iPhone won't hop to satellite?

[kr15t1n]

I'm running a RBK30 setup (RBR40 router + RBW30 satellite). Our home is narrow, but long—around 100' from one end to the other. I have the router in the middle of that 100' length. The satellite is about 40' from the router in the hopes of extending the range into the backyard. So, it looks something like this...

backyard >> back exterior wall [~50' from Orbi router] >> Orbi satellite [~40' from Orbi router] >> Orbi router >> front exterior wall [~50' from Orbi router]

Setup is great. Satellite is connected to the router with a blue light/good connection. I'm getting full coverage throughout the home, just using the Orbi router. I'm using the satellite to extend coverage onto the back deck. Again, no issues, theoretically. It's extending the coverage where I need it.

The problem is, the iPhone [iPhone 8 Plus] never hops to the satellite and always "hangs on" to the connection to the router. I've walked to the edge of the router's coverage (my garage), and even then, the iPhone hangs onto the connection to the router [which, at that distance, is unusable]. Just won't automatically hop onto the satellite, even when the satellite is pushing out a substantially stronger signal. The only way I can get the iPhone to hop to the satellite it to manually disable WIFI and then enable it. Then it'll connect to the satellite and we're all good. But, obviously that defeates the purpose and I might as will have stuck with my multiple-AP setup I was running before purchasing the Orbi.

So, wondering what my options are in terms of getting devices to hop from router to satellite? I ran out of testing-time last night, so I haven't been able to test with other devices (other iPhone models and iPads), but just wondering if anyone else has run into this issue?

Any advice would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Kristin.

[FURRYe38]

Try disabling Daisy Chain, MIMO and Fast Roaming.

Mostly this is how some client devices handshake and roam thus may keep on to same signle, even when it's low, until it's wireless radio is shut off and back on.

[kr15t1n]

Well, those are all disabled already.

So, I guess the next step would be to...enable them? 

If iOS devices are going to need the manual disable/enable to hop to the satellite, no point in the mesh I guess? Bummer. Was hoping to replace the manual hop between SSIDs I was having to do previously, but luckily, I'm still in the return window.

k.

[st_shaw]

My iPad Air and iPhone 7+ roam properly with no issues. This doesn't always happen instantly.  It can take 30 seconds or more. I have a router, one inside sat, and one outside sat.

The client devices makes the ultimate decision whether to roam or hold onto the current AP.  All Orbi can do is assist with the decision. I don't own an iPhone 8, so I can't say if the 8 has an issue.

You might try the following things:

1. On the iphone, forget the Orbi WiFI network.  Then re-join.

2. Try enabling fast roaming on the Orbi. (It's off on mine.)

3. Look at the RSSI levels at the spot you are having issues.  Use the airport utility on the iPhone and do a WiFi scan for 20-30 seconds.  Look at the list.  By looking at the RSSI and channels, and testing in different spots, you should be able to determine the mac address of your router and sat's 2.4 and 5 GHz radios.  Write those down and do a scan in the troublesome spot.  If both the satellite and the router signal are strong enough at that spot, the phone might not roam.

[kr15t1n]

Yeah, going to try and mess with all the settings tonight and see if I can get it to work. Was just hoping someone else might have come across this issue already.

I don't have any issues on other mesh networks with my iPhone 8 Plus (or any other iOS devices I support), but this is my first time working with Orbi. I've also built an SNR heatmap of the location that I updated right before installing the Orbi setup (so I knew optimal placement for the satellite to reach my dead-zone), but I'll re-scan now that the Orbi is in place and the old APs are offline and see if that helps?

I'll spend the weekend tweaking things, and hopefully I won't need to return it.

[FURRYe38]

Let us know if enableding Fast Roaming helps any. You don't need Daisy Chain. Check with MIMO enabled to see. 

[kr15t1n]

Well, spent a good 4-5 hours with this last night and I just couldn't get any of our iOS devices to reliably hop from the router to the satellite. Tried all possible configuration settings that could affect this (including reducing the power on the router so it wasn't pushing out at 100%, fast roaming, MIMO, beaming, etc.), as well as a lot of different physical setups, and nothing seemed to work (consistently).

On top of that, compared to my old ASUS AP, I was only getting about 80% of the bandwidth I was getting before. Swapping the Orbi out and the ASUS back in, I was back to getting full speed. So, definitely some overhead on the Orbi that results in a loss of speed. I could live with that, if the hopping to satellites worked reliably, but since I couldn't get that to work, it didn't matter.

