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Forum Discussion
Orbi dropping wireless, now rebooting itself. I am SO SICK OF THIS!
I am an IT Professional and I have bought this Orbi RBK50 system for my home network, since my family and I have recently moved into a 3600 sq ft house.
This system has been nothing but trouble since day one. I have went through all of Netgear's technical support steps and am currently on the debug firmware. I have given Netgear time to get their act together (around 3.5 months, if I remember correctly). I am well outside of Best Buy's return window.
When I purchased and setup my Orbi, it was buggy, but usable. Every single firmware release has made things incrementally worse, to the point where I cannot maintain a wireless connnection for more than 20 minutes. In the past, it would just drop and then reconnect the clients. Now, it appears the entire system is rebooting itself every half hour to an hour.
Can you understand how much time I have wasted on this thing? In addition to following Netgear's troubleshooting steps, I am constantly encountering failed downloads of drivers, operating systems, etc. I have to checksum everything that I download (if a checksum is provided), or download everything twice and then checksum them against each other. That is how buggy this thing is. And now you're offering it to business users?!
When a company releases a product, it should work. You have failed, Netgear, and I am beyond furious. It's like I have donated $400 to you (unwillingly) for your R&D. I can't even sell this thing on eBay, because I, unlike you, have a conscience.
All I want is my money back, or a brand new replacement set (that works), in exchange for your failed product. I have considerable wealth at my disposal, since I own a corporation.
I have not taken you up on your offer to exchange my router with a refurbished unit. If you would offer me a completely new system in exchange for mine, and if it works, than I may be satisfied. If I add a refurbished router to my system, and even if it would work, it would still be extremely hard to sell on eBay.
Please, make this right for us.
28 Replies
Same problem. This is inexcusable.
The unit worked well for a few months, and now - the unit drops wireless, reboots itself, and since I have appliances on WiFi - they all go haywire.
The best is when it drops wireless at 5 AM and the Amazon Echo freaks out and starts talking - which wakes up my wife. Oh - and my WiFi controlled fans start to beep when WiFi comes back.
Netgear - please fix this or I need to change to an Eero or Google equivalent. I cannot have this irritation.
suggest to both of you take it back and get a replacement or repair , what you are experiencing is not the norm and needs to be investigated and or replaced
if you can give us a detailed explanation of how , when where and why it all happened and then some details by message on serial number etc i can prob help you getting it escalated support wise as now im a superuser i have a bit more say and contacts within the netgear world , once its escilated its a simple matter of rma or replacement depending on where you purchased it from or what region
pete
Pete:
Take it back to Best Buy? I bought this in 2016.
This reset happened again this morning. At around 6:00 WiFi dropped. The unit appeared to reset. I was just booting up to do some early work.
No explanation for why it happened. The logs were reset and show the unit starting fresh. Nobody was using the WiFi at that time for anything serious. I had just connected a VPN to my office.
Why not take the offer of a refurbished system? They are most likely relatively new and have gone through a degree of testing to ensure they are working properly. If there is in fact general quality issues, then gettiing a brand new one will be a gamble. Mine has worked very well since I got it, as others have also reported, and thus I don't think it's a general design issue.
- Yes I've had RMA satellite and router that were both replaced with brand new products but the issues were unchanged (satellite never had an issue but they RMA'd because I said devices connected to the satellite were dropping more often). I don't know how Netgear support levels work, but at least at level 2 support you still aren't talking to a Netgear employee yet. After many sent logs and testing in circles I begged to go to level 3 support and asked about a refund since the warranty mentions it. Here was the response: "With regard to your refund request, we do not process refund on our end. Refund request should come from the store where the device was purchased. What we can do on our end is to process replacement for the unit. We are currently creating the debug firmware for this issue. We do apologize for the delay. Once it's available, we will send you another message."
Is it accurate that a warranty refund would come from the retailer? I'm months past Best Buy's 15 day return window but if that's the case I will give it a shot.yes the RMA process generally works by the retailer ether giving you a new unit or a refunf and then the manufacturer compensates the retailer accordingly
pete
I experienced the same issue, right out of the box, and now it won't even connect to the internet! Thinking it could be an issue between my modem and the Orbi I decided to purchase and try out the Google WiFi mesh. I have experienced no issues with Google WiFi except that my Acer Aspire E15 laptop does not get a wifi signal from it. It recognizes the network and allows me to connect to it, but it tells me there is no internet connection. So I simply hooked an AC1900 router to one of the sattelites and use it for my laptop and receive a little more than 90 MB/s on the 5GHz band, which is similar to what I receive from the sattelite itself! What I do not like about the mesh unit is that the sattelites talk to each other on the same channel which lowers my overall speed while the Orbi uses dedicated channels maintaining high speed throughout the entire system. Google WiFi simply works!
However, since my printers and NAS server is on the Google WiFi network and my laptop is not, I am unable to print or access my files. I'm forced to save what I would like to print as a pdf file and then plug into the Google network with ethernet. While frustrating, it works. But, since I recently replaced my modem I decided to give the Orbi another chance so I can have everything on the same network. Alas, even though I followed Netgear's instructions to the letter, the router will not connect to the internet. To add insult to injury, the sattelite does sync with the router.....for about 30 seconds, and then drops it. So, not only does the router NOT connect to the internet, the sattelite doesn't connect to the router. And even if the router did connect, the sattelite is useless which would defeat the purpose for purchasing the RBK50! I performed a factory reset on both units believing it still had my previous modem in its memory, but it doesn't matter. Nothing! Nada!
