped radiation pattern or even use beamforming to follow a client as long as possible, so I wonder if I only have to distribute "enough" satellites to make it work out of the box?

 

And can I reliable evaluate whats happening inside mesh? Can I for example check the quality of the backhaul connections and see to which satellite a client is assigned in real time when moving around?

 

Best regards
Hans

Message 1 of 8
FURRYe38
Guru

Re: Orbi, roaming and sticky clients

What do you mean by sticky clients? 

 

Location, distance and placement is key to any MESH wifi system.

What is the size of your home? Sq Ft?
What is the distance between the router and satellite(s)? 30 feet is recommended in between them to begin with depending upon building materials when wirelessly connected.

 

5Ghz is more effected by building matierals than 2.4Ghz. 2.4Ghz can go farther than 5Ghz. 

 

Roaming is a client side handling process. The Orbi may help this in some ways, however it's up to the client HW to figure out what signals is best and to transition to a better signal strength seemlessly or not. 

Some reading on WiFi Roaming:

https://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wireless/wireless-features/33195-wi-fi-roaming-secrets-revealed
https://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wireless/wireless-features/33196-wi-fi-roaming-secrets-revealed-part...
https://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wireless/wireless-features/33197-wi-fi-roaming-secrets-revealed-part...
https://www.smallnetbuilder.com/basics/wireless-basics/33180-how-to-fix-wi-fi-roaming

 

RBS are required to connect to the RBR when wirelessly or wire connected. 

 

Others have posted having up to 6 satellites connecte to one RBR. Again, depending upon size of home and building materials, will help you figure out how many satellites you may need. I have a 5000sq ft home and use one RBR at one end of the home up stairs and 1 RBS at the opposite end 40ft away, wired or wireless, have great coverage. 

 

Not much status other than status of connected satellites to the main base router. 

 

The Orbi only works as good and what it gets from the ISP modem and ISP services. These should be checked to ensure ISP services are working well for any connected wifi router. 

Message 2 of 8
FURRYe38
Guru

Re: Orbi, roaming and sticky clients

What is the Mfr and model# of the ISP modem that you currenty use? Built in router and wifi? 

Message 3 of 8
CrimpOn
Guru

Re: Orbi, roaming and sticky clients

@HansHansen wrote:

I read that all the Orbi satellites need a direct connection to the Orbi base station. Is this still true?

 

No.  As delivered ("out of the box") Orbi has a "Daisy Chain" option (set by default) that allows a satellite to connect another satellite.

A description can be found here: https://kb.netgear.com/000048458/What-is-daisy-chain-and-how-does-it-work-with-my-Orbi-WiFi-System

The RBK50 I purchased, which consists of one RBR50 router and one RBS50 satellite had the Daisy Chain option checked by default.  (Never mind that with only a single satellite, "Daisy Chain" is impossible.  My guess is that making it the default ensures that customers who acquire more satellites find that they "just work".)

 

The very best performance is always with all satellites connected to the base unit with ethernet cables.  However, the 5G backhaul is typically so much faster than the customer Internet service, that in practice there is no difference.

 

 

Message 4 of 8
HansHansen
Aspirant

Re: Orbi, roaming and sticky clients

Hi there,

first of all, sorry for the late reply, but it took some time for me to read and nearly understand the linked information.

 

@FURRYe38  wrote:
What do you mean by sticky clients?

 

With sticky clients I mean the behaviour of our iOS devices in combination with our powerline wifi set. We have 3 powerline access points with identical wifi settings and the devices stick at one access point even when we move the devices inside the house towards a much stronger access point. I found some documents from Apple where they mention a roaming treshold of -70dB for this type of devices. I remember for example that when my MacBook showed -67 dB the internet connection was almost unusable - maybe this happens due to a stronger noise signal at our location and a resulting lower SNR. But the MacBook sticks at the weak access point and I have to switch WiFi off and on to get back a usable internet connection.

 

If I understand correctly, Orbi seem to have the cabability to support useful features, but does acutally not make use of all of them (e.g. 802.11k). Other features are used, but does not seem to work properly with the Clients (e.g. band steering or 11k measurement requests). And there seem to be some very unfortunate decisions from the guys whow make the WiFi standards, because they did not consider to give the AP the control for roaming decisions and so every manufacturer creates their own proprietary roaming algorithm solution for the clients (e.g. observing RSSI instead of SNR). And it truly worries me that enabling 802.11r is supposed to kick off older devices completely. Well, maybe in 10 or 20 years (when I get to be an old man) roaming performs almost flawlessly.

 

I found an interesting blog about "Zero Handoff" introduced by a company called "Ubiquity"". To me it sounds too good to be true that the client thinks all the time he is talking to one big AP and moving around is no longer a problem. I could easily live with the restrictions of Zero Handoff (only 1 channel for all Clients and therefore less speed). But sadly the company decided to stop this "Solution" in favour to this game of pure chance all the other manufactures are using. This sounds almost unbelievable - does anyone know why this promising technology was not enhanced?

 

@FURRYe38  wrote:
What is the size of your home? Sq Ft?

 

On the ground floor we need approx. 1800 Sq Ft.
On the first floor we need approx. 500 Sq Ft.
The house is bigger, but we don't need WiFi everywhere and the shape of the first floor is a subset of the shape of the ground floor.

 

@FURRYe38  wrote:
What is the distance between the router and satellite(s)?

 

The router is located in the basement next to the telephone system together with a powerline adapter and we currently have 3 powerline wifi access points (2 on the ground floor with a bit more than 30 feet distance and 1 on the first floor).

 

@FURRYe38  wrote:
What is the Mfr and model# of the ISP modem that you currenty use? Built in router and wifi?

 

I'm from Germany and our ISP is "Deutsche Telekom". My modem router is a Zyxel Speedlink 5501 and it's wifi is permanently switched off.

 

@FURRYe38  and @CrimpOn , thank you very much for your help so far. It is not the result I hoped for, but I'm grateful to know this before I buy expensive hardware and spend days with that kind of roaming.

 

Best regards
Hans

Message 5 of 8
FURRYe38
Guru

Re: Orbi, roaming and sticky clients

Good luck. Smiley Wink

Message 6 of 8
ekhalil
Master

Re: Orbi, roaming and sticky clients


@HansHansen wrote:

.................. To me it sounds too good to be true that the client thinks all the time he is talking to one big AP and moving around is no longer a problem. I could easily live with the restrictions of Zero Handoff (only 1 channel for all Clients and therefore less speed). .............


Orbi uses the same principle "Zero Handoff". All Orbi nodes operate on the same channel that makes the client not making many handoffs as long as it's not jumping between the bands.

 


@HansHansen wrote:

......

If I understand correctly, Orbi seem to have the cabability to support useful features, but does acutally not make use of all of them (e.g. 802.11k). Other features are used, but does not seem to work properly with the Clients (e.g. band steering or 11k measurement requests). ......


Orbi supports roaming standards 802.11k, 11r and 11v, and also band steering.

 

Message 7 of 8
CrimpOn
Guru

Re: Orbi, roaming and sticky clients


@ekhalil wrote:

Orbi supports roaming standards 802.11k, 11r and 11v, and also band steering.

In addition to Orbi supporting these 801.11 standards, the client device also must support them?  i.e. it is still up to the client to device which access point to use?

Message 8 of 8
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