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Very slow network speeds on 5GHz network on Orbi RBR50 after months of solid performance
Hey All, Hopefully someone can help me with this. I just started noticing some really slow network speeds on my 5GHz connected network devices a couple weeks ago. This is after several months of ...
Thanks to all who pitched in. Your advice was helpful! I just took a backup of the working config in case I need it in the future. Setting this as resolved now!
Is the RBR in router or AP mode wth your modem. Thats a modem with built in router features.
Hopefully the reset will return the wifi back to spec.
RBR is in Router mode. I haven't had time to do the factory reset yet. Too many people at home using the network now. I'll have to schedule an "outage" to get it done this weekend.
One other data point though. I took my old TP-Link Archer C9 and hooked it up to a LAN port on the RBR. I set it up to distribute a test wifi network, and I was able to connect to the 5GHz network on it and get a 800Mbps Internet speed test with my laptop. So I think we can safely assume that the problem at this time is with the Netgear Orbis.
My plan at this time is to try the factory reset with the latest firmware that I installed last week. If that doesn't fix it, I'll try to find the v2.5.0.30 FW and downgrade. Hopefully Netgear has those old firmware versions archived somewhere.
Netgear pulled the v2.5.0.x firmware releases as they were extremely buggy. Please either use the current latest v2.5.1.16 release from https://www.netgear.com/support/product/RBK50.aspx#download or the previous stable v2.3.5.30. I have been running v2.5.1.16 for a month and it has been the most stable release for me yet.
Thanks tomschmidt. Just curious, are you getting better then 24Mbps Internet test speeds while connected to the 5Ghz wifi with that firmware version? And did you perform a factory reset after flashing the firmware? I'm getting ready to do this on my end and will report the results back as soon as I am done. I am hoping that the reset will do the trick, and get me back the speeds I lost after flashing to 2.5.1.8.
Update: One factory reset (and about 4 hours of reconfiguring from scratch) and everything is working as expected again - with theV2.5.1.16 firmware!
I am now getting the expected Internet speeds when connected to 5GHz wifi. And I can see on my wifi analyzer that the devices are all connecting to the router and satellite at 5GHz with a 80mhz wide channel. Earlier when this all went down, I noticed that the 5GHz devices were only connecting with only a 20Mhz wide channel. Now they are all connecting again with a 80mhz wide channel. I believe that was the culprit, but I cannot 100% prove it to be the case.
When everything was busted, I went around the house with my analyzer and saw that the 5GHz networks were advertised as "A54 - 20 MHz" channels. The 2.4 GHz networks were showing up as "g54 - 20MHz" channels. After the factory reset, my 5GHz networks are now listed as "AC867 - 80 MHz" wide channels. I believe that the 20MHz narrow channel was essentially restricting throughput on my 5GHz network to similar speeds as the 2.4 GHz network.
Anyway, what have I learned through all this?
1) Do NOT update your firmware on these Orbis unless absolutely necessary.
2) Have a good wifi analyzer app for your phone handy and take some metrics BEFORE you update the firmware and AFTER you update the firmware so you can compare.
3) If you do have to update the firmware, best to just factory reset them and set up from scratch afterwards.
4) Again.... Do you really need to update the firmware? Is it worth it? Sleep on it before doing so...
I hope my notes here in this forum help some folks!
Glad the reset worked and your system is up and running well.
Sometimes a reset is needed after a FW update. Just happens. Reset is mostly needed last a last resort most of the time however is a troubleshooting step. Seen odd issues with FW updates after they have been applied via auto update or manaully. My personal preference is to factory reset after FW updates. I've not seen issues with my routers using this process.Be sure to make a backup configuration to file for safe keeping. This is another lession that helps save time if a reset is needed.
Please mark you thread as solved so others will know.
Enjoy. :smileywink:
I am glad you got this working again with a factory reset. If you previously had v2.5.0.x firmware on your system, this may have left garbage in your configuration. Others experienced this issue with v2.5.0.x firmware as well, which is one reason that NG removed it from their downloads. A factory reset was needed to properly clear the system of the corruption caused by the v2.5.0.x firmware.
Thanks to all who pitched in. Your advice was helpful! I just took a backup of the working config in case I need it in the future. Setting this as resolved now!
Enjoy. :smileywink:
