Orbi WiFi 7 RBE973
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Re: WiFi 6 / RBR850 issues

Magicboy
Tutor

WiFi 6 / RBR850 issues

Hi, I have an RBR 850 wired command center and one satellite upstairs. On my MacBook Pro I constantly get an issue with the WiFi connection dropping - unstable connections during zoom calls, my mail goes off line for a second every now and then, and web pages taken an age to load. When they do, sometimes they load without images. I have 1GBPS fiber optic internet. I also get occasional issues with pixelated / broken pictures on Apple TV, as well as my Alexa and Sonos not connecting or dropping intermittently. WiFi speed test is fine. Have rebooted Orbi. A bit stuck! Any help or advice gratefully received!
Message 1 of 13
FURRYe38
Guru

Re: WiFi 6 / RBR850 issues

What Firmware version is currently loaded?
What is the Mfr and model# of the Internet Service Providers modem/ONT the NG router is connected too? 

 

What is the size of your home? Sq Ft?
What is the distance between the router and satellite(s)? 30 feet or more is recommended in between RBR and RBS to begin with depending upon building materials when wirelessly connected.
https://kb.netgear.com/31029/Where-should-I-place-my-Orbi-satellite

 

What channels are you using? Auto? Try setting manual channel 1, 6 or 11 on 2.4Ghz and any unused channel on 5Ghz.
Any Wifi Neighbors near by? If so, how many?

 

What OSX version are you using? 

Message 2 of 13
Magicboy
Tutor

Re: WiFi 6 / RBR850 issues

Thanks, appreciate the detailed reply. That’s a lot of questions and some solutions I’ll dig into.
Message 3 of 13
Scotty3
Aspirant

Re: WiFi 6 / RBR850 issues

I have similar setup (apart from the link speed and ISP) and on the face of it what seems to be the same problem.

 

I recently bought an Orbi RBR852, AX6000 setup (one router and satellite)

 

I've tried 2 different Intel AX200 based cards (different manufacturers) with various vendor and intel drivers but under certain loads the connection is dropped regularly - Veeam Agent for Backup (to a local NAS, plugged into the satellite) for backup and Wan Killer eventually drops enough packets to cause an issue. Ping shows the connection is solid, then every so often drops 2-3 packets. That seems to be enough for the backup\stress test to fail.

 

I've also tried the same loads with an ASUS AC88 - this maintains a solid connection, but it's 802.11ac - too slow. Surprisingly, even if I force the ax cards to use 802.11ac, they still drop. 

 

Router and satellite are about 30 ft apart with a few walls inbetween too. Signal strength between the satellite and PCs is strong (much more than that from PCs to router), so PCs should not be swapping between the 2. There's no serious contention that I can see on WIFI from my neighbours.

 

For the moment I've plugged both PCs and the NAS into the satellite router and that solves the problems during backups, but this is far from ideal.

 

FW Version - V3.2.17.12_1.4.14

 

I'm at the end of my tether with this one. If it's a chipset\driver issue on the cards, I'll take the hit and buy another type of card, but I can't imagine these cards were released with a major flaw like this. Is there a compatibility issue between the ax200 cards and this Orbi setup?

 

Any suggestions greatly appreciated 🙂

 

Scotty

 

 

 

 

Message 4 of 13
Mikey94025
Hero

Re: WiFi 6 / RBR850 issues

Try setting CTS/RTS Threshold to 2347 for both 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz bands using orbilogin.com, Advanced Tab, Advanced / Wireless Settings.  In my experience this improves compatibility with older wireless devices and it might be applying here.

 

If that doesn't work, as a test try disabling AX mode in Advanced Tab, Setup / Wireless Setup for the bands you're connecting to and see if that improves things.  It shouldn't, if you're using the latest drivers, but still useful as a test.

Message 5 of 13
FURRYe38
Guru

Re: WiFi 6 / RBR850 issues

Make sure the adapter drivers are updated as well. Sometimes it only takes a update. 


