Serious Satellite Connectivity Bug

[benn600]

This is not intermittent or difficult to reproduce.  I consistently am unable to connect to devices on my Orbi network.  I have seen this problem 15-20 times over about 2 weeks and I have power cycled, reset, and re-paired the satellites 5 times each in various orders.

I have an RBR50 with two RBS50's.  Each Orbi has several devices connected to it via Ethernet as well as via WiFi (nearest devices).  I have ten (10) Denon Heos speakers.  Some are hardwired to each Orbi and some are wirelessly connecting to each Orbi.

Very simple steps:

1. iPhone 7 connects to Kitchen satellite.  It cannot see ANY speakers that are connected to the Living Room satellite.  I open the HEOS app and I see 6, not all 10 speakers.

2. I cannot connect to my living room Apple TV's, either of them.  They show up in the list on my iPhone but connecting to them hangs and returns "Unable to connect..."

3. I cannot see or ping the Living Room satellite AT ALL.  Fing, the app, reports the device offline and when I open the IP address in Safari, nothing.  It hangs.

When I walk close to the Living Room satellite, suddenly I can ping the Living Room satellite, my Apple TV works, and the speakers on the Living Room satellite appear!  Oddly I can also see the Kitchen satellite.

So either there is a software problem that needs resolved, or my Living Room satellite is broken/has a hardware problem.  I have tried switching the two, resetting them, re-pairing them.  Nothing helps.  Tech support told me congratulations, I'm connected!  I said in an hour or three everything will fall apart again, like it has 20 times.

I have generated the abilty to generate an RMA but I'm extremely frustrated at the level of response and service from Netgear.  Not only is this 2nd satellite about 40 days old, purchased from Fry's, but as I'm explaining to them--this makes absolutely no sense and is no way my fault.  I'm using these devices 100% as they were intended.  I was a huge believer in this product until I added the 2nd satellite.

1. Would it help if I fully reset the Router as well?  I have only reset the Satellites and re-paired them.

2. I already flipped the satellites.  Unfortunately, I have seen the problem in both directions.  While wirelessly connected to one of the satellites, connecting to devices on the other is 40% of the time not possible.  That's a lot of downtime.  Especially when I have dozens of home automation devices that suddenly vanish.  What a waste of money/effort setting them all up.

3. I would like Netgear to provide me escalated support and help me through this frustrating situation that I think it is in their best interest to learn from.  I would like them to not charge me for an advanced RMA (which seems ridiculous) but also to pay the return shipping for the defective unit.  If they sent me a new unit I could play with the 3 satellites, in different configurations, to determine if one is in fact bad or if something else is going on here.

[benn600]

Let me add that my iMac, which is hardwired to the Router, seems to always be able to connect to everything.  It is something about devices on satellite #1 connecting to devices on satellite #2.  The double hop on the wireless backhaul may be the cause, which is also the claim to fame of this entire system.

[peteytesting]

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@benn600 wrote:

3. I would like Netgear to provide me escalated support and help me through this frustrating situation that I think it is in their best interest to learn from.  I would like them to not charge me for an advanced RMA (which seems ridiculous) but also to pay the return shipping for the defective unit.  If they sent me a new unit I could play with the 3 satellites, in different configurations, to determine if one is in fact bad or if something else is going on here.

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so having read the above i can help you with the escalation process and you wont need to pay anything , just need a few facts and info first

first can you draw a mud map of your orbi router location and the sats locations and distances inbetween and what construction materials are used invbetween

also what the lights are doing on both router and sats and what speed tests you are getting when moving from sat to router to second sat

i assume the router is inbetween the 2 sats

will also need some info like serial number etc later which you can send by message

if then we can identifdy its an issue i can help with the escalation and poss rma if needed

pete

[njfoses]

Have you tried disabling MU-MIMO and beamforming?

[benn600]

I'm not sure what a mud map is but I can describe my home.  It's fairly straightforward.  I'm in Santa Monica, California, so there is a decent amount of radio interference although most of my neighbors are older and have minimal/old equipment.  1,200 SF townhouse, 45% SF downstairs, 55% SF upstairs.  Rectangular layout, router is upstairs in the exact middle with the satellites both being downstairs, one at the front and the other at the back of the floorplan.  Given that these are rated to cover 6,000 SF (3 devices) this is fairly overkill but the reason I went for this is because I wanted several devices plugged directly into each Orbi (10 devices in the living room and 2 devices in the kitchen) including AppleTVs, speakers, cameras, etc.  This way, their data is concentrated to the max speed wireless backhaul and keeps the user network less busy.

