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Orbi and Facetime do not work nor does orbi w unifi

WHTKNGHT
Aspirant

Orbi and Facetime do not work nor does orbi w unifi

2 issues:
1)During facetime chats audio works fine but video inevitably fails everytime.
2) cannot get orbi and unifi WAP to hold seemlessly wirk together. We use wifi calling and every time phone jumps from orbi to unifi the call drops.

Very disappointed with Orbi so far as best buy guy talked me into this over nighthawk. WAP and facetime worked seemlessly using our old Apple TIme Capsule.

Any help would be great on either or both problems
Model: RBK30| Orbi AC2200 WiFi System
Message 1 of 4
st_shaw
Master

Re: Orbi and Facetime do not work nor does orbi w unifi

Why are you using Orbi and Unifi?  Seems you should use one or the other, but not both.

 

Did you set Unifi to use different channels than Orbi on 2.4 and 5 GHz bands?

 

Does your WiFi calling work when moving between Unifi APs, assuming you have more than one Unifi AP? I'm not sure you can expect seamless roaming across different manufacturers' APs.

 

Message 2 of 4
WHTKNGHT
Aspirant

Re: Orbi and Facetime do not work nor does orbi w unifi

Long story but short version, house hit by lightning cooked electronics. Figured time capsule tech was outdated so replaced with Orbi, the unifi had been in place and worked fine with TC. Even tried orbi w/o sattelite and call still drops from one side of hosue to other.

Have tinkered with the channels but to be honest i am a rookie so be lying if i said knew 100% what i was doing. Just been trying things based on what i have read on these boards as well as those of apple and umbiquity.
Model: RBK30| Orbi AC2200 WiFi System
Message 3 of 4
st_shaw
Master

Re: Orbi and Facetime do not work nor does orbi w unifi


@WHTKNGHT wrote:
Long story but short version, house hit by lightning cooked electronics. Figured time capsule tech was outdated so replaced with Orbi, the unifi had been in place and worked fine with TC. Even tried orbi w/o sattelite and call still drops from one side of hosue to other.

Have tinkered with the channels but to be honest i am a rookie so be lying if i said knew 100% what i was doing. Just been trying things based on what i have read on these boards as well as those of apple and umbiquity.

Ok.  A distributed WiFi system takes a lot of care to setup properly. WiFi calling across APs is one of the more challenging applications, and requires things to be setup properly.  In the case of Unifi, you should:

1. Manually set each AP to use non overlapping channels in 2.4 GHz. Use only Ch1, 6, and 11.  Never use Auto channel settings.

2. Manualy set each AP to use non overlapping channels in 5 Gz. Never use Auto.

3. Manually set each AP to use power levels on 2.4 GHz to minimize overlapping with adjacent APs. Typically set to Low or Medium power.

4. Manually set each AP to use power levels on 5 GHz to minimize overlapping with adjacent APs. Typically set to Medium or High power.

5. You should also manually configure 2.4 Ghz to use 20 Mhz channel width (to minimize channel overlap) and 5 GHz to use 80 Mhz channel width (for maximum speed.)

 

Orbi uses a fundamentally different approach, placing all APs on the same channel. Orbi offers NO ability to set the transmit power on individual stations, offers very little channel control on 5 GHz, and consumes lots of channels for the backhaul. This makes it very difficult to configure Orbi to coexist with other APs.

 

I would not expect Orbi and Unifi to work well at all in the same proximity.  At a minimum, you would need to carefully configure Unifi and Orbi to avoid channel overlap and coverage overlap. You need to enable 20/40 MHz coexistence on 2.4 GHz. It sounds like you haven't done that, so don't expect good performance.

 

You would be better off removing Unifi or removing Orbi and using one or the other solution.

 

 

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