Orbi - Do wifi devices switch to another satellite IF signal stays strong?

[sfx2000]

Had to post, Orbi has been horrible for me, called support many times, to no avail.
I get disconnects like crazy, android, apple, directv its crazy, so fed up.
I have a 3 pack from Costco, house is 4K feet 2 stories, they told me 3 is too much, I'm running 2 now, one upstairs and one downstairs.
as soon as you walk up or down the stairs you DROP, takes about 3 min to get connected to the proper router/satellite.
Even if your near the hardware you can drop, its pretty bad. Not ready for primetime for sure.

Reposition the nodes is the first thing - shouldn't drop in any event... unless the node spacing is not overlapping...

 

[RogerSC]

Well, just found out that while my Apple mobile devices switch between the router and satellite as they should, my Android phone (Pixel) doesn't switch. I have to disconnect and reconnect it to get it to switch. I don't know if that's the case for all Android devices, or just the Pixel phone, but it sure seems dumber with respect to Wi-Fi than the Apple devices. This seems to be a change for Apple, since I remember when they were pretty particular about what they'd connect with, and I'd hardly ever get full speed or consistent behavior with them. The iPhone 6S Plus and the iPad Air 2 both seem to be very well behaved with Wi-Fi at this point. At least, compared to my Android phone. About time, I guess *smile*.

 

[SoSouthern]

So I had mine for about two weeks before I returned it. I read a lot of reviews before ordering and felt this would be my best bet for my home. I wanted to get away from extenders and powerlines and saw the impressive dedicated backhaul performance and was sold. I put the satellite in my bedroom so we could have our gaming rigs direct connected. It was solid the first three days. The third night my connection dropped completely. We were gaming with a solid ping and nothing. Then I saw the satellite flashing magenta. Went to the router and saw that it was rebooting. So I figured it was a fluke and everything came back online. Went back to gaming and not even ten minutes later it dropped again. Same thing. I was scratching my head at this point.

I hit the logs on the router and saw repeated DHCP leases to one device going out. I found the device to be our daughters iPod. Just to be sure, I went ahead and had her sit in our room and I joined a game and told her to start Netflix. My ping immediately shot to 900 and then the network dropped again. Well now I'm super pissed and curious about why this is happening. At first I thought her iPod must have an issue but my iPhone would cause it to do the same thing. Google took me to Netgear forums. Learned a lot about issues that reviewers didn't encounter. So Beamforming and MU-MIMO do not work for Orbi if you have Nest devices and it appears Apple devices as well. We have about ten Apple products in our household as well as a Nest thermostat. After I turned those settings off, the network stopped dropping, however, the satellite still would go crazy with the ping. My wife was surfing the web on her Surface Pro 4 while I was gaming and it knocked me offline. At that point I processed a return to Amazon.

Aside from gaming, this is a pretty solid setup but MU-MIMO and Beamforming were something I was pretty invested in with all these devices and kids in my home. Before this I was using my TP-Link C3200 which is a solid performer but our powerline started acting up which I attribute to wiring in my home and extenders and bridged routers just don't cut it. I've since gone back to my Archer with the old powerline equipment. I'm now looking into the Moca 2.0 setup which I think will work in my case. For the average home this is good but I feel that Netgear rushed to be the first to market and this system is not ready for Production.

 

[RogerSC]

So I had mine for about two weeks before I returned it. I read a lot of reviews before ordering and felt this would be my best bet for my home. I wanted to get away from extenders and powerlines and saw the impressive dedicated backhaul performance and was sold. I put the satellite in my bedroom so we could have our gaming rigs direct connected. It was solid the first three days. The third night my connection dropped completely. We were gaming with a solid ping and nothing. Then I saw the satellite flashing magenta. Went to the router and saw that it was rebooting. So I figured it was a fluke and everything came back online. Went back to gaming and not even ten minutes later it dropped again. Same thing. I was scratching my head at this point.