I'll point out that my HEOS system never worked reliably until I got the Orbi.  I had tried some other devices and given that I have so many nodes (10) it was a mess.  When I got the router and satellite, suddenly I had 99% rock solid performance.  This 2nd satellite I ordered is when everything started going wrong.  I bought it at Fry's.

Lights on the Orbis have only ever been blue.  I have never seen purple.  They are basically in the next room, just downstairs, given the smaller size of my place.  All materials are wood and drywall.  Thankfully these should not impact anything and like I said, with the first kit everything was good.

Speed tests have been reliable.  Getting internet from any satellite is not a problem (perhaps because it's only a single backhaul hop).  230mbps down by 23mbps up almost always.

I had an open case a few days ago under my email address, with an attached ability to open an RMA.

[benn600]

I have tried disabling the 5GHz radio but have not tried disabling MU-MIMO and beanforming.  I'll give that a try.

[OrbiMan]

I have similar things https://community.netgear.com/t5/Orbi/Orbi-loosing-part-of-the-network-NOT-Internet/m-p/1298723

[OrbiMan]

I do not believe that it is hardware because I have 2 different satellite and I switched them still the same

[st_shaw]

Sounds like you have a complex setup. The fact you had WiFi issues before buying Orbi hints that your problem might not be an Orbi bug, but might be radio interference related.

You also have a lot going on in a small space.  Based on your 1,200 feet area, the upper and lower floors would only be something like 22x30 and 18x30. I am covering three floors and 3,000 SF with one satellite.  Adding the second satellite could actually be contributing to your problems, because they all share the same channels. You mention trying three satellites, but that could make it even worse.  If things worked fine with only one Satellite, the solution might be to go back to that.  If you need more wired ports, you could connect a switch to the Orbi.

I'm not familiar with HEOS speakers, but I see some include Bluetooth, which can interfere with WiFi. You have no control over your neighbors' devices either, and they will impact you as well.

I don't know what you've tried, but I would recommend you make sure you've managed your RF environment to the extent possible.

1. Hardwire everything that you possibly can!

2. Turn off the WiFi radios on anything that you can. If you have any old APs, make sure they're OFF.

3. Turn off the Bluetooth radios on anything you can.

4. Try to manage channels, to the extent possible. See what's out there using WIFi scanning software (inSSIDer, etc.). Make sure your WiFi is using the channels with the least congestion. Make sure you're using only channels 1, 6, or 11 on 2.4G. Channel management is more difficult with Orbi, as you don't have a lot of flexibility to adjust channels, and the backhaul uses a lot of the spectrum.

5. Make sure your wirless devices, especially the Orbis, are not sitting right next to other wireless devices. Close proximity will cause issues.

6. You said you swapped satellites, but you should also try moving the satellites to different positions (even swap floors) if possible.

7. Given the small space, you should also try reducing the WiFi power level of the Orbi's.

It's actually somewhat fortunate that your specific issue is repeatable.  This should make it easier to isolate the cause.

[benn600]

I will try decreasing the power.  I just don't think it's a connectivity problem, but more like a "firewall" or software breakage in the virtualized network connected via the backhaul.  It's not that packets drop or bars go down, it's that a whole wing of my network vanishes.

Sat1 -> Router -> Sat2

When I'm on a satellite, every device on the other satellite is invisible about 40% of the time.  That whole satellite is gone.

I have everything plugged into a satellite that I can.  This is the whole purpose of Orbi, to get a dedicated and separate backhaul.  All units in my complex are townhouses so the density is a bit lower than small apartments, by at least half or less.  I have every radio turned off that I can and plugged the devices into a port so Orbi can do what it was designed to do.  Handle as much traffic as possible on the dedicated wireless backhaul.

Reducing wireless transmit power I can see as a solution because my devices might be hopping too much.  But again, I don't even think that's the problem.  I never have trouble getting internet, or connecting to devices on the router.  It's only the double hops on the backhaul.  This seems like a software block or error and something reboots internally periodically that resets it and it works.  Interestingly enough it always works great after a power cycle.  It would be great if I could turn a satellite into ONLY a backhaul receiver that does not rebroadcast my wifi, but simply gives me bridged ports.  I have 3 main areas where devices live that can be hard wired but no Ethernet.  If I was willing to cut the walls I wouldn't have gotten Orbi.  This is the primary selling point on the box as well as logically.

