I want to add some perspective to this. I have, at peak, 58 devices connected to an RBK50 system (2 satellite bundle from Costco).
The router has 14 wired devices connected to it (cascaded to switches) leaving 44 wireless devices.
Of those 44, 6 constant to one satellite and that goes up as folks use their devices out at the pool area (which was previously on the fringe of functionality for my R6900) Another 4 devices are constant on the second satellite on the far right of the house to include the garage. This was previously unreachable with my R6900.
With the Orbi system, I now have 150MBps or better everywhere in my home and on my property.
Of all of the devices, I have only been having consistent issues with very specific ones: ATV4, iPhone 5C, iPad Mini1, Wink Hub2 and iSmart Alarm Spot Cam.
Now running 12.0.12.20 I am only having very intermittent issues with the Wink Hub2 and the iPad Mini1 but not to the point where they are replicable to capture using debug and packet capture.
As the WiFi is the core of my Smart Home I need a WiFi network that stays up even when I loose the internet from my provider (lighting, garage doors, sprinklers, sensors, and locks). (This eliminates Eero and TP-Link)
I Also need to have enough bandwidth to stream movies from the NAS and Music and Movies to the pool for all users (This eliminates all mesh units that don't support dedicated wireless or wired backhaul)
I will admit this has been a bit of a bumpy ride, but I haven't found a suitable solution that provides a single SSID and log-in (and suitable bandwidth) that I am able to roam my property with that works as well for almost all of my devices.
I have tried Eero, Google, TP-Link and Linksys. I am not willing to run backhaul wires. I am going to wait this out until a better product for my needs is available OR Netgear resolves the issues with the Orbi platform. I am seeing slow but steady improvements overall on the platform. Yes, it pisses me off when they shoot me in the foot, but overall it only affects a limited number of my devices and they have provided beta software within 48 hours of breaking things that resolved things again. The BEST support I have received on ANY of the platforms I have tried was from Eero, but the fact wifi goes down when XFininty goes down was a total deal breaker for me.
I'm going to stay the course until a more reliable product that meets all of my needs comes along, be it from this or any other vendor.
P.S. And... Eero2 still looses wifi when the internet is down and although triband, still doesn't dedicate a backhaul.
This is my current open issue/wish list for the RBK50 system:
The only anomalies I am able to identify is that when you go to the satellites GUI it shows devices are connected but on Satellite 1 it only lists 2 of the six device names:
IP Address Device Name MAC Address Connection Type
192.168.68.124 HARMONY-HUB 00:04:20:F6:8D:43 Wireless
192.168.68.135 Unknown 88:66:A5:F2:6F:3A Wireless
192.168.68.141 Unknown 50:C7:BF:1C:C0:FD Wireless
192.168.68.126 Unknown DC:3A:5E:16:95:4D Wireless
192.168.68.148 Unknown 44:73:D6:02:47:5F Wireless
192.168.68.151AMAZON-DOT88:71:E5:6D:23:D9
and on Satellite 2 it only lists 1 of the 3 device names:
IP Address Device Name MAC Address Connection Type
192.168.68.137 TP-LINK HS100 50:C7:BF:0B:85:C7 Wireless
192.168.68.143 Unknown 50:C7:BF:1C:B7:9E Wireless
192.168.68.114 Unknown 64:52:99:22:01:5B Wireless
The device names show up in the connected device list on the Router.
The router still only shows Wired or Wireless and no longer reports 5G or 2.4G to differentiate the wireless connections.
On the Router, it also no longer shows which devices are connected to the Satellites vs, the Routers as it had done previously.
This makes troubleshooting somewhat more difficult.
I am also having some difficulty with the QOS setup as when I run a Speedtest on the router it is reporting only ~140MBps down and ~12MBps up whereas if I run the test from my laptop connected on 5GHz I get 224MBps down and 13.1MBps up. I also get much higher test results from running these tests from my firewall.
*It would be advantageous to have the ability to manually enter the values so correct for this.* (Router > Advanced > Setup > QOS Setup)
It would also be nice if Netgear were to enable the ability to
"Do Not Automatically Upgrade Firmware"
so that when we have a working firmware version we can hold there pending a stable update.
