NETGEAR Orbi Whole Home System

My Old Man Bernard K experience Do the research before buying.

First, let me state I change my router every 18 months because my internet speed increases, I am always adding more wireless clients and then lastly wifi technology is constantly changing. Orbi, eero, Velop and Google Wifi are called mesh because you can install multiple access points that all communicate and can self-organize.

There are three very important things that you need to remember about mesh,. First the Access Point can be Dual band (2 radio) or Tri-Band (3 radio), Second, a radio can be 4x4 or 2x2 (more rarely 3x3). Thirdly the radio can be high power or medium power. There is a huge difference in price when you select different options. For example, the Orbi RBK50 series are 4x4 and tri-band and they are very expensive. I bought the RBK23 that is tri-band 2x2 similar spec. as the latest eero. If your budget is infinite, buy an RBK50 series and add more satellite.

Don't pay attention to the square footage listed on the product. It is totally misleading because coverage depends on the layout of the house. If you live in a 6,000 sq ft loft with open space, you probably only need one Access Point. If you live in an older house with many halls and the signal bounces around a lot, you need multiple AP and a high power radio for the backhaul. There are no secret formulas for number of access points and house sq footage.

Now onto installation. It is very important that you do a survey of your house and determine where to place these Access Points. Don't place them randomly because you will end up with the purple ring of death that many reviewers have complained about. Place them strategically and ideally the satellite should be one hop away from the main router. I know that it is not always possible to do this. You may have to try different locations. This is the hardest part of the installation. The installation procedure offered by Linksys is OK and not fool proof. So, if it fails, restart the installation process.

I was shocked that I had to place the Access Point relatively close to each other in order to get a good coverage in my space. I suspect that the RBK23 don't have high power radios. But I placed them strategically in such a way to get a triangle on the App. (v.s., a line) and I now have full coverage in the house. I was also surprised that it takes a long time for the Access Points to converge. I don't know what type of algorithm is used but it takes a long time to settle. I had to wait 3-5 minutes for things to settle down.

Lastly if you use Apple Print, and you have another Gateway (e,g., Verizon FiOS or Comcast) then you should make the Orbi an AP not a router. Printing will not work properly if routed due to broadcast traffic.

Overall, I am happy with thus purchase, I paid $200 for a kit of 3 Access Point (RBK23) and they do the job for a 3,000 sq foot space. Thank you for reading.

My Fellow vandy72 Talk Problems, problems.

I had high hopes for the Orbi after all the reviews I read both here and at other sites but it didn't work out. The first problem came almost immediately when satellite #1 wouldn't pair. I gave up after 4 tries and went to the second satellite and it paired immediately.. So I went back to satellite #1 and it finally paired after 3 tries. Mind you that the satellites were sitting within 2 feet of the Orbi router.
Next I ran the firmware update that it requested I do. That went flawlessly and only took 3-4 minutes.
I then moved the satellites to their distant positions and they paired up very quickly over wifi. The speed test within the Orbi app showed me 119mbps download anywhere I went in my house!
I have cat6 ethernet run to the satellites positions so I connected the satellites and my problems began. I immediately lost connection to both satellites. By powering them down/up and reconnecting the ethernet cables several times I finally got both of them to show up again. The problem here was the Orbi app - each time you do anything it may take 5+ minutes for the change to be registered by the app. So all of this fiddling around took almost 3 hours! Plus, I could never get the app to show a wired connection, only wifi. Even moving a satellite back near the router and connecting them with a 2 foot patch cable wouldn't show a wired connection.
That 119mbps throughput shown by the Orbi app was problematic, too. I could stay right where the app showed me that great connection and the Speedtest app and fast.com would both show only 20-25mbps. Quite a difference! The best I could get from either satellite was 35mbps. I was getting over 110mbps with my old AC-capable routers in bridge mode and was not happy with only 25mbps.
Bottom line: 1) The Orbi app is terrible. Plan on having several hours for what should be a simple installation. 2) speed testing with the Orbi app is not believable 3) I could never get a wired connection between the router and either satellite even after updating the firmware 4) throughput from the satellites was poor.
I was using an existing, proven-good network so that was not the problem. I took my first computer programming course in 1969 and used to own a networking company so I don't feel I was the problem.
Needless to say, the Orbi RBK23 is on its way back to Amazon.