Some observations I did make, though, during all of this testing (as I had a MacBook with me the entire time and was monitoring everything via the web interface)...

• Totally understand that this could just be my situation and may not reflect the performance of the Orbi system for others (plus, as I deal with wireless networking as part of my day job, I may look at things/notice things a little more than the average user, especially when doing testing/comparisons vs previously recorded data of the system I'm replacing).

• Before I did any of the testing, I manually scanned the area and ensured that my 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz bands had zero interference. I'm lucky in that my neighbourhood is pretty clean and there's not a lot of interference/competition from neighbouring devices and I'm able to select both 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz bands that have zero overlap. As well, I did a quick heat map of the main floor/area I was testing and SNR was a-ok, so no issues there.

• Reduced bandwidth/speed was a result of the Orbi hardware, not environmental conditions.

• I don't know if this is just a GUI error, or what, but I constantly found the satellite was connected to the router via 2.4Ghz? This surprised me because I thought the satellites connected to the router via a dedicated 5Ghz band for backhaul? So, not sure why it was showing as it being connected at 2.4Ghz?

• When running speedtests from my phone, and monitoring wireless AP connections on the laptop, whenever I noticed poor performance, it'd coincide with my phone having dropped the 5Ghz connection and having jumped to the router via 2.4Ghz.  Turning wifi off/on would result on the phone reconnecting to the router via 5Ghz and performance would increase significantly.

• My phone would hang onto the 2.4Ghz connection to the router forever, and never hop to the satellite. I would walk out to the garage...to the extreme edge of the connection, and the phone would just stay connected to the router at 2.4Ghz. Up/Down speeds at this point would be close to zero. Or, if I continued to walk, I'd loose wifi altogether. But again, turning wifi off/on would result on the phone finally connecting to the satellite via 5Ghz (or, sometimes 2.4Ghz) and performance would increase.

One thing I really wanted to test was completely disabling the 2.4Ghz band so I could test just with the 5Ghz band, but, even though screenshots of old firmware showed the checkbox to turn off 2.4Ghz (via Advanced Wireless Settings > Enable Wireless Router Radio), this option wasn't available in the latest firmware I was running. The only option I had was to disable SSID broadcast, but that didn't do what I wanted.

And because of the above, combined with the Orbi forcing the 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz to share the same SSID, there was absolutely no way I could test on just the 5Ghz band (well, aside from telnetting into the router and setting different SSIDs via the command line, but by the time I got to that as an option, I'd resigned to the fact that I wasn't getting anywhere).

Anyway, I think I gave it a good go and put the system through the gears. But, for me, I just couldn't get it to perform. Having to manually turn wifi off/on to force the jump between router and satellite, the limited bandwidth/range of the router itself [way more dead zones vs my old AP] and constantly finding myself on the slower 2.4Ghz connection are all dealbreakers. So, unfortunately (as I really wanted this to work), I'm going to have to return the RBK30 and go back to my old two-SSID setup (at least with the old setup, we know we get full coverage throughout the house via the main AP, and by lowering the output power on the main AP, there's a pretty consistent auto-jump between the main SSID and the secondary SSID when we go out into the backyard...even though the connection isn't "seamless" in terms data being handed off between the two APs...but that's not really much of an issue for the most part).

I might consider the RBK40, so I can test again with the full-on satellite (vs RBW30), and a dedicated ethernet backhaul, but at that price point, I'm getting into Velop territory. The RBK30 was just a sweet entry point, so had high hopes for it (especially for family/friends).

Thanks,

Kristin.

[st_shaw]

It's strange that it doesn't work for you.  Roaming works on my system with iOS devices, but my system is an RBK50, and my house is not in a neighborhood, so there's no interference.  My iOS devices will roam between bands and APs properly.  I've measured 30 Mbps throughput as far as 500 ft from the house.

Your iOS devices make the roaming decision, so there's nothing about Orbi (or any other AP) that should prevent your devices from roaming, provided the iOS device can see another AP with a usable signal present.

Did you forget and re-join the Orbi network on your iOS devices? This is the first step to try with any iOS WiFi issues.

Did you look at the RSSI on your iOS devices, using Airport Utility?  Making a heatmap with a laptop won't tell you what signals your iOS device is seeing. If you find that your phone is sticking to 2.4 GHz at -75 dBm when there's a 5 GHz signal at -55 dBm, then there's something wrong with your phone.

[Sman51]

How do you enable fast roaming?

[FURRYe38]

Advanced tab/Advaced Settings/Wireless Settings

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@Sman51 wrote:
How do you enable fast roaming?

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