Netgear Orbi vs. IOgear Wireless HDMI

[MikeTRose]

Here's a puzzler, where I may know the answer but it's not one I'm going to like...

I've had WiFi challenges (new house) since we moved in March... cycled through the provided Optimum/Cablevision D-Link, an Almond+, and a TP-Link Archer C7 with no consistent performance... until this week, when I splurged on a Netgear Orbi base+2 satellite system. A couple of firmware upgrades later and everything is working more smoothly than ever before. 

There's only one big fly in the ointment: we have an IOgear Wireless HD Digital kit https://www.iogear.com/product/GW3DHDKIT/ to transmit set-top box signal from the 2nd floor, where the cable box (and router) are, to the living room & projector. Although previously the IOgear unit worked (mostly) fine, acquiring signal and keeping good picture quality, last night it failed to sync for minutes at a time, and when it did get a lock the signal was jittery and full of noise.

I suspect -- and again, I am not happy to be headed down this road -- that the Orbi's 5GHz backhaul connection between the base and satellite units is stomping on the IOgear's wireless HDMI signal. A handful of Amazon reviews and forum posts indicate something similar.

Does anyone have experience with this particular combo? Recommendations for isolating the two bands?

[peteytesting]

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@MikeTRose wrote:

Here's a puzzler, where I may know the answer but it's not one I'm going to like...

I've had WiFi challenges (new house) since we moved in March... cycled through the provided Optimum/Cablevision D-Link, an Almond+, and a TP-Link Archer C7 with no consistent performance... until this week, when I splurged on a Netgear Orbi base+2 satellite system. A couple of firmware upgrades later and everything is working more smoothly than ever before. 

There's only one big fly in the ointment: we have an IOgear Wireless HD Digital kit https://www.iogear.com/product/GW3DHDKIT/ to transmit set-top box signal from the 2nd floor, where the cable box (and router) are, to the living room & projector. Although previously the IOgear unit worked (mostly) fine, acquiring signal and keeping good picture quality, last night it failed to sync for minutes at a time, and when it did get a lock the signal was jittery and full of noise.

I suspect -- and again, I am not happy to be headed down this road -- that the Orbi's 5GHz backhaul connection between the base and satellite units is stomping on the IOgear's wireless HDMI signal. A handful of Amazon reviews and forum posts indicate something similar.

Does anyone have experience with this particular combo? Recommendations for isolating the two bands?

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get a wireless app like inssider and see what channel the iogear is tranmitting on as it may be in the lower 5 gig and you could then change / set  the orbi 5 gig so they dont conflict

if the iogear is on the upper channels try rebooting the orbi system with the iogear turned on and the orbi may detect the iogear and put its backhaul on another channel

[MikeTRose]

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@peteytesting wrote:

get a wireless app like inssider and see what channel the iogear is tranmitting on as it may be in the lower 5 gig and you could then change / set  the orbi 5 gig so they dont conflict

Unfortunately, the IOgear doesn't use WiFi -- just bandwidth in the 5GHz range, so inSSIDer doesn't see it. (Tried that earlier today.)

if the iogear is on the upper channels try rebooting the orbi system with the iogear turned on and the orbi may detect the iogear and put its backhaul on another channel

Interesting... might try that and see. My understanding is that the Orbi backhaul is a pretty hefty chunk of channel, but might help.

[peteytesting]

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@MikeTRose wrote:

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@peteytesting wrote:

get a wireless app like inssider and see what channel the iogear is tranmitting on as it may be in the lower 5 gig and you could then change / set  the orbi 5 gig so they dont conflict

Unfortunately, the IOgear doesn't use WiFi -- just bandwidth in the 5GHz range, so inSSIDer doesn't see it. (Tried that earlier today.)

if the iogear is on the upper channels try rebooting the orbi system with the iogear turned on and the orbi may detect the iogear and put its backhaul on another channel

Interesting... might try that and see. My understanding is that the Orbi backhaul is a pretty hefty chunk of channel, but might help.

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the iogear must be on a channel as i cant see how it would work otherwsie are you sure you used a 5 gig wifi adapter

yes it uses 80ghz but should try and avoid interference where it can

[st_shaw]

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@peteytesting wrote:

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the iogear must be on a channel as i cant see how it would work otherwsie are you sure you used a 5 gig wifi adapter

yes it uses 80ghz but should try and avoid interference where it can

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There are numerous things that use the same frequecny band as WiFi, and interfere with WiFi, but that do not appear in a WiFi scanning tool. Examples include Bluetooth devices, Zigbee devices, the Sonos 5 GHz ineter-speaker links, and the Vizio soundbar another poster on here descried.  I believe the Orbi's own 5 G Hz backhaul is also not shown on WiFi scanning software (at least I've never seen it.)

[peteytesting]

i see the orbi one all the time its on ch 116 or something like that , your adapter would need to set to use the dfs channels to see it

[st_shaw]

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@peteytesting wrote:

i see the orbi one all the time its on ch 116 or something like that , your adapter would need to set to use the dfs channels to see it

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I'll have to look into that. My MacBook connects to DFS channels, but I'm not sure about my scanning software. 

