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Introducing the Orbi 970 Series Mesh System with WiFi 7(BE) technology. For more information visit the NETGEAR Press Room.

Orbi WiFi 7 RBE973
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Seamless Roaming Orbi

cyberprashant
Luminary

Seamless Roaming Orbi

So far impressed with the orbi system.  

Satellite firmware update was glitchy using Chrome, but worked fine in IE.  I did update manually.   

 

Seamless roaming appears to be happening.  You can actually pull up each satellite by it's IP (see attached devices  - or in firmware update it will display the IP when the load firmware box appears) for the satellites).  I can see that as I move from one end of the house to the far end other side, the iPhone (with its screen on whole time) will now be connected from one satellite to the other one.   Facetime/video seems to be working fine as well roaming across access points!  Speed seems impressive so far....300 mbps actual transfer rates for a file from HDD across network to SSD (approx 35 feet from nearest node)

 

impressed as this is working much better than my 2 router setup (r8000 and r7000 connected via ethernet backbone).  For roaming there I had to switch the screen off or toggle wifi

 

A wifi extender didn't work well - created too much lag (Linksys RE6700/6400)

 

 

Model: Orbi High-Performance AC3000 Tri-Band WiFi System (RBK50)
Message 1 of 7

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Re: Seamless Roaming Orbi

just to clear something up the orbi is NOT seamless roaming , it has band steering and ap steering but thats not technically seamless roaming 

 

the client device stiull disconnects from one transmission to then move to another 

 

real seamless roaming does not disconnect at all 

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Message 2 of 7

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Re: Seamless Roaming Orbi

just to clear something up the orbi is NOT seamless roaming , it has band steering and ap steering but thats not technically seamless roaming 

 

the client device stiull disconnects from one transmission to then move to another 

 

real seamless roaming does not disconnect at all 

Message 2 of 7
cyberprashant
Luminary

Re: Seamless Roaming Orbi

Perhaps not true commercial grade seamless, but if you have an iPhone 6 or more try an app called Netty - it will show u the mac id of which host your connected to.   I can run this on one side of the house, then run speedtest while quickly moving to the other side of the house and close netty and reopen it and I get a different mac ID for the closest satellite node with the screen never switched off and no loss in speedtest.   I noticed though my old android samsung tablet likes to keep latched to the same MAC ID (On android a great program is Wi-Fi Analyzer). 


So do any of the mesh solutions out there offer true commercial grade seamless, or is it AP steering as above? Thanks. 

Message 3 of 7
rhester72
Virtuoso

Re: Seamless Roaming Orbi


@cyberprashant wrote:


So do any of the mesh solutions out there offer true commercial grade seamless, or is it AP steering as above? Thanks. 


Currently only Ubiquiti's UniFi (note: NOT the same thing as AmpliFi!).

 

Rodney

Message 4 of 7

Re: Seamless Roaming Orbi


@rhester72 wrote:

@cyberprashant wrote:


So do any of the mesh solutions out there offer true commercial grade seamless, or is it AP steering as above? Thanks. 


Currently only Ubiquiti's UniFi (note: NOT the same thing as AmpliFi!).

 

Rodney


yes and only then in its old series ap's

 

seems even they have dropped zero handoff configuration and are also now going the mesh route with ap and band steering

 

i do agree that band steering and ap steering help but to get the major benefit out of them you need client devices that support the same standards and we are yet to see these in the market place , so until then we can be stuck with sticky clients that are stubborn and dont like moving between ap's / mesh points mainly because they have been designed to grab hold of a single transmission and not let go

 

beamforming believe it or not is part of the reason the client adapters are sticky as well as the transmission follows the client around the house trying to keep it connected

Message 5 of 7
Miles267
Apprentice

Re: Seamless Roaming Orbi

What is beamforming exactly? What are the benefits of enabling or disabling it in Orbi?

Re: zero handoff I've also used multiple Open-Mesh APs prior to Orbi and found fewer Orbi units actually handoff more reliable than OM. This was a pleasant surprise.
Message 6 of 7
RonV42
Luminary

Re: Seamless Roaming Orbi

A very good brefing on what Beamforming is:

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beamforming

 

Due to "stickyness" in some wireless devices Netgear left Beamforming turned off in the Orbi. I found that older devices have more issuess jumping from satellite to satellite when turned on.  I have a 3 year old Android tablet that refuses to release from the Orbi on the far end of my house when beamforming is turned on.  Turned beamforming off and  the tablet now moves from sat to sat.

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