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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...
Users should try disabling Beamforming and MIMO if there experiencing wifi issues. Seen some client side HW not work well with Beamforming or MIMO when they are enabled on the router. I have mine disabled currently. Working great with a few cameras, controllers and a bridge.
I suspect most of the people who made it as far as this forum already tried disabling all the added features to get better stability, and, like me, found it made no difference. Of course it begs the question if I have to disable key selling points like MIMO and beam-forming, why did I buy this product in the first place?
Sadly, it appears the majority of users are not seeing these issues (yet), and posting 5 star reviews on Amazon. Just in the past few days there have been dozens of 5 star reviews, so any lower ratings are drowned out in the noise. I'm guessing people post immediately, and even if they later see the problems don't come back to revise their review. Will be interesting to see if more people end up here after time passes.
There are many factors and variables and many environments that can impact router and wireless HW and operations. The HW works as its stands. It's when it's set up by users and the environments that will start to see various issues that need to be identified to see where the real issues are. This has been going on with routers and wireless devices since they first came to market. Problems still happen. The forums are here to help each other find out where the real problems are and maybe help resolve them. Many devices depending upon sign by all the various Mfrs, may not work well with new features like Beamforming, Smart Connect or MIMO. So offering troubleshooting options is to help see weather if the system can work better with some of these disabled. It's up to users weather or not to try them.
Users can talk all day about how good or bad theres work. It all comes down to what really works and where the real problem is.
rphsiawrote:I suspect most of the people who made it as far as this forum already tried disabling all the added features to get better stability, and, like me, found it made no difference. Of course it begs the question if I have to disable key selling points like MIMO and beam-forming, why did I buy this product in the first place?
Sadly, it appears the majority of users are not seeing these issues (yet), and posting 5 star reviews on Amazon. Just in the past few days there have been dozens of 5 star reviews, so any lower ratings are drowned out in the noise. I'm guessing people post immediately, and even if they later see the problems don't come back to revise their review. Will be interesting to see if more people end up here after time passes.
rphsiawrote:I suspect most of the people who made it as far as this forum already tried disabling all the added features to get better stability, and, like me, found it made no difference. Of course it begs the question if I have to disable key selling points like MIMO and beam-forming, why did I buy this product in the first place?
Sadly, it appears the majority of users are not seeing these issues (yet), and posting 5 star reviews on Amazon. Just in the past few days there have been dozens of 5 star reviews, so any lower ratings are drowned out in the noise. I'm guessing people post immediately, and even if they later see the problems don't come back to revise their review. Will be interesting to see if more people end up here after time passes.
I bought my system a little over two weeks ago and immediately updated the router and both sat's to the dreaded 2.1.2.18 firmware. Router and sats are showing 16 days of uptime and if I had not found this forum I too would be singing the praises of the Orbi. It has exceeded my expectations. I dont know why we have this dichotomy and it cant be different devices or different ISP/modem/router. It doesnt seem limited to people in AP mode or people in Router mode.
The only thing that makes sense to me is that we have different hardware and some systems work and some dont. Even hardware with evolving chips can evolve with with the hardware differences accomodated in the software. If chipset A then do this, if chipset B then do that etc.
It is unlikely that Netgear makes the Orbi, they probably buy it from an ODM and for all I know Netgear product management is still trying to figure out what is going on. For sure they are not sharing much here.
I'm glad you're having a good expeirience. What rphsia has been getting at, is that you may never notice the issues being described here. Depending on your usage, the issue can range from "glaring and impossible to ignore", all the way to "gee, seems to work for me". The specific and transient nature of the bugs are what makes this so maddening.
Now, since you've posted here a few times, I do have a test case that I've used to demonstrate the issue with support. It always reveals the issue in somewhere from 5 minutes to 3 hours and has been reproducible for the last 8 firmware revisions. If you're intereted, I'll post it. Though, it's not the easiest test to perform.
I'm very confident you are also experiencing the issue and that it's not a result of any specific hardware variations from manufactoring. However, depending on your usage - and specifically how many active devices connect to sattellites - you may never notice it. And, if you never notice it, then it's definitely an acceptible problem in your case!
t_kwrote:I'm glad you're having a good expeirience. What rphsia has been getting at, is that you may never notice the issues being described here. Depending on your usage, the issue can range from "glaring and impossible to ignore", all the way to "gee, seems to work for me". The specific and transient nature of the bugs are what makes this so maddening.
Now, since you've posted here a few times, I do have a test case that I've used to demonstrate the issue with support. It always reveals the issue in somewhere from 5 minutes to 3 hours and has been reproducible for the last 8 firmware revisions. If you're intereted, I'll post it. Though, it's not the easiest test to perform.
I'm very confident you are also experiencing the issue and that it's not a result of any specific hardware variations from manufactoring. However, depending on your usage - and specifically how many active devices connect to sattellites - you may never notice it. And, if you never notice it, then it's definitely an acceptible problem in your case!
In the interest of science I would be happy to do some tests that would result in the bahavior that people are reporting - spontaneous reboots, devices disconnecting, speed drop off, devices unable to connect. I have the router and two sats with 36 devices connected. Multiple Windows tablets, android tablets and android/apple phones to test roaming scenarios. Router in the middle on the lower floor, sats at either end of the upper floor.