[MikeTRose]

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@st_shaw wrote:

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@peteytesting wrote:

i see the orbi one all the time its on ch 116 or something like that , your adapter would need to set to use the dfs channels to see it

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I'll have to look into that. My MacBook connects to DFS channels, but I'm not sure about my scanning software. 

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I can see other networks on the 100-161 channels, but I don't see the backhaul for the Orbi. And as st_shaw noted, the IOgear doesn't actually use Wi-Fi, just a chunk of 5GHz spectrum so it doesn't show in network analyzers.

I've had some modest success with turning on the IOgear while the Orbi is powered down (base and satellite) then turning on the Orbi... but it doesn't seem to last. It doesn't seem to be related to the 5GHz band for the client network, as I turned that off with no improvement. So, my money is still on the backhaul.

It would be really nice to be able to have Wi-Fi and TV at the same time... 🙂 Is there any access to the backhaul configuration through the setup UI?

[st_shaw]

You can try reducing the power of Orbi's 5 GHz radio and/or moving it farther from the HDMI link. However, if the HDMI link is susceptible to interference from 5 GHz wifi, it's not really an Orbi issue, and you might need to find another HDMI solution.

[MikeTRose]

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@st_shaw wrote:

You can try reducing the power of Orbi's 5 GHz radio and/or moving it farther from the HDMI link. However, if the HDMI link is susceptible to interference from 5 GHz wifi, it's not really an Orbi issue, and you might need to find another HDMI solution.

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Sorry, maybe I wasn't clear. I have disabled the client-facing 5GHz on the Orbi and it doesn't make a difference re. fixing the IOgear problem; I've also had other 5GHz routers in the house that have not caused interference with the IOgear. That's why I suspect it's the backhaul that's causing the problem.

[st_shaw]

Ok. Got it. You still might be able to improve things by relocating the Orbis. And If you could run a piece of coax for the TV, that would be much better than the IOgear.

[MikeTRose]

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@st_shaw wrote:

Ok. Got it. You still might be able to improve things by relocating the Orbis. And If you could run a piece of coax for the TV, that would be much better than the IOgear.

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Yeah, I'm going to try relocating the Orbi base, but all of these things naturally want to be near the TV (the Orbi because it's connected to the cable modem, the IOgear because... yeah).

Running coax (or, more likely, HDMI) is not really an option in this configuration as the cable box and the projector are on different floors and more than 30' away from one another. It would be a very expensive solution to something that was working pretty well before the Orbi came along. (You can imagine someone else with a wall-mount cablefree solution not wanting to just "run a piece of coax" either.)

My issue isn't the fact that there's interference -- I understand that there might well be. The issue is that neither IOgear or Netgear ever put one word into their documentation or marketing to suggest that these products might not play nicely together. Given that I had the IOgear first, and that the Orbi is obviously a premium solution for Wi-Fi, I might have skipped over it in favor of something else that wouldn't stomp on other 5GHz links.

[st_shaw]

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@MikeTRose wrote:

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@st_shaw wrote:

Ok. Got it. You still might be able to improve things by relocating the Orbis. And If you could run a piece of coax for the TV, that would be much better than the IOgear.

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Yeah, I'm going to try relocating the Orbi base, but all of these things naturally want to be near the TV (the Orbi because it's connected to the cable modem, the IOgear because... yeah).

Running coax (or, more likely, HDMI) is not really an option in this configuration as the cable box and the projector are on different floors and more than 30' away from one another. It would be a very expensive solution to something that was working pretty well before the Orbi came along. (You can imagine someone else with a wall-mount cablefree solution not wanting to just "run a piece of coax" either.)

My issue isn't the fact that there's interference -- I understand that there might well be. The issue is that neither IOgear or Netgear ever put one word into their documentation or marketing to suggest that these products might not play nicely together. Given that I had the IOgear first, and that the Orbi is obviously a premium solution for Wi-Fi, I might have skipped over it in favor of something else that wouldn't stomp on other 5GHz links.

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When I said coax, I was envisioning installing a second cable box, Tivo Mini, etc., not trying to run the HDMI that far.  Many homes have been retrofit with coax since cable TV became popular.

I agree with you regarding the interference.  That's what I don't like about consumer gear, or so-called plug and play solutions.  They don't tell you what's going on behind the curtain, and they don't let you change settings.  If it works, great.  If not, you're stuck.

[MikeTRose]

> When I said coax, I was envisioning installing a second cable box, Tivo Mini, etc., not trying to run the HDMI that far.  Many homes have been retrofit with coax since cable TV became popular.

Yep. I don't really want to pay for a 2nd STB given the remarkably small amount of time we spend watching cable. The projector already has a Fire TV Stick which works great for everything except (some) live and DVR content. But I would like to be able to watch Saturday Night Live in the living room without shutting off the Wi-Fi.

[AndrewKurtz]

I am having the same issue with a conflict between my IOGear Wireless HDMI and Orbi. Are there no setting on the Orbi that can help avoid this?

[Rialtoxx]

I'm having the exact same issue with my Optoma WHD200 Wireless HDMI transmitter, I've tried changing channels in the Orbi router for the 5Ghz transmission with no results. I'm trying to shuffle the locations of the router, and HDMI transmitter and receiver, so far with no luck... 😞 My only solution right now is to switch off the Orbi router while watching TV...

If any solution comes along, I'm interested!!