I hit the logs on the router and saw repeated DHCP leases to one device going out. I found the device to be our daughters iPod. Just to be sure, I went ahead and had her sit in our room and I joined a game and told her to start Netflix. My ping immediately shot to 900 and then the network dropped again. Well now I'm super pissed and curious about why this is happening. At first I thought her iPod must have an issue but my iPhone would cause it to do the same thing. Google took me to Netgear forums. Learned a lot about issues that reviewers didn't encounter. So Beamforming and MU-MIMO do not work for Orbi if you have Nest devices and it appears Apple devices as well. We have about ten Apple products in our household as well as a Nest thermostat. After I turned those settings off, the network stopped dropping, however, the satellite still would go crazy with the ping. My wife was surfing the web on her Surface Pro 4 while I was gaming and it knocked me offline. At that point I processed a return to Amazon.

Aside from gaming, this is a pretty solid setup but MU-MIMO and Beamforming were something I was pretty invested in with all these devices and kids in my home. Before this I was using my TP-Link C3200 which is a solid performer but our powerline started acting up which I attribute to wiring in my home and extenders and bridged routers just don't cut it. I've since gone back to my Archer with the old powerline equipment. I'm now looking into the Moca 2.0 setup which I think will work in my case. For the average home this is good but I feel that Netgear rushed to be the first to market and this system is not ready for Production.

Curious if you tried static addresses on the Apple clients? I don't see any problem with our Apple clients here, but if I saw what you described, I'd be trying static addresses. And I don't have a Nest thermostat, just an old-fashioned programmable one that we end up setting manually due to have unpredictable schedules. The Orbi is working really well for us, and our guests also don't have any problem with it. We have 4 Apple devices, 2 phones and 2 tablets, plus a bunch of computers, printers, TV's, etc. Everything is working well with the Orbi, and great wireless throughout the house. Sorry that it didn't work out for you.

Oh yeah, I did have one problem with it, the channel on the 2.4GHz. band wanted to be 40MHz. wide, and I didn't like that. I put up with it for a while, and finally just turned off the 2.4GHz. band. That wasn't a functional problem, just my personal preference...I only had one device on the 2.4GHz. band, a wi-fi printer, so I just connected the printer with a cable and called it a day. I could also have used a 5GHz. wireless bridge, but a wire was simpler *smile*.

I don't feel that Netgear rushed to market any more than anyone else. All the router companies (and computer companies and mobile device companies, etc.) want to make money on new products as soon as they can, so they don't leave things sitting around on shelves, they get them out on the market. The ones that really rushed to market that jump out in my mind are the "mu-mimo" routers where mu-mimo wasn't even activated yet. Or the "open source ready" routers that had no open source projects going, or even open source drivers ready to hand off to third-party firmware writers. Of course, I didn't rush out and buy the Orbi as soon as it came on the market. I waited and read reviews, and decided I'd wait for a sale. Finally came along, and the Orbi was functional for me from the first day that I had it.

I guess that not everything works out for everyone. Glad that you found something that works for you, too, though. The Orbi here has been up with no problems for going on a month now. Last time I took it down was to try new firmware for the R7800, and it had been up for about a month before that.

MoCA 2.0 should be fine for you, as long as you're not using satellite TV...I suspect that it might be difficult working around the frequencies that satellite TV takes up...that was an issue for MoCA 1.1, and I'm sure that MoCA 2.0 requires more frequency bandwith than 1.1 did. I used MoCA 1.1 before we got faster internet download speed, and it was pretty much turnkey, very easy to set up. Worked well, consistent speed. Much better than powerline for me around here.

 

[SoSouthern]

Curious if you tried static addresses on the Apple clients? I don't see any problem with our Apple clients here, but if I saw what you described, I'd be trying static addresses. And I don't have a Nest thermostat, just an old-fashioned programmable one that we end up setting manually due to have unpredictable schedules. The Orbi is working really well for us, and our guests also don't have any problem with it. We have 4 Apple devices, 2 phones and 2 tablets, plus a bunch of computers, printers, TV's, etc. Everything is working well with the Orbi, and great wireless throughout the house. Sorry that it didn't work out for you.

