I've read this thread: https://community.netgear.com/t5/Orbi-WiFi-6-AX-and-WiFi-6E-AXE/iPhone-loses-WiFi-connection-with-RB...and having similar, but perhaps different issues - there are 4 of us in our house, all with iPhones. All of us experience similar problems. Our iPhones drop wifi connection. Sometimes it reconnects after a while, sometimes we have to disable and re-enable wifi on the iPhone to reconnect, and sometimes we have to remove the SSID - "forget network" and go through the motions of adding the SSID back. It's super annoying because we happen to live in an area with near zero mobile network coverage so wifi is critical for all of us.
Setup:
1 gb fibre via BT (UK) with ISP provided modem
1 x Orbi RBR850 router
4 x Orbi RBS850 satellites
approx 25-30 devices connected at any given point in time (satellite tv, apple tvs, Sonos, laptops, nest thermostats & co2 monitors, and some other IOT devices)
house is ~7,500 sq ft and an old property, so big, thick walls. All satellites are connected to router via ethernet since the 5ghz backhaul didn't really work in our home (meta point: we used to have Apple Airport Extremes throughout the house connected via same ethernet and worked fine for 6yrs without any issues, albeit slow since we upgraded our ISP to 1gb fibre)
I've been in touch with netgear support for a month now, and still no resolution. What we tried:
manually reinstalled firmware on router after factory reset
reset all satellites
2.4ghz set to ch 11
5ghz set to ch 44
AX disabled
CTS = 2349
MTU = 500
reset network settings on iPhones and re-added orbi SSID
there may have been one or 2 other things we did, but I now forget.
Anyway, over my morning coffee this morning I was browsing the news on my phone, and again network dropped while using my phone, so not in DND mode or phone in Lock Screen mode. So I disable wifi, re-enable and its back. This kept happening and lost connectivity 4 times in 1 hr, in spite of being relatively stationary, in one room, less than 20ft away from the satellite. On one of the 4 occasions it wouldn't reconnect, so I had to go through the whole "forget network" and adding it back in process. Our iPhones are relatively new (oldest is XR, newest is 13 pro, all running iOS 15.5)
This is super annoying, and I'm almost at the point of ditching orbi and going to something else (even back to my old apple airport extremes), but I'm not one for giving up this quickly.
Any tips/advice would be much appreciated - NETGEAR Support have run out of things for me to try, it seems.
perhaps @donawalt or @FURRYe38 have some sage advice from their previous exchange?
@FURRYe38kindly suggested disabling Wifi Private Address, Limit IP Address Tracking and iCloud Private Relay, but the problem is still occurring even with all three of those disabled. (Although disabling Wifi Private Address did fix another minor issue I'd been seeing).
The suggestion in the other thread you linked to was to set RTS/CTS to 500 but I am already running at that value.
As you say, sometimes the problem resolves itself, sometimes I need to turn Wifi on and off, and sometimes only forgetting and re-adding the network will fix it.
For me the problem seems to be related to the iPhone moving between access points. I always notice it when I have recently entered my home office which means that the device has probably just switched from the router to one of my satellites. While it usually makes that transition cleanly, sometimes it seems it doesn't. The problem seems to occur about once a week for me.
I'd be interested to know if anyone can get to the bottom of this!
Hi @rl72 ..... mine has been running fine, but the tuning of parameters in the thread you referenced was not the reason, even though I think per @FURRYe38's suggestions in that thread, the parameter changes are good ones to do anyway and I have kept them for the most part. Current:
5 GHz: 48
2.4 GHz - Auto
Enable AX - yes on 2.4 and 5
Enable 20/40 MHz Coexistence - yes
Enable WMM (Wi-Fi multimedia) settings (2.4 GHz b/g/n/ax) - yes on 2.4 and 5GHz
CTS - 2347 (no collisions ever)
The only problem I have now is one others have reported many places (here, reddit, DSL Reports, Comcast forums), that there is some issue between Comcast (my ISP) and Orbi routers with IPv6. It does not see a valid IP address, even though the router web page shows it has one - my theory is there is some issue on lease expiration, so the RBR850 has an IPv6 IP address that is no longer valid. Hopefully Netgear will at least be a little transparent about this to set some expectations, it's like they don't care what decisions customers make about this in a vacuum. So I have just disabled IPv6 .
Anyway - what made the drop offs go away? I think this mesh system (maybe all of them ) are very sensitive to where signals come from. I have lived in this house only 18 months, and it's old with a lot of solid walls and doors. In August 20 when that thread you referenced was created, I had a RBR in the basement where the comcast line came in, and RBSs on floor 1, 2 and 3. My theory was that was too many; even though they were further apart than Netgear's 30' minimum, it doesn't mean that a device didn't see signals that were acceptable from multiple RBR/RBS devices; and I think this probably confused some devices like iPhones (and maybe others). Saturating the space with WiFi signals from multiple RBR/RBS devices is not good imho.
