I am hoping you can help. I bought the Orbi AX4200 (RBR750) Mesh System in January 2021 and added an additional satellite in March, and I was truly amazed at the speeds and coverage. I bragged and bragged at work about how I could be outside my house front or back and still got 450Mbps+ download speeds, since I couldn't setup the backhaul due to how my house is wired. I have a 1Gbps connection from Spectrum, and running the speedtest on the Orbi to test upstream connection, I am showing 940Mbps down and 37Mbps up...which is well within spec for the service.
Things took a turn for the worse a couple months ago and I have been searching for what might have happened. I noticed that Netflix started failing to connect on our living room Roku, and then Disney+ refused to connect at all. I upgraded the Roku and that seemed to help, but that got me checking on things. In talking to one of my friends who was looking at upgrading his Internet to 1Gbps, we did some speed tests. I am still seeing the 940Mbps/37Mbps connections upstream, but all of my devices are seeing 85Mbps to 205Mbps down and 16Mbps to 25Mbps up. I upgraded the firmware of the Orbi Router and Satellites to V4.6.5.14, and have rebooted the whole setup more than once since then...and the speeds have not changed. I also tried both wired and wireless devices, though I have not tried wired directly into the Router on the internal switch. I hesitate to do a Factory reset on the mesh, but do I have any other options?
My house is 2200sqft, 2 floors. The coax for internet comes to a central closet on the first floor, and a single RJ45 connection in the kitchen in the back of the house. Our Office is in the front of the house, and the Game Room is upstairs with a switch attached for PCs...and neither have any way to get internet outside of Wireless, which is why I went with Mesh.
Everything in the Orbi Management App looks good, no errors in the logs, both satellites are showing Good for their Backhaul Status (one had shown Out of Sync before the firmware upgrade).
2) How far apart are the satellites from the router?
3) Are there any nearby neighbors with WiFi signals "visible" to your system?
4) Are the interruptions/dropouts on one band or both?
Since every location has its own "personality" due to thousands of variables, there is no "one size fits all" solution. Most of the issues seen on this forum are related to NetGear firmware interacting with WiFi device firmware. Finding a solution for your situation may not work for anyone else due to the variables involved, e.g., construction of your house, location of appliances/furniture, signal interfernece, etc.. Implementing any solution is a trial and error process that can be very frustrating and time consuming.
There are a few common steps to try that seem to help:
1) Set your 2.4 gHz band to a static, non-overlapping channel. Channel 1, 6 or 11.
2) Turn off the AX part of 2.4 gHz band.
3) Set your 5 gHz band to a static channel. Channel 48 is what I use.
4) A factory reset and configuration from scratch (not a backup config file!) helps a lot of folks.
I recommend trying each of the steps above one at a time. Allow the ORBI to "settle" for several hours in between steps. If none of the first three help, then a factory reset may be your best bet. Good Luck!
I have 2 satellites, and one is upstairs and about 40ft from the router, the second is about 25ft from the router with walls between.
On my phone, checking for other wireless signals, I get about a dozen on various frequencies.
No dropouts, just truly terrible speeds. Since posting the message, all connections in the house are hovering around 80Mbps with dips into the low 20Mbps range on download speeds.
The interesting thing is that the slow speeds are on both the 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz connections. I set the 2.4Ghz to a set channel from Auto and will give that a try.
I am not sure how to turn off the AX portion of the 2.4Ghz band, but I will dig for that.
I am also using a set Channel 48 for 5Ghz already, though 2.4Ghz was set to Auto.
I don't really want to go the Factory Reset route, if possible, but hopefully someone on here will have some other options to try. The Cable Modem uses the same default IP Address for Management, so the setup gets goofy on this router until I get it to work long enough to change the default IP. Finding that issue took a bit the first time around and several factory resets. 😄
Found the AX, and disabled that for the 2.4Ghz. Testing now to see if that changes anything for the 5Ghz range. I hesitate to turn off the AX for 5Ghz, since that will knock out the faster ranges...