Oh yeah, I did have one problem with it, the channel on the 2.4GHz. band wanted to be 40MHz. wide, and I didn't like that. I put up with it for a while, and finally just turned off the 2.4GHz. band. That wasn't a functional problem, just my personal preference...I only had one device on the 2.4GHz. band, a wi-fi printer, so I just connected the printer with a cable and called it a day. I could also have used a 5GHz. wireless bridge, but a wire was simpler *smile*.

I don't feel that Netgear rushed to market any more than anyone else. All the router companies (and computer companies and mobile device companies, etc.) want to make money on new products as soon as they can, so they don't leave things sitting around on shelves, they get them out on the market. The ones that really rushed to market that jump out in my mind are the "mu-mimo" routers where mu-mimo wasn't even activated yet. Or the "open source ready" routers that had no open source projects going, or even open source drivers ready to hand off to third-party firmware writers. Of course, I didn't rush out and buy the Orbi as soon as it came on the market. I waited and read reviews, and decided I'd wait for a sale. Finally came along, and the Orbi was functional for me from the first day that I had it.

I guess that not everything works out for everyone. Glad that you found something that works for you, too, though. The Orbi here has been up with no problems for going on a month now. Last time I took it down was to try new firmware for the R7800, and it had been up for about a month before that.

MoCA 2.0 should be fine for you, as long as you're not using satellite TV...I suspect that it might be difficult working around the frequencies that satellite TV takes up...that was an issue for MoCA 1.1, and I'm sure that MoCA 2.0 requires more frequency bandwith than 1.1 did. I used MoCA 1.1 before we got faster internet download speed, and it was pretty much turnkey, very easy to set up. Worked well, consistent speed. Much better than powerline for me around here.

I didn't go the static route. It seems that some other guys smarter than me attribute the issue more to how Apple devices use wifi. They also mentioned the limited 20mhz on 2.4 being an issue for Apple. Apple seems to want to control wifi on its own terms. I did have better experience after I disabled MU-MIMO and beamforming like others have stated on the Netgear forums, but I feel I shouldn't need to handicap it for it to function as intended. I can't explain the behavior but it seems like the satellite can't process a lot of bandwidth or a device streaming from it while I'm gaming and also having the network tank repeatedly.

I think it's a great setup but it doesn't work for my current needs. I would recommend it to the common household as I feel it is a superior setup among the other mesh systems.


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[SoSouthern]

Oh and I tried an alternative setup in the meantime which is actually working pretty well based on a review from this site of the TP-LINK RE450 extender. I bought it last year but I stopped using it. Well I hooked it up and set the 5Ghz as a backbone and turned off the broadcast for that frequency and enabled 2.4Ghz for extending to my bedroom devices which aren't many. I connected a 1Gb 8-port switch and it has been solid. I'm still going to order the Moca setup as well to see what I can pull out of that.


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[RogerSC]

I have both mu-mimo and beamforming enabled on the Orbi here. Again, no problems with the Apple or any other wireless clients. The TP-Link RE450 sounds good, glad that it's working for you. You can get a lot more out of using MoCA with an access point than you will from an extender, though. At least that's been my experience. My experiences with extenders have all been disappointing. They've all been returned.

 

[sm00thpapa]

Orbi has been working well for me throughout my 2 story home with backyard, patio, kazeebo and pool area. Only issue is some devices see 2 networks coming from Orbi and you can't connect to either one. So I have a Wi-Fi power line adapter for those devices.

 

[pege63]

Orbi has been working well for me throughout my 2 story home with backyard, patio, kazeebo and pool area. Only issue is some devices see 2 networks coming from Orbi and you can't connect to either one. So I have a Wi-Fi power line adapter for those devices.

On wath band is that and wath channel are you using, I'm curious about that?