Like yourself I have held on to mine beyond the return date and am now stuck with some very expensive, heavy and oversized paperweights. What happened to Netgear's quality control? Until I receive satisfactory resolution to this issue I will not purchase another Netgear product. TP-Link is less expensive and manufactures quality product so they may receive my business that ordinarily would have gone to Netgear. And the Google WiFi is a keeper....for now. I just need to figure out how to get my laptop to recognize the internet signal.
**UPDATE**
Before giving up on Orbi entirely I decided to give it one more shot. Alas, it was the same results, no internet connection on the router at all and the satellite drops the sync within 30 seconds.
I did a bit of research and am now able to connect my Acer Aspire E15 to my Google WiFi mesh. I'm receiving about 118 MB/s in the same room as the router, about 90 MB/s from the first satellite and 73 MB/s from the second satellite. While these speeds are acceptable they are well below what I was able to acheive with the Orbi. And this is the main reason I purchased it. I wanted full house and backyard coverage without losing the speed I'm paying for the further I am from the router, which is exactly what it provided! But the disconnect issues are a non-starter for me (and now not being able to connect at all). So I'll stick with Google WiFi until I can find a better solution that provides the range needed and allows me to take advantage of the speed I'm paying for.
I hadn't thought of that! But this would mean running CAT 7 cables through my attic and as I understand it, I would still have signal loss the longer the cable. Unless you're referring to a powerline av ethernet adapter? But wouldn't there still be signal loss? Anyway, it's still worth trying.
Thanks for the suggestion!
Thanks! And this solution is obviously much less expensive than the Asus RT-AC88U I've been eyeballing. According to the specs and reviews, it's one of the best routers with impressive speeds and range, with some to spare. But it's also $270 plus tax on Amazon. Then again, I did pay $400 for the Orbi and $300 for the Google WiFi. But I like your less expensive solution much better.
What's your take on powerline AV ethernet adapters as a solution rather than running cable through my attic?
I already own the TP-Link powerline AV adapters which I used prior to getting Google WiFi, which has eliminated dead spots, so I decided to try it. When I first hooked it up it worked beautifully. I was getting full speed on both satellites. But about 5 minutes in they began to drop the connection. The first satellite was never able to reconnect and the second one would cycle through dropping and then reconnecting. And while reconnected, there was no internet access. So I set everything back the way it was.
Here's the ironic part about all of this. I was forced to reconnect my AC1900 router to the first satellite because after the latest Android Nougat upgrade on my S7 Edge, which I did today, it would not allow me to connect to my WiFi. It was the same issue I experienced with my laptop (which is still working great), I could connect to the network but there would be no internet. So out of curiosity I hooked up the AC1900 and my phone had no issues connecting to it, with internet. I decided to do a speed check of the AC1900 and it achieved speeds of 137.9 Mb/s. I double checked it with my laptop and sure enough, the speed is faster than the satellite it's hooked up to! Very strange. I'm wondering how that's even possible?
I'm counting myself lucky on the phone issue because apparently many can't connect at all and on some phones the WiFi on/off button is grayed out! Allegedly Samsung pulled the update to fix the problem so either I updated before they pulled it or they still haven't fixed the problem. I found a fix on thedroidguy.com which requires a reset and wiping my phone, but I'll pass. WiFi on the AC1900 is rock solid and fast and the only thing I do not have access to are my printers or NAS server, which I usually do not need to access from my phone. So I'll wait until Samsung comes out a fix.
If there are any S7 or S7 Edge owners out there, if you receive a notice to upgrade the Nougat OS (Ver. 7.0), don't do it until an official fix has been announced by Samsung. Doing so will in all likelihood kill your access to WiFi. If you've upgraded already and are running into this issue, follow these links for a possible cure, Samsung S7, Samsung S7 Edge. The full url's are below.
Thanks for all your help Bobert! I greatly appreciate it.
So I tried Netgear tech support.
The first suggestion was to plug into different power. My whole house has the same power, and I had all outlets replaced and polarity checked when I moved a year ago. The Orbi is 7 months old and this problem just started happening. The outlet that the Orbi is plugged into supports the Orbi - a netgear 24 port PoE switch, and the cable modem. There is nothing else but one basement LED light bulb. The load is iconsequential.
So I suggested that it would not matter which outlet I used. Now Netgear suggests swapping the power adapter between the satellite and router. Perhaps the adapter for the Orbi base unit is problematic. OK. Seems like power adapters generally work or don't work, but I will try it.
The Orbi reset itself again yesterday. My family is getting annoyed because this happens inexplicably when they are using devices.
The saga continues of the unstable resetting Orbi.
btw the chart i posted was from smallnetbuilder and not my own
I never said or implied the chart was your own! I was simply respondng with evidence to the contrary from PC Magazine that is in the business of testing equipment such as this. Also, when I look at the chart and compare the speeds to PC Magazine's testing, it appears the chart is for MU-MIMO tests only. So it really doesn't provide the full story.
Don't get me wrong because I would love it if my Orbi would work as designed! It's a great system with impressive speed! But, the rebooting and dropping of connections is a non-starter. And the connection drop also includes dropping the satellite as well. It sort of defeats the purpose of the design, don't you think? Although I would love to sell it so I can at least recoup some of my money, like BobertSaget, I have morals and am not about to pass the same issues on to another. I'd give it away before I would do this! But since I did invest so much money on it, I'm holding on to hope that eventually Netgear will fix these issues with a firmware update. If and when they do and all works as it's supposed to, I'll revise my review. Until then it stands as is.
