[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.