@Scotty3 wrote:

I have similar setup (apart from the link speed and ISP) and on the face of it what seems to be the same problem.

 

I recently bought an Orbi RBR852, AX6000 setup (one router and satellite)

 

I've tried 2 different Intel AX200 based cards (different manufacturers) with various vendor and intel drivers but under certain loads the connection is dropped regularly - Veeam Agent for Backup (to a local NAS, plugged into the satellite) for backup and Wan Killer eventually drops enough packets to cause an issue. Ping shows the connection is solid, then every so often drops 2-3 packets. That seems to be enough for the backup\stress test to fail.

 

I've also tried the same loads with an ASUS AC88 - this maintains a solid connection, but it's 802.11ac - too slow. Surprisingly, even if I force the ax cards to use 802.11ac, they still drop. 

 

Router and satellite are about 30 ft apart with a few walls inbetween too. Signal strength between the satellite and PCs is strong (much more than that from PCs to router), so PCs should not be swapping between the 2. There's no serious contention that I can see on WIFI from my neighbours.

 

For the moment I've plugged both PCs and the NAS into the satellite router and that solves the problems during backups, but this is far from ideal.

 

FW Version - V3.2.17.12_1.4.14

 

I'm at the end of my tether with this one. If it's a chipset\driver issue on the cards, I'll take the hit and buy another type of card, but I can't imagine these cards were released with a major flaw like this. Is there a compatibility issue between the ax200 cards and this Orbi setup?

 

Any suggestions greatly appreciated 🙂

 

Scotty

 

 

 

 


 

Message 6 of 13
Scotty3
Aspirant

Re: WiFi 6 / RBR850 issues

Many thanks for the suggestions folks.

 

I've tried the CTS/RTS settings on both bands at 2347 with no difference. I've switched off the ax function on both bands (one at a time and then both) and it still failed unfortunately.

 

I've tried just about every adapter driver I can get my hands on, both from the vendors and the latest intel drivers (22.30.0) with varying degrees of success. On some driver versions when the connection drops - which can be anything after a minute under load to several hours - the cards throw a hardware error in event viewer and refuses to reconnect to wifi until a reboot or flight mode is enabled\disabled. On others, it just drops a few packets, but that's enough to cause failures.

 

Cards tested are -

TP-LINK Archer TX3000E AX3000 (I bought 2 which have this same issue)

Ziyituod AX200 Wifi 6 Card

 

All were tested in 2 different PCs and all available PCIe slots in them. I'm not buying the hardware error warning is real- unless I'm incredibly unlucky, it's not a defective card (but maybe a defective driver?)

 

Both have what seems to be exactly the same issue.

 

All power management options have been disabled on the cards in the adapter config as well, but doesn't seem to help.

 

OS is Win10 Home (20H2 (Build 19042.870))

 

I know this (particularly the HW errors in event viewer) seem to point to an issue with the cards\drivers themselves rather than the Orbi, but with 2 different card manufacturers tested, I'm wondering if it's some kind of clash between the ax200 based cards and the AX6000 Orbi? Is anyone aware of any WIFI6 cards I can try that aren't based on the intel ax200 chipset?

 

Only thing I can think of that I haven't tried is to get the old router out and see if those cards fail in a similar way on 802.11ac with that. I'll do that this week. That might rule out the ORBI setup entirely (and I'll take this over to the Intel forums Smiley Happy ).

 

What might be helpful is...does anyone here have a setup with ax200 based cards and an Orbi 85x setup that actually works under a sustained load?

 

@Magicboy not sure if this still seems to be the same issue you're experiencing and I don't want to hijack your original post. If this is significantly different to what you're seeing, please DM me or post below - I'll start another thread so we both have the best chance of a fix.