[st_shaw]

Sounds like you've done a lot already. You might be able to test your theory about the inter-sat communications by telnetting into a sat and pinging the other sat when you have the problem happening.

The only other thing I can say is it's quite important to try moving the Orbis relative to each other and relative to your other WiFi devices. I've seen it cause problems with my setup with the Orbi apparently saturating another device's radio when they were too close.  Also, RF waves bounce around inside and it's possible one satellite is in a bad spot for the backhaul. If you put a switch between your devices and the sat, and put the sat on a long ethernet cable, you can move the sat around quite a bit.

[benn600]

While I'm connected to an Orbi node, I have a rock solid connection to that.  When I'm even remotely close to my Kitchen satellite, my Living Room satellite devices are rock-solid unavailable.  As soon as I move even somewhat close to the Living Room satellite, my iPhone hops over and suddenly everything is visible.  I'm running Fing regularly and lots of devices are grayed out (unreachable) and it quickly tells me which node I'm on and which node is unavailable.  But sometimes it works fine without a problem.

[st_shaw]

I haven't used Fing.  I'll check it out.

[benn600]

My hard wired devices on the router can always connect to everything.  My server seems to never lose connectivity to any cameras, which are connected to either satellite or wireless.

[benn600]

I'm on my MacBook Pro and I just pulled up the administration page for the Router, and both Satellites.  What do you know...my laptop is connected to one satellite and I can see that on the Connected Devices tab.  When I go to the other Satellite page, oddly the page does appear but the Connected Devices page hangs at the loading screen and never displays.  So I'm seeing the same situation again and again.

I had disabled MU-MIMO and Beamforming this morning, but this problem just happened.  So I have now re-enabled both of those but lowered the transmit power to 50%.  The devices are rebooting right now and I hope they finish coming back online shortly so I can post this message.

I'll report back how this goes.  It usually works right after reboot but starts losing backhaul connectivity after a few hours.

[peteytesting]

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@benn600 wrote:

I'm not sure what a mud map is but I can describe my home.  It's fairly straightforward.  I'm in Santa Monica, California, so there is a decent amount of radio interference although most of my neighbors are older and have minimal/old equipment.  1,200 SF townhouse, 45% SF downstairs, 55% SF upstairs.  Rectangular layout, router is upstairs in the exact middle with the satellites both being downstairs, one at the front and the other at the back of the floorplan.  Given that these are rated to cover 6,000 SF (3 devices) this is fairly overkill but the reason I went for this is because I wanted several devices plugged directly into each Orbi (10 devices in the living room and 2 devices in the kitchen) including AppleTVs, speakers, cameras, etc.  This way, their data is concentrated to the max speed wireless backhaul and keeps the user network less busy.

Lights on the Orbis have only ever been blue.  I have never seen purple.  They are basically in the next room, just downstairs, given the smaller size of my place.  All materials are wood and drywall.  Thankfully these should not impact anything and like I said, with the first kit everything was good.

Speed tests have been reliable.  Getting internet from any satellite is not a problem (perhaps because it's only a single backhaul hop).  230mbps down by 23mbps up almost always.

I had an open case a few days ago under my email address, with an attached ability to open an RMA.

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hi so here is what i read

you have a  1,200 SF townhouse and imho the orbi router on its own would cover this , you may just have a case of too much of a good thing , too much wifi overlap is as difficult to deal with as not enough , there is no benefit in over powering wifi as it just confuses the clients

to be honest it sounds like if you cant have ethernet run to those locations you would be better of with a big honking router like the r8500 and a few wireless media bridges that just connected back to the r8500 but did not transmit a client signal

im pretty much 100% sure the orbi router and 2 sats is way to much wifi for your house

[OrbiMan]

I don't know if space is the issue I have 5000 Sq feet and still have the issue similar to op

[benn600]

Thanks @OrbiMan

I just really, really don't think this has anything to do with square footage personally.  You know why?  Because what Orbi is trying to do here is the holy grail.  This is the thing that we have all begged for, for years.  I bought Three Apple AirPorts 3 years ago attempting to use two to simply make a dedicated wireless backhaul, and then Ethernet connected the 2nd to another AirPort.  I needed my wifi access point in a particular area and did not need an extender, but I could not have users connecting to the router.  All wireless traffic HAD to go through this ideal location or I'd get 5GHz drop out because of material in one wall, which I then installed the router in the ceiling next to where the problematic material was not present (up higher).  Yes, in my current home I do not need more than one.  My router/modem are exactly placed in the middle of my space, albeit on the upper floor but still.  I know one is wildly sufficient.

