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Forum Discussion
RBR850 Wired Satellite to Wireless Satellite Then to Wired Satellite
I have a RBR850 router in the basement, with a Wired connection to a Satellite in an 3rd floor Window, with Line of site to another Satellite in a window of a Metal Shop. The Shop Satellite seems to...
What is the distance between the 3rd floor satellite and the satellite in the shop building?
Does the router to 3rd floor satellite show as 'wired'?
What device is on that pole behind the shop?
Distance from the 3rd floor to the Shop is around 200 Meters, shop is metal so satellite is in the window of the shop facing the house, direct line of site to the house window where the other satellite is. Then I wired from the shop Satellite to another outside on a pole around 50 meters away.
so Living room (3rd floor) shows wireless and poor even though its wired to the router. Devices connecting to it are showing Wired, in the connections list. Devices in the Shop are showing up as Wireless, but devices in the back yard are showing up wired.
I'm also experiencing issues when I move my phone around the house, Yard. When ever it goes between a satellite, or back to the router, it get connection failed, and only way to get it back is by connecting to say the guest wifi, then back to the original.
Orbis report the connection of devices by how each device is connected to the system as a whole. It does not matter how a satellite is connected to the router (or another satellite). If the device is 'wired' to anything, then it is 'wired'.
200 meters is way too far to achieve a decent connection between Orbi units. It is miracle that the satellite in the shop connects at all.
It might be worth testing the 3rd floor satellite Ethernet connection. Temporarily bring the satellite next to the router. After it connects, use an Ethernet cable to connect it to the router. In 4-5 minutes (or so), the Attached Devices display should show it changing from WiFi to Wired.
Having established that the satellite is capable of wired connection to the router, return it to the 3rd floor location and plug it in. If it does not change to 'wired', this might indicate that there is a problem with the Ethernet cable path between router and satellite. Often in-house wiring consists of components in addition to the actual cable, such as patch panels, RJ45 jack terminations, and Ethernet patch cables. A termination that even a little bit "off" can result in the satellite not achieving a 'wired' connection. (That is why the temporary test next to the router helps determine whether the problem is with the actual satellite or with the cable path.)
You might consider trying a WiFi link between the 3rd floor satellite and the shop satellite. Dozens of companies sell links on Amazon consisting of two radio units (one at each end), usually powered by Power over Ethernet (PoE). These units have highly directional antennas and are rated in terms of kilometers, so 200 meters is well within their capability. This article explains in more detail:
Equipment from mainstream manufacturers, such as Ubiquiti and TP-Link is usually a bit more costly than from some brands available on Amazon.
Have a system with 3 Satellites. Router in the Basment, Hardwired to a Sallellite on 3rd floor, wireless from 3rd floor to Shop, then Hardwired to a Satellite in the Back 40. All are showing good Backhaul status now, but SHop does show Hardwired for some strange reason, guess because its Hardwired to the next Satellite, Connection view does show it going from router/3rd Floor/Shop/Back40.
I've been fighting with my samsung phones, A54, Galaxy 24, Galaxy 22. They will connect to my main Wifi, but then when I move between satellites they fail and loose connection, and sometimes never come back.
I've disabled MAC randomizer in the Phones, Disabled disconnect on no activity, disabled connect to a better Wifi, Disabled Access control, enabled access control and set the MACs to Allow. I've set fixed DHCP IP addresses just nothing makes it stay successful. I've tried dropping 2.4 G Power to 25% on Router.
I notice that when I set to allowed, in the access control list, and review its showing "Wired" but believe that is a bug when communicating to a Wired Satellite.
Anyways getting tired of this, and it sometimes fixing with router reboot, phone reboot, switching to another SSID like the guest account, and sometimes just never coming back
Extremely frustrating considering the money I spent on this, starting to think I should have just gone with Google Mesh.
Have you checked signal strength, especially at the shop satellite? I agree 200 meters is probably way too far. A general rule of thumb in home networking says that Wi-Fi routers operating on the 2.4 GHz band can reach up to 150 feet indoors and 300 feet outdoors. Newer 802.11n and 802.11ac routers that operate on both 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bands reach greater distances. Because it uses narrower wavelengths, a 5 GHz Wi-Fi connection is more susceptible to obstructions than 2.4 GHz connections, and so will usually have a slightly shorter effective range, typically, 10 to 15 feet shorter. But your situation is 650 feet (200 meters), which is way more than the "rule of thumb".
There is a paper in this forum stickied to the top -
that walks through how to use signal strength to determine optimal placement of both wired and wireless satellites. It's amazing how many problems here are due to poor placements.
And as my .02, I came from Google mesh to Orbi - the 850 has a much stronger signal than the Google mesh does, there is 10% of the configuration capability in the Google mesh vs. Orbi as well. I found Google worked mediocre at best - it is meant to make getting it working fast and easy, but optimizing, getting best speeds, tuning are not the product priorities. I also think the Google WiFi product has been discontinued, you might check on that.