 

 

Scotty

 

 

 

 

 

 

Message 7 of 13
Scotty3
Aspirant

Re: WiFi 6 / RBR850 issues

@FURRYe38 Reckon you were spot on. I swear I tried >5 different driver versions with no joy. Gave the latest Intel driver a go (22.40.0.7 - dated March 30th 2021).

 

A full 2TB+ backup ran with no issues for the first time - got nowhere near that before! I ran a continuous ping along side it and saw no packet loss at all Smiley Very Happy I'll keep an eye on it, but seems Intel's fixed something on their end. Nothing obvious in their release notes to indicate what the problem was. Everything's pointing at an Intel driver issue in this case rather than an Orbi one though (Sorry Netgear!)  

 

If it helps anyone else reading this forum with similar issues, the working config I have is -

Ziyituod AX200 Wifi 6 Card (Intel AX200 chipset) 

Intel AX200 Driver 22.40.0.7 (with all power management settings off in the driver config)

Orbi RBR\RBS850 AX6000 (FW. V3.2.17.12_1.4.14)

Win10 Home (20H2 (Build 19042.870))

 

Thanks again for all your help folks!

 

Scotty

 

 

 

Message 8 of 13
FURRYe38
Guru

Re: WiFi 6 / RBR850 issues

Glad you found one that worked. Be sure to save off a back up configuration to file for safe keeping. 

Enjoy. Smiley Wink


@Scotty3 wrote:

@FURRYe38 Reckon you were spot on. I swear I tried >5 different driver versions with no joy. Gave the latest Intel driver a go (22.40.0.7 - dated March 30th 2021).

 

A full 2TB+ backup ran with no issues for the first time - got nowhere near that before! I ran a continuous ping along side it and saw no packet loss at all Smiley Very Happy I'll keep an eye on it, but seems Intel's fixed something on their end. Nothing obvious in their release notes to indicate what the problem was. Everything's pointing at an Intel driver issue in this case rather than an Orbi one though (Sorry Netgear!)  

 

If it helps anyone else reading this forum with similar issues, the working config I have is -

Ziyituod AX200 Wifi 6 Card (Intel AX200 chipset) 

Intel AX200 Driver 22.40.0.7 (with all power management settings off in the driver config)

Orbi RBR\RBS850 AX6000 (FW. V3.2.17.12_1.4.14)

Win10 Home (20H2 (Build 19042.870))

 

Thanks again for all your help folks!

 

Scotty

 

 

 


 

Message 9 of 13
vajim
Master

Re: WiFi 6 / RBR850 issues


@FURRYe38 wrote:

 

What is the size of your home? Sq Ft?

 

 

still trying to figure this out?


 

Message 10 of 13
Magicboy
Tutor

Re: WiFi 6 / RBR850 issues

Hi - yes, thx, I’m great with tech but I’m not a techie and the answers were too technical for me to make head or tails of, as much as I appreciated them. 3500 sq ft. MacBook and IPhone drops intermittently. Sonos sometimes fails to connect, then connects if I refresh the app. Previous set up was a straightforward AT&T router. No issues on that, but didn’t have the range or the speed. Now I have the range, but not the consistency of connection. Thanks for any layman help! Simon.
Message 11 of 13
FURRYe38
Guru

Re: WiFi 6 / RBR850 issues

Maybe someone can help you gather this information. 


@Magicboy wrote:
Hi - yes, thx, I’m great with tech but I’m not a techie and the answers were too technical for me to make head or tails of, as much as I appreciated them. 3500 sq ft. MacBook and IPhone drops intermittently. Sonos sometimes fails to connect, then connects if I refresh the app. Previous set up was a straightforward AT&T router. No issues on that, but didn’t have the range or the speed. Now I have the range, but not the consistency of connection. Thanks for any layman help! Simon.

 

Message 12 of 13
hader35
Aspirant

Re: WiFi 6 / RBR850 issues

Yes i am also facing the similar Wi-Fi issue in my device and this is really harming and effecting my new projects on netgear like you can seehere the result of this issue.

Message 13 of 13
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