My Old Fellow Mike P Talk so this thing is absolutely amazing! My router/modem is located in our basement where ....

I mean I can't think of a single negative aspect. Hence the 5 out of 5 stars. Set up is easier and faster than making a sandwich. And I'm a sandwich ninja. Certified. Anyway, so this thing is absolutely amazing! My router/modem is located in our basement where the kids sleep (no it's not a dungeon, it's finished with cool stuff like a ping pong table and peace on earth) and upstairs was not getting a good WiFi signal at all. Pretty much useless. Once I installed the Orbi, the clouds parted and I heard angels singing "Whyyyyyy Fiiiiiiiiii". Life has returned to the upstairs area, the darkness has been lifted. I can now stream 1080 HD videos about food once again. (Sandwiches of course) - Thank you Orbi 1 Kenobi, you were my only hope.

My Old Man Shirley tell us STAY AWAY FROM THIS ROUTER AND NETGEAR. THEY DO NOT HELP YOU,BUT THEY DO TAKE YOUR MONEY.

Beware & stay far away from this router and Netgear. It's a trap n it will cost you alot of time on the phone getting help & they will take your $$ without answering the problem.

I have had issues this router since June '18. You have 3 months of technical support. Luckily I was within the 3 month frame. My system was faulty and needed a new router. Netgear had promised to send me a new product within a week. I paid for the RMA shipping and to be expedited - to be delivered within a week, this was June '18. They were quick to charge CC, without a new product. I've been on the phone for with Netgear 3 to 4x week, wIt hold o each phone call minimum of 2 hrs.....if I can only show you my cell phone log with Netgear. I get people seriously from India that are useless..."yes Ma'ma. Sorry to hear that...etc". American company trained them well to say those repetitive things. Netgear left a voicemail that I cannot return thier calls and an email that I cannot respond to. Useless way of contacting a customer. I'm beyond annoyed, frustrated and angry with Netgear.

The more I read about Orbi,the more I see that a lot of customers went through the same problems as I did.

Still waiting to receive my replacement router. If this replacement router is dysfunction this is the last straw for Netgear.

Imagine your kids watching something on ipad,netflix or anything that requires WIFI and it goes out 3 to 4x/wk....unacceptable n unprofessional service Netgear - Dumbgear provides......

**GO TO ANOTHER COMPANY. SAVE YOUR MONEY N DONT LOOK FURTHER INTO NETGEAR. YOUR HELP IS OUTSOURCED TO INDIA....CHEAP SERVICE, IN RETURN YOU WILL RECEIVE CHEAP HELP (THEY DO NOT UNDERSTAND YOU NOR WILL YOU GET ANY STRAIGHT ANSWER). THEY WILL JUST KEEP ASKING FOR YOUR CC.

YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.....
YOU WILL RUN INTO ALOT OF TECHNICAL PROBLEMS. SAVE YOUR SANITY N TIME, GO TO ANOTHER COMPANY.

My Old Man James Nyazai tell us Was excited at first! But it just doesn’t stay working..

I was keen to get this and set it up, based on the reviews. Granted setup was fairly easy, and range and speed were great. At first. The only problem, and it’s a BIG one... it’s not reliable. Devices (I have 37 of them) are always somehow disconnected (I’m on LTE right now, with an Orbi in the same room...) and that’s a game-over for me. When you say “Alexa...” and she immediatiateky responds “sorry, I’m not connected to the internet right now, check your WiFI settings on this device” every single time, then how is a VPA even useful?? Or your Nest thermostat won’t work? And your Ring doorbell is just a pretty brick and stays silent all the time, even when someone is knocking?? A reliable connection is #1. So I just spent $300 to make my life way more complicated and annoying. I’ll be going back to my 5yr old Apple AirPort Extreme. It was 802.11ac before that was even a standard. And guess what? It just works. Every single day. No walking around the house restarting devices.

