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Finally - fast WiFi on all 3 floors of the house
I see most people on here with complaints, but thought I would add my $.02 on the positive so far. My setup is a 3 story house with symmetric gigabit fiber. I have 7 kids and associated devices, both wireless and wired. We have added some home automation and have a big variety of devices. Some of the key items: Sonos - 1 wired Playbar and 3 wireless players Nest Thermostat and 3 Nest Protects Ring Doorbell Alarm.com system Ooma T-Mobile with Android and iPhones configured for WiFi calling several Xboxes and several gaming PCs TiVo SiloconDust tuner Nvidia Shield Amazon Fire TVs Vizio Cast capable TV The house is about 3600 Sq. Ft. and I have the Orbi router mounted in the pantry - probably the most central location in the house, then a satellite in the basement. New construction - lots of Cat6 wiring, but a lot of devices are wireless, even if you do have wiring you might not be able to use it. We had Google Wifi for about 8 months and it worked well, but because of the fiber setup it created double NAT as a router and won't do mesh as just an AP. The double NAT finally caused too many problems and ipV6 wouldn't work right, either. Thus began the search for replacement gear. I compared Orbi to Linksys Velop, eero, and Google Wifi. After lots of testing, none of these systems could do both mesh and handle the gigabit fiber - for multiple reasons. One key thing is that I have CenturyLink and they require two things to replace their 'modem' - 1. PPPoE, not available on eero, for example. 2. VLAN tagging - becoming available on some units but not on most, like Google Wifi. The other thing is the PPPoE offload acceleration is needed to get wireline speed - something that most units don't do, so even if you have PPPoE, it may be very slow, which wouldn't matter on a 40Mbit connection, but on gigabit fiber, you know. So, long story short, the Orbi is hands down the fastest wireless AP I've tested - including a Unifi UAP-AC-Pro. I have great WiFi edge to edge in the whole house now with the RBK50 and RBS50. Setup was a challenge - the satellite would not show up in the dashboard - I had to find its IP address, login to it directly, then update its firmware manually. Once I did that, it showed up and then the whole system auto updated. It's been 3 days now and all seems stable. The final thing I had to do was replace the 'modem', though. I bought a Cisco rv340 - has corporate speed with PPPoE acceleration and VLAN tagging integrated. After I put the GWifi setup on Ebay and finalize returns, I'm in for about $350 to upgrade to blazing fast wireless and wireline speed routing. YMMV, but I am very please with Orbi thus far. As an AP with a smart extender, its ridiculously fast. Two thumbs up! Oh, and running the latest firmware - 1.12.0.18. I have powered both units off, then the satellite, then the router, a few ranom resets, etc. just to make sure it all comes back and so far, so good. Also, a plug for Netgear putting their equipment for sale with the Navy Exchange - as a vet, that price was excellent - thank you!