Recently upgraded to a new mesh - orbi 972 - to replace an “aging” 850 series. I was excited to pump enhanced 6E around the home as well as the (on paper) stronger wireless backhaul setup. Sadly my experience has been pretty poor so far for a £1500 system.
First the positives:
- speed is pretty mega when you are close to the router. I have a 1 gig fibre connection and getting exactly this over WiFi. - range and speeds around the house do seem vastly improved. On my 850 I’d get 200 ish from satellite, now I get 700.
Now the downsides:
- random latency spikes when doing pretty much anything, maybe every 10-15 mins? It’s quite random. Typically when connected to satellite but also observed from router. - device disconnections happen randomly and for no reason. - ping-pong between satellite and router seems a lot worse than the 850 when roaming the house. - latency when testing over WiFi from router (stood next to it) is worse on the 970 vs 850 by the tune of 5-7ms which is unexpected?
I’m on the latest firmware 9.12.2.1 on both and have identical setup from before with the 850. Both units in the same place, connected wirelessly. Router wired into ISP modem on high quality cat6 with modem on a 2.5g port/router 10g port. Same number of connected devices etc. Was literally a drop in place with change of SSID. Only other settings I’ve changed is disabling the iot and guest WiFi as not needed.
House is approx 200 sqm and router is ground floor and satellite on first floor, almost opposite ends to provide coverage across 3 floors. Router and satellite report “good” connection with 5+6 ghz shown.
I’ve tried hard resets and reboots and factory resets and all that. No real change observed. Wife is now complaining that even she feels it’s far worse than before (and she’s in no way technical).
I know this is a relatively new and expensive system so maybe not much uptake but are others facing these issues? I know home setup/building materials etc make every setup unique but shocked it’s worse than the previous much older system in terms of reliability.
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 wired or wirelessly connected. https://kb.netgear.com/31029/Where-should-I-place-my-Orbi-satellite 🛰
Does this happen with the RBS turned OFF? Does this happen with both wireless and wired devices? What channel configurations are currently set on the router?
Thanks, answered pretty much all of the info in the initial post. To confirm/add:
- ISP is virgin media in the UK, using a super hub 5. - router/satellite are ~30ft apart but have experimented and no change. - not experienced any issues wired.
No other changes with devices which were all working perfectly fine on the 850 system.
I’ve tried disabling armour (as it’s useless anyway) to see if that helps.
Does base station orientation matter for the 970? I know previously angling helped, I think these are don’t need that? Or should I try to “aim” them at each other?
I’m seeing random WiFi disconnects across today also on the main router (eg smart tv which is only a few ft away) and a few connected appliances which are constantly disconnecting randomly.
Orbi is omni directional from what I know. Shouldn't need any pointing at each other. You can try of course turning each slightly I guess and see.
Can you post a screen capture of the RBRs web page by selecting the Advanced Tab, then Show Stats. Then post a screen capture of the debug page from the RBRs IP address/debug.htm. Please include this page from the RBS as well.
Ok, I don't see any odd CPU or memory issues. Uptime is same across the two units.
I would open up a support ticked with NG support and ask for help on this one. We've seen some users with RBRs not working well out of the box and no matter the FW, didn't fix, however an RMA did so you may have a faulty system. I'd reference this thread as well.
Thanks for the help. I raised a chat request and the agents asked me to change some channels (6 and 44) and “wait and see”. For a £1500 product not sure that should be the approach but hey ho, I guess I’ll wait and see.
iPhone pro 15 and my wife has an iPhone pro 13. Wife has an iPad Air also which seems to be suffering from latency and connection issues but my iPhone I’m seeing drop out the most.
@Kappo_84 wrote: Recently upgraded to a new mesh - orbi 972 - to replace an “aging” 850 series. I was excited to pump enhanced 6E around the home as well as the (on paper) stronger wireless backhaul setup. Sadly my experience has been pretty poor so far for a £1500 system.
First the positives:
- speed is pretty mega when you are close to the router. I have a 1 gig fibre connection and getting exactly this over WiFi. - range and speeds around the house do seem vastly improved. On my 850 I’d get 200 ish from satellite, now I get 700.
Now the downsides:
- random latency spikes when doing pretty much anything, maybe every 10-15 mins? It’s quite random. Typically when connected to satellite but also observed from router. - device disconnections happen randomly and for no reason. - ping-pong between satellite and router seems a lot worse than the 850 when roaming the house. - latency when testing over WiFi from router (stood next to it) is worse on the 970 vs 850 by the tune of 5-7ms which is unexpected?
I’m on the latest firmware 9.12.2.1 on both and have identical setup from before with the 850. Both units in the same place, connected wirelessly. Router wired into ISP modem on high quality cat6 with modem on a 2.5g port/router 10g port. Same number of connected devices etc. Was literally a drop in place with change of SSID. Only other settings I’ve changed is disabling the iot and guest WiFi as not needed.
House is approx 200 sqm and router is ground floor and satellite on first floor, almost opposite ends to provide coverage across 3 floors. Router and satellite report “good” connection with 5+6 ghz shown.
I’ve tried hard resets and reboots and factory resets and all that. No real change observed. Wife is now complaining that even she feels it’s far worse than before (and she’s in no way technical).
I know this is a relatively new and expensive system so maybe not much uptake but are others facing these issues? I know home setup/building materials etc make every setup unique but shocked it’s worse than the previous much older system in terms of reliability.
Thought I’d report back on this after a few weeks of testing the new firmware. I’ve seen some improvement to overall device connection stability however still experiencing latency spikes between router and satellite. It’s annoying and no amount of moving/replacing seems to help. It’s most pronounced when using real time video apps - so video conferencing, console streaming etc. There’s a latency spike intermittently and randomly, eg on google meet avg latency is 17-22ms consistently then spikes to 500-1000ms for a few seconds then settles back again. Only happens when connected to satellite. Same happens when say using a ps portal to steam from ps5 (which is hard wired). Doesn’t seem to matter which device - tested loads.
I otherwise have a rock solid connection between router and satellite with almost max speed from the ISP connection (1gbps). Never had this issue with my old 850 setup. Pretty frustrating with all these issues given the cost of these units.
