Using Orbi with Netgear D7800 and BT Infinity+BT Sports

[WillParry]

I have an existing setup of a NETGEAR D7800-100UKS Nighthawk AC2600 and I was interested in adding the Orbi system to it to provide the wifi in the house. I have a BT TV box located in a totally seperate area of the house from the router and so would need an Orbi in this location with ethernet ports as well as one connected to the router (i am assuming) and possibly some more for further coverage of the house. Am I right in thinking that I could achieve this with two of the Add-on Orbi Satellite (RBS50) as I already have the Nighthawk router or do you have to have the  AC3000 (RBK50) unit in order for the satillie units to communicate back?

[martyfp · Accepted solution]

I don't believe that you can use a satellite + D7800 without an Orbi router, you need both the RBR50 + RBS50.

Regarding the BT sports on the BT TV box - this is a multicast IPTV so you might struggle to get this working reliably by plugging the bt box into the satellite.   Remember that the satellite-2-router link is done over wifi and multicast and wifi don't play well together.   It might work but you might get a lot of picture breakup.  Really the bt-box should be connected directly via ethernet to the router.

I have my BT-TV box in a different room to the Orbi router. I connect via a long cat6 cable that is hidden under the skirting.   

[martyfp · Accepted solution]

I don't believe that you can use a satellite + D7800 without an Orbi router, you need both the RBR50 + RBS50.

Regarding the BT sports on the BT TV box - this is a multicast IPTV so you might struggle to get this working reliably by plugging the bt box into the satellite.   Remember that the satellite-2-router link is done over wifi and multicast and wifi don't play well together.   It might work but you might get a lot of picture breakup.  Really the bt-box should be connected directly via ethernet to the router.

I have my BT-TV box in a different room to the Orbi router. I connect via a long cat6 cable that is hidden under the skirting.   

[WillParry]

Thanks for the reply, would still like clarification on if the Orbi Router is necessary if anyone out there knows. 

[timch]

Yes you need the router. The satellite can only get its network connection over the Wi-Fi back haul channels from the router. 

[WillParry]

So if you have a BT home hub, would you just turn the wifi off on the home hub and connect the Orbi to the router, does the Home Hub still act as the DHCP server etc and do all the routing and the Orbi does the wifi?

[martyfp]

When I first got the Orbi, I had the following combination :

HH5 (wifi off) + Orbi in AP mode + BT-TV plugged directly into the Hub.  The HH was the modem + router and handled DHCP. Orbi just does wifi.

With the latest firmware (which fixed some IPTV bugs), I moved over to :

Vigor 130 (modem) + Orbi in full router mode + BT-TV plugged directly into Orbi router.  Orbi handles routing/DHCP and Wifi

Both worked fine, however, I preferred the second option as it allowed me to finally ditch the Hub.

[WillParry]

My setup is slightly different but from what you have said it sounds as if it would work fine.

I have the BT internet line coming in at the other end of the house to the location of the BT TV box. So one room has the router, the other the BT TV. So I would think the following would work;

Put the Home Hub or Netgear D7800 (i have had issues with this router freezing a lot so may go back to HH although it is a big pile of garbage), in non-wifi mode and connect the RBR50 to the router to provide the wifi. Connect the RBS50 in the room with BT TV and connect and ethernet cable from the RBS50 to the BT TV box. This will then transmit the traffic back to the router. Does that sound right?

Also does anyone have experience with exactly this setup and with BT sport as this gets a little more complicated with MTU needing to be a specific rate and the equipment supporting multicast. I assume the Orbi because it is not acting as a router does not concern itself with these settings these are done by the Router (either HH or D7800)? 

[martyfp]

One problem: with your proposed configuration of plugging the BT-Box into the RBS50 is that the mulitcast TV traffic will then be sent over the backhaul wifi to the satellite,  While this might work, generally, multicast streams over wifi are apparently not reliable enough.  Ideally, the bt-box should be plugged into the main router directly.    It may work, the backhaul wifi connection is pretty quick, however, I think that you will end up with the dreaded IPC6023 errors on the BT-Box.

How is your BT box currently connecting ?

Regarding the second part of your question., yes only the router needs to be concerned about handling the multicast.  The HH will just work without any additional configuration. 

not sure about the D7800 but with the Orbi as the router, you just de-select "Disable IGMP Proxying" and ticked "Support British Telecom IGMP Proxying" and it works well after a reboot.     My MTU is set to 1492 (which I think is required for multicast) -  I did not manually set that value, something auto-configured to that.    I suspect the D7800 has some similar settings but you may want to check it's IGMP support.

[WillParry]

I currently have it connected via a power ethernet connector (using the electrics cabling), which I could continue to use in the new setup using the same config, it was just a case of which products to use, as the RBS has the ethernet connectivity, so it is probably best just to use the RBK40 that plug neatly into a plug socket.

Thanks for all the advice on this thread it's been really useful, appriciate all the responses.