Update: still having WiFi connectivity issues. Nethear keeps emailing me asking me to provide feedback, they seem to think I bought it at Best Buy or Costco. Either way, I’m surprised I get their emails since my WiFi connection is always down. Frustrated. And no, I don’t want their $50 gift card for submitting a review. I just want a WiFi network that works all the time and doesn’t drop connections.

My Fellow Aaron Quintana tell us Good concept, poor execution.

I’m a network engineer by trade. Our house is such that my router is located upstairs on one side of the building and my bedroom downstairs on the other side. Between the rooms It’s about 1000ft with multiple walls. Ive tried using wireless extenders and repeaters but they all seemed to suffer from the same issue of drops when moving from zone to zone. I did a lot of research on full mesh routers and decided to give this one a shot. Installation was relatively easy and I had it up and going in about 20 minutes. I went into my bedroom, checked that the satellite was showing a strong connection and proceeded to browse. Same. Exact. Issue. It would browse for a good 5-10 minutes on my cell phone or tablet and then spin. Reddit wouldn’t load gifs with any sort of quickness and my smart TV was constantly buffering on streaming services. I boxed it up and sent it back. Reading the other reviews it looked like there’s a firmware issue (I did update all the firmware) but I’m not about to deal with rolling everything back. It either works first time out of the box or it gets sent back.

My Fellow Pedro Castro experience CHECK REVIEWS FIRST "NETGEAR Orbi Home Mesh WiFi System | 3-Pack (RBK23)".

I really had great expectations and hopes for the "NETGEAR Orbi Home Mesh WiFi System | 3-Pack (RBK23)". It is a shame that all the reviews in this page are for different models of the Orbi Home Mesh WiFi systems, I am guessing that some models work best than others, but my experience with this purchase has been so disappointing and frustrating that I decided to return this product to Amazon.

I really tried my best to make this system work, I opened a case with Netgear support and they could not get this to work properly. After being in the phone with them multiple times, the last representative asked me to apply a change to the router, she muted her line and after 10 - 15 minutes, she got back on the phone and said that the call was being ended because she could not hear me. It is also very frustrating that she asked for my phone number when she was assigned to my case in case that we got "disconnected" and then she did not call me back.

Maybe I purchased the wrong system and I should have purchased the latest model, but after this experience with Netgear support, I am going back to Linksys. These are the major issues that I had with this "NETGEAR Orbi Home Mesh WiFi System | 3-Pack (RBK23)" solution:

1-> The wireless speed was slower than my old Linksys router. I was standing next to the router and the max speed that I was able to get with my Mac was 185 – 215 Mbps. Netgear support asked me to change the channel settings multiple times and they also asked me to enable/disable some of the router settings with no success. My old Linksys router is able to achieve ~400 Mbps (Using the same Mac) if I am standing next to the router.

2-> Multiple wireless devices would disconnect randomly during the day. We would be streaming and watching TV and the network connection would reset multiple times. I switched to my old router and the problem has not occurred in days.

I really wish that this solution was going to work, I never write reviews, but after looking at the reviews of others experiencing the same issues, I decided to share my experience with this purchase. Good luck if you decide to purchase the “NETGEAR Orbi Home Mesh WiFi System | 3-Pack (RBK23)"

My Old Fellow MG-9223 said Horribly unreliable and supported by awful customer service.

I bought this router hoping that it would be a good solution for a large space. I found it glitchy and poor performing. I found that the network would drop roughly 3-4 times per day and require a full reset each time to get it up and running. I spent hours on the phone with Netgear trying to correct the problem. I wasted time with firmware patches and different settings. None of them worked. This network is just glitchy as all get-out and very unreliable if you need a dependable wifi network. The worst part is, all of the time I wasted over the past two months with Netgear trying to get product to work properly ate through my Amazon return window. I tried to return the network to Netgear but they are refusing. Their customer service has been atrocious to deal with. I would have been much better off just returning the product the moment I experienced issues.

