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Orbi WiFi 7 RBE973
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Re: Bad experience 😥

infinityz
Tutor

Bad experience 😥

Hi all, just wanted to share my experience with orbi here.

I'm living into a 2 storey house 4500sqft and wanted to try the orbi system.
Started with the router + 1 satellite pack.
Followed the guide, I've put the router next to my main pfsense router and the satellite on the opposite side of the house in the ground floor. Switched the router into ap mode and started to play with the settings and configuration.
Sadly the coverage was too poor, half of the house had not enough signal strength, and very poor at the 1st floor too.
Decided to buy an extra satellite to cover the 1st floor.
Repositioned the other two for better coverage and to avoid overlapping.
Yet a couple of rooms had poor signal, but enough for Internet browsing.
At this points I've started to face a lot of issues! Band steering is not really working as expected, the clients connect to the 2.4 network as preferred and I have to disconnect and reconnect multiple times a day to have them connected to the 5ghz, but after a while they connect back to the 2.4 regardless.
I've lowered the signal strength of the 2.4 down to 50% but still, less frequently, the issue occurs.
Following a guide on reddit I've been able to split the ssids in order to guarantee that my clients always connect to the 5ghz only.
Unfortunately this hasn't fix my issue but show me where the real problem is! The clients often loosing the connection to the satellite and/or the satellite itself loose its connection to the main ap.
You can imagine my frustration when this happens during a file transfer to my NAS or even while my Son is playing online.
I've tried all the available firmwares from 1.2 to 1.5 and factory reset all the appliances multiple times.
Frustrated I've decided to dust off my old Asus rt-ac68u and BOOM!
Put it in the middle of the house on ground floor, it is covering up the whole house! My mbp on 1st floor getting 1170mbps, this is crazy! I'm feeling like a dumb to have wasted about 500$ with orbi and ending up with a 5 years old device which is doing great on every aspect!

Again this is my own experience and not an hate thread, but I've thought to have share it with the community.

Thanks
Message 1 of 3
st_shaw
Master

Re: Bad experience 😥

 

You hacked the configuration of Orbi in an unsupported way and changed SSIDs, which is an unsupported configuration.  Did you consider that maybe this broke Orbi and contributed to your issues?

 

Because Orbi is a spoke and hub (not mesh) you should put the main unit (router) in the middle of the house, where your ASUS is working well now.  Then the satellites should go on the other floor on the far ends of the house.

 

If the ASUS works well in the center of the house then the Orbi router should too.

Message 2 of 3
infinityz
Tutor

Re: Bad experience 😥

Which part of "I've factory reset the appliances many times" you didn't get? Before point your finger read twice!
The disconnection I'm faced with happened before and after my changes and again once I've reverted everything back.
Again this is NOT a hate thread!
Yes the Asus works great in the center the orbi doesn't, can't say why

Message 3 of 3
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