As for the MFG/Model, not sure that matters...since the upstream is posting the expected numbers. It is only downstream from the Orbi that is suffering. 🙂
As for the power down, I didn't wait a full minute, but did use the old default of count to 15 slowly to allow network connection cache to clear before turning on the modem and letting it settle before powering up the Orbi. Total about 5mins of downtime in the house for internet...but I can cetainly try to unplug the modem for a full minute, press the power a few times to remove all flea power, and then bring it all back online. 🙂
I have 2 satellites, and one is upstairs and about 40ft from the router, the second is about 25ft from the router with walls between. 25 feet is too close between the RBR and the RBS. 30 feet or more.
On my phone, checking for other wireless signals, I get about a dozen on various frequencies.
No dropouts, just truly terrible speeds. Since posting the message, all connections in the house are hovering around 80Mbps with dips into the low 20Mbps range on download speeds.
The interesting thing is that the slow speeds are on both the 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz connections. I set the 2.4Ghz to a set channel from Auto and will give that a try.
I am not sure how to turn off the AX portion of the 2.4Ghz band, but I will dig for that.
I am also using a set Channel 48 for 5Ghz already, though 2.4Ghz was set to Auto.
I don't really want to go the Factory Reset route, if possible, but hopefully someone on here will have some other options to try. The Cable Modem uses the same default IP Address for Management, so the setup gets goofy on this router until I get it to work long enough to change the default IP.
What is the Mfr and model# of the Internet Service Providers modem/ONT the NG router is connected too?
As an alternative to explore, anyone have a link to any gotchas on using the Orbi as an Access Point? I picked up a Netgear Router (Hurray Black Friday) and could put that inline from the modem, but am not sure if there are any gotchas on checking the box to make the Orbi an AP. The Router I got might be enough to cover the whole house, but I really like the ethernet port capability on the satellites where my PCs are located. Or if I could use that satellite as an Extender, or it wouldn't work with the new router. The new router is a Netgear Nighthawk AX4200 Dual Band (RAX43-100NAS). The dual band would suck, since it will slow things down, but I was curious to use it as a test mule to see whether the problem is my Orbi Router or something else causing the problems.
The modem I have from Spectrum is the dreaded HiTron EN2251, but the speeds from within the Orbi App are great (940Mbps down & 37Mbps up), so doubt that is the problem. I could certain go buy another modem and test with it, but it just seems that the issue is with my hardware within my house and not the modem from Spectrum.
During setup of the HiTron, I had the tech set it as passthrough so that it wouldn't be acting as a router, since I had the Orbi to perform those duties. It is very annoying that the modem's default access page is the exact same as the Orbi, but allowing the Orbi to configure and then unplugging the ethernet between them, allows me to go in and change the default IP Range for the Orbi before it starts causing issues.
Not sure what finally did the trick, but now I am back to seeing 500Mbps+ on all devices.
Today I did the following:
Turned off the satellites one at a time testing between. Taking the first satellite out, I started seeing speeds up to 225Mbps again. This was better than it was before, so I went ahead and unplugged the 2nd satellite and tested. Speeds only increased to 230Mbps.
Plugged an ethernet cable into the router to test the speeds obtained. This resulted in a major fail because the router refused to give an IP address to the wired connection. I thought that was a clear indication that the router had failed, but want to fully confirm.
Plugged the same ethernet cable into the modem. Since the modem was pre-configured to have the router turned off, it did not provide an IP Address to the cable either.
Did another full shutdown of the complete network and left it all offline for a few minutes. Brought up the modem, waited until all lights were done blinking. Brought up the Router and waited until it was fully online. Tested connection and was seeing 450-520Mbps connections. Brought up the first satellite and speeds were 440Mbps to 510Mbps. Brought up the 2nd satellite and speeds went to 480-580Mbps.
I am still running at half the speeds that are coming in the wall, but without the Ethernet backhaul, this is about as good as I can expect. I will check it again tomorrow, since I didn't really change anything, but so far, it is looking good. Thanks for your help @FURRYe38