As post-script to this review, I ended up buying the Google mesh network and it has worked flawlessly for the past ~month. Don't waste your time or money with Orbi. There are better options out there.

My friend Mr. Bottom Tooth said Fantastic so far (2019 review).

Early review for the Orbi are, how do we say, not favorable at all. There appears to be myriad of issues that seem to get fixed in one firmware, only for things to break horribly in a subsequent firmware. So, I was hesitant to buy Orbi.

I'm replacing an oldish Trendnet router that lives in my basement. Because it lives in my basement, I've also attached a Trendnet extender to cover the entire house. The main reason for moving to a mesh system is being able to eliminate the 4 wireless networks that served my house (2.4ghz & 5ghz from both the router and the extender). In a mesh system, you have one SSID that blankets the whole house. Moving between access points in a mesh system is seamless and without interruption.

The problem became, which mesh system was the best? There are a lot of options from the big name makers along with ones from unfamiliar companies. Prices are equally all over the place. When it came down to making a purchase though, I picked Orbi RBR20 for a few reasons:

1. It's a tri-band system (more devices connected with less loss of speed)
2. It's AC2200 vs my old wifi that was AC1200
3. The link between the satellites and the router is incredibly fast unlike using an extender/repeater. Plus, it's a dedicated link not being shared with other 5ghz connected devices.
4. The price was inline with what I was willing to pay, and lower than other less-robust systems

Installation went incredibly smooth. I'm the type of person that prefers to login to a router's homepage and make configurations myself via the web GUI. When the exceedingly brief quick start guide said to go download the phone app and start plugging things in, I knew something was going to go horribly wrong.

One word of advice, after you order the Orbi, go ahead and download the Orbi app and get that setup while you wait for delivery. You'll need to create an account and then verify that account via email link. Once you're setup, you can just close the app and patiently wait for your delivery.

Once you get your box, unpack it and place your satellites where you'll need them. They will need to be plugged into an electrical outlet. BUT DON'T PLUG THEM IN YET! Just get them placed. I bought two satellites and placed one on each floor over the house basically in a vertical line with each other.

Next, take the base station/router unit and go to where your current router is. Launch the app you already configured, and tell it you want to install a new Orbi system. It'll will guide you step by step on what to do. Just follow the instructions on the app, and don't jump the gun. Once you get everything plugged in, the app will discover the main unit and the satellites. It'll update the firmware, and prompt you to pick an admin password, SSID and wifi authentication password to join the network.

There were a few times where I was worried thing were working and the app had locked up or was borked--especially during the satellite discovery phase. Just be patient. Keep the app open and running, and things should work out. The total time from unboxing to I was up and running was maybe about 30-40 minutes.

2 weeks in and I've had no issues. Speeds are great. Coverage is exceptional (so much better than with my extender and old router). Knock on wood, this system operates as flawlessly as it does right now.

My Old Fellow James T. experience JUNK....

Ok. Let me start by saying I was intially excited and surprised when I hooked it up at first. Plugged in and started right up. Was up and running in moments. The initial speed test was 5 times faster than my Google Fiber Modems wifi so I am really happy. BUT then I tried to setup the Circle App so I could monitor my kids internet traffic. The whole purpose of this purchase... so then I find out it needs a firm ware update to be able to access Circle. No problem right... .well one done it is at square one all over again... so then I resetup the whole network and finally get Circle up... then learn most functions require a subscription to access... WTF right... so I am disappointed but figure the basic functions are still available and the higher speed make it worth it... right? Wrong...I then spend half an hour trying to figure out why my roku won't stream anything while connected to this garbage. Apparently others experienced this same issue as I read through some blogs seeing if there was a reasonable fix... I got frustrated and decided to just reconnect to the Google Fiber wifi for the night and immediately my issues were solved... so...I am done with this crap and will pack it back up in the am to return to Amazon. If I were you...Id look elsewhere. This thing is far from worth the money.