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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...
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.
How big is your house/building? sq ft?
Try just the router and one satellite?
Having 36 device maybe hitting what the orbi system can handle as far as how many devices can be connected. Most home class routers usually only support 15-20 devices. Maybe 30 on higher end wifi. Theres bandwidth that that wifi and router have to alow for each device and each device can have more than just one connection.
You might start with disabling Beamforming and MiMO first. See if the system still experiences problems. If so, then I would turn OFF most of your devices, then start with maybe 10-15 devices online. See what the system does. If you notice it's better, then start to graduate adding a device untill you notice something happen.
I have a 5000sq ft house and have the base router at one end and at Satellite at the other. About 50 feet in between them and building materials in between. Orbi system has been really good. Only using 1 Satellite. However I only have about 20 devices connected wirelessly and not all online at the same time.
Roamaboutwrote:
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.
Just to add to this discussion? I've been running the Orbi RBK43 setup (router and 2 satellites) for a while now. The primary router sits in the family room, near the middle of the house on the first floor. One satellite is upstairs in a bedroom and the other satellite is outside in a detached garage. (House is about 2,200 sq. feet in size.)
When I first set this up, I thought (like many new owners) it was working flawlessly. Even running the latest firmware though, I've starting running into some glitches. Primarily, I've noticed my iPhone 7 Plus will occasionally stop responding on the wifi until I toggle wifi off and back on again to force a reconnect. I'd say this happens once per night, on average. Interestingly, I also have an iPad Pro 9.7" that seems to remain connected reliably. (To be fair though, I don't use it nearly as much as the phone.)
Additionally, I just started setting up some home automation products, including several Belkin Wemo switches. (These all use 2.4Ghz wifi only.) I noticed I was having issues with one of them randomly dropping off the network and then coming back again if I just waited an hour or two and checked for them again. There was no rhyme or reason to when or which Wemo would disappear.
I just ran into a problem about an hour ago where all the wireless devices in the house quit communicating on the Internet. I could ping a random web site address and it would immediately resolve DNS properly to an IP address, but the pings would just time out with no reply. The wired Ethernet devices continued to work normally though! I rebooted the Orbi router and everything started working again.
I did try a suggestion I saw posted to turn 2.4Ghz wifi signal strength down from 100%. I tried 75%. It actually *may* be helping the Wemo switches stay connected reliably but it's kind of early to say for sure.
Bottom line? I agree with the people who say this product needs more work. I hope it's something Netgear can solve with firmware and not a hardware limitation of some sort. I'm past my return window on this setup and it works well enough overall, I'm still inclined to keep it for now and see if Netgear addresses these issues.
Just curious, did you try disabling Beamforming and or MIMO on the Orbi router?
Also have you tried just using one Satellite instead of two? I'm currently using just one Satellite at the far end of my 5000sq ft house.
Just trying to help with some short term solutions until NG comes out with another FW update. Soon we all hope.
twyrickwrote:Just to add to this discussion? I've been running the Orbi RBK43 setup (router and 2 satellites) for a while now. The primary router sits in the family room, near the middle of the house on the first floor. One satellite is upstairs in a bedroom and the other satellite is outside in a detached garage. (House is about 2,200 sq. feet in size.)
When I first set this up, I thought (like many new owners) it was working flawlessly. Even running the latest firmware though, I've starting running into some glitches. Primarily, I've noticed my iPhone 7 Plus will occasionally stop responding on the wifi until I toggle wifi off and back on again to force a reconnect. I'd say this happens once per night, on average. Interestingly, I also have an iPad Pro 9.7" that seems to remain connected reliably. (To be fair though, I don't use it nearly as much as the phone.)
Additionally, I just started setting up some home automation products, including several Belkin Wemo switches. (These all use 2.4Ghz wifi only.) I noticed I was having issues with one of them randomly dropping off the network and then coming back again if I just waited an hour or two and checked for them again. There was no rhyme or reason to when or which Wemo would disappear.
I just ran into a problem about an hour ago where all the wireless devices in the house quit communicating on the Internet. I could ping a random web site address and it would immediately resolve DNS properly to an IP address, but the pings would just time out with no reply. The wired Ethernet devices continued to work normally though! I rebooted the Orbi router and everything started working again.
I did try a suggestion I saw posted to turn 2.4Ghz wifi signal strength down from 100%. I tried 75%. It actually *may* be helping the Wemo switches stay connected reliably but it's kind of early to say for sure.
Bottom line? I agree with the people who say this product needs more work. I hope it's something Netgear can solve with firmware and not a hardware limitation of some sort. I'm past my return window on this setup and it works well enough overall, I'm still inclined to keep it for now and see if Netgear addresses these issues.
FURRYe38 I'm happy to see that yours is working well. However, for you to say "The HW works as its stands" and to say "It's when it's set up by users and the environments that will start to see various issues" undermines the people that have gone through troubleshooting and faced numerous headaches from these disconnect issues.
And especially when netgear has acknowledged issues with their system as well: https://community.netgear.com/t5/Orbi/OrbiOS-MR-2-1-issues/m-p/1506307
I'm almost positive that you aren't experiencing issues due to having only one satellite along with your router. I had a setup in a warehouse type building with very thin walls, maybe 9,000 square feet with the router in the middle and 3 satellites in each corner - tried both wireless and ethernet backhaul. As the original post of this thread states, if you have multiple satellites with devices roaming between them, this issue can be a real pain in the ass.
It's obvious you are active here in the community with your Master title so I appreciate you trying to help people here. But when you say things like "Having 36 device maybe hitting what the orbi system can handle as far as how many devices can be connected. Most home class routers usually only support 15-20 devices. Maybe 30 on higher end wifi." it makes me question if you are just posting replies to sound knowledgable or if you are just mistaken. Without going into the technical details of number of devices, Orbi officially supports up to 250 connections (https://kb.netgear.com/31097/How-many-devices-can-my-Orbi-system-support) - as do most other AP's in the market these days.
"You might start with disabling Beamforming and MiMO first. See if the system still experiences problems"
This has been posted earlier in this thread and people who experience the disconnect issues will experience the issue with Beamforming / MiMO on or off.
Again, I appreciate people like you that are trying to help the community but it really rubs me the wrong way when this is most definitely an issue with the Orbi under certain network conditions and you blame the user setting it up - especially after I've spent the last few weeks pulling my hair out debugging this issue with no solution (except rebooting satellites multiple times a day) until I replaced the Orbi system completely.
We have around 5600 sq feet (30x60 house, three floors and a 20x20 porch on the rear). I have no issues with the Orbi but I'm interested in steps that I could take to reproduce any problem in an othwise happy Orbi system. I would rather break it now while I am in my return window.
