Product: RBK53 (RBR50 Router + 2 RBS50 Satellites)
Firmware: v2.1.4.16
Configuration:
* All three nodes were reset (was told to hold for 30 seconds) and set up in same room using wireless backhaul.
* RBR50 WAN connected to unmanaged switch that is connected to Verizon FIOS router (previous tests connected directly to Verizon router, so the switch did not change behavior).
* Changed to AP Mode and fixed wifi 2.4 GHz channel to 11 (doubt that matters). No other changes except admin password.
* After network stabilized, connected the two satellites to RBR50 using ethernet cable.
* Able to get system up an running and confirmed through web interface that Satellites showed as Wired with good backhaul status.
Testing Procedures:
* Have laptop with wired connecton to RBR50 and running continuous pings to my Verizon FIOS router.
* Have iPhone running Dr. Wifi tool running continuous pings.
* Power off one of the Satellites for 5-10 seconds.
Testing Results:
* The ORBI network becomes unstable whenever something changes, such as powering down a Satellite. In about 6 tests, only once did the ORBI network recover from the Satellite Re-Start without manual intervention.
* During the instability, both the laptop wired connection through the RBR50 and the phone wifi had no internet connectivity.
* During the instability, when able to refresh the web interface to the connected devices, it showed that the ORBI network was switching between wireless 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz backhaul channels.
* During the instability, the ORBI network traffic seemed to cause performance problems with my other wired network devices that were connected to the Verizon router (separate from the ORBI devices). I didn't investigate further, but suspect that there may have been packet flooding (would have run Wireshark if I cared).
* The one time that the ORBI network was able to automatically recover from the Satellite restart, it took about 6 minutes to return to a stable network.
* In order to recover the other times (waited for over 20 minutes), I had to manually remove the wired ethernet cables from the Satellites and re-start the RBR50.
After going through this testing multiple times myself, I carefully went through the steps again with Netgear Support allowing them to instruct me what to do (several times) to demonstrate the problem. They have escalated to Level 2 support, but that was hours ago and I'm done (fortunately, Im able to return the product). I need the wired backhaul. Perhaps the product works well with just the wireless backhaul, and perhaps the postive reviews from the so-called independent reviewers are because none of the reviewers tested the wired backhaul properly. I have security cameras attached to my network and can't afford to have my network go down when there is a power (or network glitch?). I'm speculating that the same problem occurs with a network outage with the RBR50 because I think that occurred one time, but it was not a very controlled test.
I find it incredulous that the Netgear engineers do not seem to perform proper testing of this product's advertised features. This problem, while not 100% repeatable, it is pretty easy to reproduce and people have been reporting similar problems for a long time, ever since they added support for wired backhaul. Perhaps they can shift some of their marketing resources to their testing. I'm posting this information because I invested several days trying to make this system work, and perhaps the information will help others. Just pay attention to the current firmware version when comparing to these test results, as maybe some day the Netgear engineers will provide a stable product that supports wired backhaul.
