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Forum Discussion
What you can expect with your Orbi system
I'm writing this mainly because a post like this would have saved me a lot of time and effort. If you're thinking about buying an Orbi system, or recently purchased one, here's a few things you can e...
Luckily not everyone has your experience. Mine has been a set it and forget it experience.
tsig, would you care to offer any specifics on your setup to help others out? Which model are you using (and when did you purchase), how many satellites do you use, and how long has your system been up? What is your general usage pattern like?
If you read through the details, you should understand that many people like myself thought we had a great "set it and forget it" experience with the fastest speeds we'd ever seen. It was only after many months that issues started appearing. It also depends on how you use your system; there are use cases where the issue will never show itself, or will be seemingly infrequent, and a simple reboot will make it seem like there aren't any issues.
What worries me is the number of people that had a great experience for weeks or months before it all went south. It makes those of us that are still enjoying a trouble free Orbi experience wonder if we are sitting on a ticking time bomb that will likely go off when we are not home and the family has no Internet, no home security, no entertainment and the day after the return period runs out.
These community forums were created by Netgear to increase customer engagement and increase customer stickiness (make us keep buying Netgear stuff). What would help in that regard would be for the Orbi product folks to explain what the heck is going on, what is the nature of the bugs that caused a firmware recall, what is the roadmap for fixing them and what is the plan to test the fixes before wide deployment.
Roamabout - the good news is even if you start to have the same problems, it's nowhere near catastrophic. The worst for me would be losing connection in the middle of an action game and not being able to get back in time before the match was lost. In general it manifests as a freeze or lockup, so it stops you in the middle of whatever you were doing involving the internet (downloads, games, streaming, etc). Sometimes it comes back on its own, other times you can disconnect and reconnect wifi, and at very worst you have to power cycle your satellite.
I'd call it a major annoyance, but one that if you know about it in advance you might be able to mitigate. If I was going to keep using Orbi, this is what I'd do: the most important stuff I'd connect via ethernet, to the modem if possible. Next most important stuff, I'd connect via ethernet to the Orbi main router. Position the main router so that you're using it for the max amount of wireless items (cameras, doorbell, etc). Finally connect any Orbi satellites to a power source that can easily be switched on and off for quick reboot.
Obviously you shouldn't have to go to these compromises as it kind of defeats the whole purpose of a system like Orbi, but if you really don't want to spend more money you can kind of make the most of it with what you've got.
- I disagree with a minor issue. I work from home and cell reception is bad so I use WiFi calling on my iPhone as my primary phone. So disconnects are a major issue. I have lost phone calls and dropped from conference calls. Not good. Just got my system last week. Got it from amazon do returns are good. I’ll give it another week and the. Goodbye
What's sad is that many were saying it's the Chromecast/Android issue, but I've had all my Chromecast devices unplugged and uninstalled the Google Home app from my phone, and I am still having the disconnect issues with the Orbi wifi system.
It was a great system for almost a year, but these last few firmware updates have been a headache!
I would take a refund if I could get it, and would buy another brand. I am now recommending to everyone to stay away from anything Netgear.
Netgear doesn't seem to care, they already have our money!
