I Want To Blow Up My !!$?/@!!;&ing WiFi System

[jyl]

This is going to start as a vent and end with a question.

I hate my effing WiFi system at home. I have a Netgear Orbi 850RBR base station and an Orbi 850RBS satellite, fed by an Xfinity cable modem. It used to work nicely, but in the past year it has been terrible. When I’m standing in the same room as the base station using my iPhone 12, Fast.com reports very good speeds: 180 to 260 Mbps. When I’m standing right next to the satellite, similar. But anywhere else in the house, things are iffy and variable. Sometimes I get 80 Mbps, sometimes 2 Mbps, sometimes no internet connection at all, and things can change every couple minutes! My wife has the same problem using her iPhone 11, we have similar problems with our Macbooks, my son has a similar problem with his Thinkpad, etc. I find myself having to turn my phone WiFi on and off to reconnect, and it is not uncommon that I spend 5 or 10 minutes trying to connect to WiFi.

Before this I had an eero mesh system, that also worked fine for a couple years and then started giving me similar problems.

WTF is going on. Why can’t these g-d WiFi systems simply work the same way after three years as they worked when I first buy them?

Before the eero, I had a system of Apple WiFi access points - two Airport Extremes and two little Airports, that worked great for a decade. But Apple stopped making those and eventually WiFi standards moved on.

The Orbi app says there’s no firmware update available. I’ve rebooted the Orbi base station, unplugged and replugged the satellite, powered my phone and off.

My house is two stories, each about 1000 sf, a finished attic third floor of about 600 sf, and a basement of 1000 sf that we use a lot. It is a “four square”, so basically a box, 111 year old wood frame construction. The cable modem is on the first floor, at one corner of the house in the kitchen, where there are big metal things (fridge, hood, etc). I’ve tried various locations for the satellite, on different levels.

If you were me, what would you do to figure this out and fix the damn WiFi?

I’ve thought of rerouting the cable to place the cable modem closer to the center of the first floor, having the base station at the same place, then adding a second satellite.

I’ve thought of throwing away the Orbis and trying something else. I’m open to using something heavier duty (Ubiquiti?) if I can figure out how - I know nothing about networking.

I am even open to hiring a professional, except that the idea makes me ashamed.

[KFC911]

LOL .... as a former network professional (but WiFi wasn't my forte), you need help!

I'm not it

[stevej37]

My latest router/modem I set up myself. I was told it would be easy.
Two days and prob four hours on the phone later...it finally worked.

Never again...I'll pay someone else to do it next time.

[cstreit]

I wonder if this is a channel/interference thing?

Someone else in the area installed a network extender on a similar frequency.

Have a you tried a full reset and channel scan?

[astrochex]

The landscape lighting system at our home is controlled via wifi. The two lights that are closest to a neighbor work only infrequently due to blockage from their wifi.

[IROC]

Originally Posted by jyl

My house is two stories, each about 1000 sf, a finished attic third floor of about 600 sf, and a basement of 1000 sf that we use a lot. It is a “four square”, so basically a box, 111 year old wood frame construction. The cable modem is on the first floor, at one corner of the house in the kitchen, where there are big metal things (fridge, hood, etc). I’ve tried various locations for the satellite, on different levels.

This might be your problem. We struggled with the same issues you point out above. I tried everything. Repeaters, mesh systems, etc. When Covid hit and all the sudden I'm working from home and three kids are doing school from home, it was completely unacceptable. My daughter's room would see less than 15 MBPS sometimes. I talked to my oldest son who is an IT genius and he said that WiFi routers work best if they are up higher. I ordered a 100 ft Cat 5 cable and temporarily moved the exact same router we had been having trouble with from the first floor (near the kitchen) to the second floor. Problem solved. We did speed tests in every room (with multiple devices) before and after and in each case, the "after" speeds were much higher. The router now lives in a linen closet in the hallway on the second floor of the house.

That's all it took. I now routinely see 450 MBPS download in most areas of my 3200 sq ft house.

Try some experimenting with moving the router around.

[KFC911]

Though I've been out of the networking game for years, and cables always beat WiFi in terms of reliability and throughput, we literally had hundreds (almost 1K) of WAPs in our buildings.... almost all were located/mounted high up on walls in strategic locations.

Good luck John!

[greglepore]

Assume you're running the xfinity modem in bridge mode with the wifi disabled?

That Netgear is a nice piece. The world of wifi everything is really stressing out most consumer routers, but a good 6 system should be fine.

I do know of a friend that had an issue with his local xfinity whereby some security software at their end didn't like some device he had on his network (an older airport he used for streaming) and identified it as a possible dns attack threat and kept whacking his ip with filtering that would crash his network. No one locally could solve it, but he's a cellular consultant to investment banks and was able to get thru to top level engineers at Comcast that solved it for him. You or I would get nowhere.

[KFC911]

One other thing to check.... lots of "layers" in the big picture that auto-negotiate various settings ... find what all of these are negotiating to, and then lock them down. Remove the negotiation from the equation if you are in a static location like your house all of the time.

[masraum]

Originally Posted by KC911

One other thing to check.... lots of "layers" in the big picture that auto-negotiate various settings ... find what all of these are negotiating to, and then lock them down. Remove the negotiation from the equation if you are in a static location like your house all of the time.

LOL, hard code speed and duplex!

Things have gotten much better these days. I might have suggested that in the past (even for switchports and NICs) but these days, things are often as good or better when allowed to negotiate.