The problem is that I want coverage in my courtyard and even my garage, both of which the satellites give me fairly well.  So tack on another 3K SF of exterior space and I'm not that far off from any of you larger homes.  IF you're saying the satellites need to be farther than 25' away, maybe 50' or 75' well technically I could actually try this.  Grab a little UPS and haul my Orbi out to the outside on a little table, just for a test.  I just cannot imagine this solving it.  I seriously have no issues with hopping wireless or throughput.  These work famously.  It's the double hops on the backhaul.  Satellite 1 to Router to Satellite 2.

If this was a true Mesh network and Sat1 could backhaul directly to Sat2, then maybe this wouldn't be a problem.  It seems to only be a problem with satellites AND your more typical user is not doing as much node-to-node communication.  If you just have devices that need to connect to the internet and devices plugged into the router, that all works great.

It's when a device connected to Sat1 wants to connect to Sat2 is the problem.  When I'm connected to the Router no issues.  I just walked within a few feet of my router, my iPhone hopped over and BAM every device is visible/accessible/not gray in Fing.  This is reliably reproducible every time, just sometimes you have to wait a bit for the system to fall apart, might be a few minutes or a few hours, but it always happens.  Then sometimes fixes itself, then back to the same again.

[benn600]

If Orbi Satellites could be turned into bridge mode to receive but not rebroadcast the signal, that would be a stopgap.  At least I wouldn't have these drop outs and yes, my place is small enough where I could get by with one node.  I could live without the exterior coverage, until this is figured out.  This is the reason I did what I did with the AirPorts.  I wanted strictly a wireless node with a bunch of Ethernet ports on it.  That way, the latest-generation, best-available wireless chip in the WAP can handle all communication, in a queued fashion, through a single wireless connection thereby reducing interference and wireless traffic/noise.  I want as much as possible simply handled by this one 802.11x connection.  Devices which must be wireless (phones, tablets) then have more space on the primary network.

[st_shaw]

@benn600 I posted this article on here a couple months ago.  It's a good read.  It explains some of the technical reasons why "more is not better" with WiFi.

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/03/802-eleventy-what-a-deep-dive-into-why-wi-fi-...

[peteytesting]

and i hope the above helps the poster understand whats going on as far as wifi coverage goes , and yes there is too much of a good thing

i have 3500sqft of house and its just on the break point between orbi router and 1 sat v 2 sats and tbh one sat is enough

the piosters coverage is far less and is why the client wont roam , its simple physics , if a client doesnt lose a signal it wont roam

[benn600]

So if I set my two satellites on the edge, where they turn purple when they pair and see the same problem can we move on to a different diagnosis?  I'm trying to eliminate possibilities.

[peteytesting]

the simple answer is to not use the second sat as your house aint big enough

if you want devices connected by ethernet get ethernet installed or use a wireless bridge or powerline adapter as the second sat is just too much wifi in your house as far as wifi overlap goes

[benn600]

You're diverting the question.  If Orbi is designed for up to 3 satellites (right?) than it should be rock solid 100% reliable with up to 3 satellites in some configuration.  I don't see anything on any boxes or manuals stating a minimum square footage.  The 3-pack says up to 6,000 square feet.  My friend bought a 3-pack to cover two houses spanning probably 8K SF and hasn't reported this problem but his setup is much simpler.

Without the 2nd satellite my speaker in my kitchen would drop out/audio would cut out.  So something needed to be done.

[peteytesting]

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@benn600 wrote:

You're diverting the question.  If Orbi is designed for up to 3 satellites (right?) than it should be rock solid 100% reliable with up to 3 satellites in some configuration.  I don't see anything on any boxes or manuals stating a minimum square footage.  The 3-pack says up to 6,000 square feet.  My friend bought a 3-pack to cover two houses spanning probably 8K SF and hasn't reported this problem but his setup is much simpler.

Without the 2nd satellite my speaker in my kitchen would drop out/audio would cut out.  So something needed to be done.

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im nort diverting anything

you mis understand the logic of wifi

for ever and a day we have lined on the wifi coverage overlap principal of the image below

this ensures that clients can roam because of the 20% overlap of transmissions

so assume that each transmission is 2000sqft , thats 8000sqft coverage right , but that assumes you have 8000sqft

if you compress that you have too much overlap and confused clients that wont roam

this isnt rocket science its simple physics

your friend may need a orbi router and 2 sats , but you dont , its that simple

pete

p.s

if you dont believe me have a google of

over saturation of wifi