So I did this (pretty sure I reported this on a thread somewhere) - I took the 3 RBSs offline, just leaving the RBR. Now this will be different whether you have wired or wireless backhaul, but I took my Mac and a signal strength app (free - I have both iAnalyze WiFi and WiFi Explorer Lite), and for placement of a WIRELESS backhaul RBS, I want to put the first one somewhere on the first floor where there is a STRONG signal. If you have WIRED backhaul capability, pick an outlet where the WiFi signal is the weakest (hopefully this makes sense - the theory is, you can't put a wireless backhaul-RBS where there is a very weak signal, and you can help your network a lot if you are able to put a wired backhaul-RBS where WiFi signal is bad). After one RBS is placed, move up to other floors and find the right place to place the next RBS.
So really all I did was check signal strength and make sure I put only the minimum RBSs in the optimal locations in house. I was surprised how good their signals became! I went from 1 RBR850 and 3 RBS850s in a house with a full basement and 3 floors above it, to 1 RBR in the basement, 1 one the 1st floor, and 1 on the 3rd floor. One of the RBSs is in a different location. I reduced the number of RBSs by 1 and I have better coverage and operation!
So my advice would be to see if your RBSs are in the best spot, they may be too close even if > 30' from another device, you may have saturated WiFi signals from multiple RBR/RBS devices in parts of the house. See if you really need all the RBSs you have. My house is almost 5000 square feet with floor floors and heavy walls/doors, and I only have 2 RBSs - you have a lot of devices with 1 router and FOUR satellites!
What Firmware version is currently loaded? 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.
I recommend changing the CTS value to 64 since you have 4 RBS. This will help lower the collisions with having 3 or more RBS in one locations.
Might reduce the power to 50% as well on the RBR. Help off load devices from connecting too much at the RBR and get them more on the RBS.
Possible you might have 1 too many RBS as well however your building materials may impact this.
I've read this thread: https://community.netgear.com/t5/Orbi-WiFi-6-AX-and-WiFi-6E-AXE/iPhone-loses-WiFi-connection-with-RB...and having similar, but perhaps different issues - there are 4 of us in our house, all with iPhones. All of us experience similar problems. Our iPhones drop wifi connection. Sometimes it reconnects after a while, sometimes we have to disable and re-enable wifi on the iPhone to reconnect, and sometimes we have to remove the SSID - "forget network" and go through the motions of adding the SSID back. It's super annoying because we happen to live in an area with near zero mobile network coverage so wifi is critical for all of us.
Setup:
1 gb fibre via BT (UK) with ISP provided modem
1 x Orbi RBR850 router
4 x Orbi RBS850 satellites
approx 25-30 devices connected at any given point in time (satellite tv, apple tvs, Sonos, laptops, nest thermostats & co2 monitors, and some other IOT devices)
house is ~7,500 sq ft and an old property, so big, thick walls. All satellites are connected to router via ethernet since the 5ghz backhaul didn't really work in our home (meta point: we used to have Apple Airport Extremes throughout the house connected via same ethernet and worked fine for 6yrs without any issues, albeit slow since we upgraded our ISP to 1gb fibre)
I've been in touch with netgear support for a month now, and still no resolution. What we tried:
manually reinstalled firmware on router after factory reset
reset all satellites
2.4ghz set to ch 11
5ghz set to ch 44
AX disabled
CTS = 2349
MTU = 500
reset network settings on iPhones and re-added orbi SSID
there may have been one or 2 other things we did, but I now forget.
Anyway, over my morning coffee this morning I was browsing the news on my phone, and again network dropped while using my phone, so not in DND mode or phone in Lock Screen mode. So I disable wifi, re-enable and its back. This kept happening and lost connectivity 4 times in 1 hr, in spite of being relatively stationary, in one room, less than 20ft away from the satellite. On one of the 4 occasions it wouldn't reconnect, so I had to go through the whole "forget network" and adding it back in process. Our iPhones are relatively new (oldest is XR, newest is 13 pro, all running iOS 15.5)
This is super annoying, and I'm almost at the point of ditching orbi and going to something else (even back to my old apple airport extremes), but I'm not one for giving up this quickly.
Any tips/advice would be much appreciated - NETGEAR Support have run out of things for me to try, it seems.
perhaps @donawalt or @FURRYe38 have some sage advice from their previous exchange?
