How does the Orbi band / AP steering work?

[ktula]

Is there an official documentation on how band and AP steering work in the Orbi WiFi system?

This is my current setup: 

3rd floor: Orbi router

2nd floor: Orbi satellite

1st floor: Orbi satellite

Wired Ethernet backhaul

Clients: A combination of Ethernet, 2.4G and 5G

Looking at the Attached Devices, all the Ethernet devices are connected to the Orbi router (the entire house is wired and the switch is connected to the Orbi router). The 2.4G and 5G devices are spread among the router and satellites. Why would a 2.4G device in the garage (the closest AP to it would be the 1st floor satellite) connect to the Orbi router on the 3rd floor? Similarly, why would my iPhone 8 (currently in the living room on the 2nd floor) connect to the 1st floor Orbi satellite, instead of the 2nd floor Orbi satellite that is less than 10 ft away?

[DarrenM]

This may not be as detailed as what you want but here is our KB on this.

https://kb.netgear.com/31214/Why-is-my-Orbi-broadcasting-only-one-network

DarrenM

[guzzijason]

There is still a bug witht he connected devices page. I'm on the latest firmware, but the UI still shows clients connected to the router, when they are actually (verifiably) connected to satellites.

If you realy want to know where your devices are connected, you have to check the BSSID reported by the client. Don't trust the Orbi connected devices page.

[ktula]

---

wrote:

This may not be as detailed as what you want but here is our KB on this.

https://kb.netgear.com/31214/Why-is-my-Orbi-broadcasting-only-one-network

DarrenM

---

Yeah, unfortunatley that document really doesn't say a whole lot 🙂

Right now, I am experiencing this issue. The first floor satellite is located in the 1st floor room that i also use for working out. It has a MacBook Pro that is connected via Ethernet and a MacBook Air that connects to the WiFi. When i got home from work, all the WiFi connections in the 1st floor were extremely slow. I only noticed this because a desktop app running on the MacBook Air was downloading its update at about 10kb/s. I went to speedtest.net and it confirmed the slow download. The speedtest app on my iPhone also confirmed the slow speed. The speedtest app on the MacBook Pro (Ethernet) was blazing fast. So i turned off the 1st floor satellite - i assumed the wireless devices were connected to it - and within seconds, the desktop app that was downloading its update on the MacBook Air went back to the normal speed. The speedtest app also showed normal speed on my iPhone. I turned the 1st floor satellite back on and eventually the ring light went to solid magenta. It's my understanding that magenta probably meant it was having some difficulty talking to the router. But this satellite is connected to the wired backhaul and the status in orbilogin.com revealed backhaul status as "good". So what is going on here? I powered the satellite off and on again, the ring light is still solid magenta, and now, wireless devices on the 1st floor are unable to connect to the WiFi network.

[budy]

I can't help you a lot with your speed problems, but the magenta LED ring - if it's on the router, is a consequence of your wired ethernet backhaul. My router (running in AP mode, though) has been showing this magenta LED ring since I plugged in the ethernet cable according to Netgear's documentation about setting up ethernet backhaul.

It didn't do that, when I plugged the ethernet cable on the router to the router LAN port and the ethernet backhaul would just work, but then all my devices that are connecting wirelessly to my satellite, would show up as being wired to te router and not wirelessly to the satellite.