[KFC911]

Originally Posted by masraum

LOL, hard code speed and duplex!

Things have gotten much better these days. I might have suggested that in the past (even for switchports and NICs) but these days, things are often as good or better when allowed to negotiate.

Yeah... you might be correct . We used to lock everything down (even DHCP, etc.) on all of our latest & greatest gear though. If things are flakey and inconsistent however, I would at least elininate all variables until the issue is resolved and then work backwards.

T-Rex is done here ....

[masraum]

Originally Posted by KC911

Yeah... you might be correct . We used to lock everything down (even DHCP, etc.) on all of our latest & greatest gear though. If things are flakey and inconsistent however, I would at least elininate all variables until the issue is resolved and then work backwards.

T-Rex is done here ....

I used to use netstumbler to see what other wifi was around my house and then hardcode my wifi onto channels that were the weakest/least used for interference's sake. That was probably 15-20 years ago. I haven't bothered in a long time and for ~8 years that was in an apt complex in the city (LOTS of wifi).

I'd avoid 5gHz and stick with 2.4gHz. I think 5 has a speed advantage in some situations, but is more impacted by having to go through walls and stuff.

And yes, I'm also a network professional, but like KC, wifi is not my particular area of expertise either. These days they are usually plug and play.

It's possible that neighbors have now systems that are causing interference as stated above. Even cordless phones, microwaves and big metal boxes (including AC ducting) can cause issues. In my old home that was built in '67 and was a 2 story 4-square. Most of the house was great, but the room where my computer was (opposite corner from the router) had terrible connectivity. I eventually hard wired that room, but in the mean time, I bought a cable and put the wifi antenna high on the wall behind the door. The distance between my PC and the router was probably 15'-18' except that there were probably 4-5 walls between the two, and those walls wouldn't have had AC ducts or plumbing in them.

[GH85Carrera]

I had the first WiFi system in my neighborhood. I remember the days of looking for a signal, and finding no one else running WiFi. Now there are are many signals when I look for them.

My router sits at 7 feet in the air on top of a cabinet-desk in my office. My garage is the opposite far corner in my house. The signal is not real strong but plenty good enough to stream music from a really old iPad to some computer speakers for my garage listening.

As mentioned in posts above, get the router as high up as possible. And use a cable when possible. I have my computers just a few feet from the router, and this system is plugged right into the router, and the rest of the the Cat5a and Cat6 cables all go to a gigabit switch. I have a DVR recording my security cameras all driven by Cat5a power over Ethernet, or POE.

One other tip, by an upper end (more expensive and professional) level of router. More channels, and something that the firmware can be updated to keep it current.

[KFC911]

Like Steve .... the routers/switches I used to work with cost about $750K each (and we had a few ).... I doubt my robot vacuum is even in the same league .

I run it in stooopid mode tho'....

[nota]

we have a device that looks like a big spider on the wall
a ''netgear up'' after the kid bought and installed it no problems

it is wired ant for wifi

[Gogar]

two ideas from me.

Make sure your wired speed is ok. Hook your laptop right to the back of the modem or the router and check your speed.

Next download "wifi explorer lite' for free on your laptop and take a look at the wifi channels in your neighborhood and you can see if a neighbor is right on top of you or if there are any channels where you have a better chance.

here's a shot of my neighborhood, the 2.4 and 5g. I'm "Grandma." My next door neighbor is "poison ivy"

[Paul T]

Originally Posted by GH85Carrera

I had the first WiFi system in my neighborhood. I remember the days of looking for a signal, and finding no one else running WiFi. Now there are are many signals when I look for them.

My router sits at 7 feet in the air on top of a cabinet-desk in my office. My garage is the opposite far corner in my house. The signal is not real strong but plenty good enough to stream music from a really old iPad to some computer speakers for my garage listening.

As mentioned in posts above, get the router as high up as possible. And use a cable when possible. I have my computers just a few feet from the router, and this system is plugged right into the router, and the rest of the the Cat5a and Cat6 cables all go to a gigabit switch. I have a DVR recording my security cameras all driven by Cat5a power over Ethernet, or POE.

One other tip, by an upper end (more expensive and professional) level of router. More channels, and something that the firmware can be updated to keep it current.

I agree with this if you can afford it - it does make a difference. I use enterprise level stuff (mostly Pakedge), and I never touch it, it just works and actually many years old at this point.

[rattlsnak]

The Xfinity router is actually better than the netgear setup.. (netgear is not very good overall. Linksys is MUCH better) But anyway, use the Xfinity Gateway and get 2-3 of their xPods and you should be good to go..

https://www.xfinity.com/learn/internet-service/wifi/xfi-pod

[wildthing]

First I'd establish if it's the home network or Xfinity. I would connect my laptop via Ethernet to the Xfinity modem and test speed there.

Then I'd disable the Orbi thing and turn on the WiFi on the Xfinity modem and test speed there.

Then I'd turn on the 1 Orbi thing that connects to the modem, and if the Orbi thing has an Ethernet port, I'd test that first.

Then WiFi via the Orbi... and add each access point one by one.

If at any point there's a problem I'd probably do a hardware reset on that device.

[Brian 162]

I'm in the same boat as you so I know your frustration. There's a dead spot in the house right where the couch is in the tv area. We got a mesh type system and I saw no real difference. We had a guy come in this week and had us re-locate some of the pods. It's better but he said where I hang out it's close to the main steel beam that travels the length of the basement. He said that's why it's bad in this area of the house.
Good luck