Super interesting, thanks @donawalt. My house is spread over 3 floors, but there's ~150 feet from one end of each floor to the other end, with plenty thick walls and doors in between, and then a home office in my garden which is ~200 feet from the main house. I have an ethernet cable running from the home office to the main house and one satellite there - it's necessary given the distance & interference of trees and stuff in the garden. Then in my main house, my router is on the top floor where the fibre comes into the house, a satellite on 1st floor, and 2 satellites on the ground floor at either end of the floor given the distance. So in theory, there shouldn't be too much signal interference, but I will take your advice onboard and disable satellites on 1st and ground floor and then turn them on one by one with a wifi scanner and see what happens.
I was actually planning to add another satellite in a new area we just built because wifi speed drops from ~400mbps in the room where the satellite is down to ~10mbps in the new room, which is adjacent to the room with the satellite in, but if your theory is correct, I might actually make things worse.
I'll go play around and come back with my findings.
running firmware: v4.6.3.16 on router and satellites.
as just posted in response to @donawalt - 1 x router and 3 x satellites in main house and 1 x satellite in a garden office. router is on 2nd floor of house, and distance to nearest satellite on 1st floor is >30 feet. then 2 satellites on ground floor, ~100 feet apart, and each of them are probably 50 feet from satellite on 1st floor. it's an old house with super thick walls. As an fyi, measuring wifi strength using wifisweetspots I get ~400mbs in room where satellite is placed, and in room next door that drops to ~10mbps, only a few feet away. Hence the reason all my satellites are wired. But I'll play around with satellite placement and may try remove one to see if that improves reliability.
Given the above setup, would you still recommend dropping CTS to 64?
And how do I go about reducing power to the RBR by 50%?
I removed one of the satellites and now down to 2 satellites in the main house and a 3rd satellite in another building quite far away.
I’ve also dropped CTS to 64. It was working OK for a few days and then issues started again. Oddly, as I was typing this (on my phone), standing 2 feet from a satellite, I’ve lost connection twice in the time it’s taken me to type this. I’m lost at what to do next. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks @FURRYe38 . To confirm, the FW version you're referring to is this one: Firmware Version 4.6.8.5 ?? That's the latest I can find on https://www.netgear.com/support/download/?model=RBS850. If not, could you please post link to the FW version you're referring to here? Many thanks.
I'm still seeing this issue on the latest firmware version 4.6.8.5 and with Wifi Private Address, Limit IP Address Tracking and Private Relay all disabled.
I'm only getting it (or at least only noticing it) about once a week and the iPhone does usually reconnect to the network after a few minutes but it's clearly not behaving in the way it should.
I do think it's linked to the iPhone moving between the router and the satellites. I only ever seem to notice it when I am moving around the house. When I am in one place, the iPhone remains connected without any issue. However the problem is very intermittent and I haven't been able to replicate it reliably.
@FURRYe38kindly suggested disabling Wifi Private Address, Limit IP Address Tracking and iCloud Private Relay, but the problem is still occurring even with all three of those disabled. (Although disabling Wifi Private Address did fix another minor issue I'd been seeing).
The suggestion in the other thread you linked to was to set RTS/CTS to 500 but I am already running at that value. <Try running 64 or 2347. I've not seen any issues with my Iphones and I use 64 here. I also set 40Mhz channel width as well.
Might disable AX mode on the RBR and test to see if this changes anything as well. I also use manual channels 1 and 40.
As you say, sometimes the problem resolves itself, sometimes I need to turn Wifi on and off, and sometimes only forgetting and re-adding the network will fix it.
For me the problem seems to be related to the iPhone moving between access points. I always notice it when I have recently entered my home office which means that the device has probably just switched from the router to one of my satellites. While it usually makes that transition cleanly, sometimes it seems it doesn't. The problem seems to occur about once a week for me.
I'd be interested to know if anyone can get to the bottom of this!
I have seen the problem in the past....I wonder, since it reconnects in a few minutes, if it happens to many more people and they just don't notice it.
I’m asking since Sonos (and mesh audio systems in general) can cause many issues if you have more than one speaker wired to Orbi. This will cause network loops and broadcast storms and will just distort all devices in Orbi. I’ve had these issues earlier.
I’ve been monitoring how devices connect and to which satellite. I’m observing this morning that everything is now connecting to the router (which is on 2nd floor of my house and furthest away), whereas the 2 satellites on ground floor have zero devices connected, in spite of being less than 10 feet away and in the same room. So this is super weird and I wonder if this has to do with dropping power down to 50%? I don’t understand why devices would connect to an AP (the router in this case) which must have a weaker signal given its location vs the satellites? Any ideas and / or how to force devices onto nearest AP? Netgear Orbi is pretty crap in my experience thus far. I’m regretting the purchase. 😞
