NETGEAR - Orbi 970 Series

I just had my Orbi 972 units crash for a 3rd time this month and in the middle of an important meeting. I am so done with the product. I just ordered a Firewalla Gold Pro and 2 AP 7 units. Goodbye forever Netgear. You suck.

You must have gotten a dud. Deco BE95 system. Simply amazing. Had it for 12 weeks now. Zero drops. 5800 sq ft home. ISP 6 Gig up and Down. Wired backhaul. 121 connected devices. Wired devices that can handle multi gig speeds - 6 GIG WiFi 7 - 2.5-4.3 GIG WiFi 6E - 1.8-2.4 GIG WiFi 6 - 1.1-1.6 GIG WiFi 5 - 600 mbps - 900 mbps WiFi 2.4 - 200-500 mbps The consistency, reliability and speed blow every simple competitor out of the water in my experience! Amazing system and have tried them all! Eero Max 7, Orbi 970s, Asus ZenWifi

I have the Orbi 970 3 pack. How do you set it up so only home devices connect to the 2.4ghz band?

Go BE95. I have the main router and 2 satellites. Switched from Orbi 970. The BE 95’s have shown themselves to be much more reliable. 970’s weren’t worth the ridiculous price I paid.

I went from the RBR50’s to the Orbi 97* series as well with three satellites and have had no issues either. It works as well as the older RBR50’s with the added bonus that wireless is basically faster than gigabit even with a wireless backhaul ( which is why I got this ). The two major changes with the new network was ( as you ) creating a separate 2.4 ghz IoT network and the other thing was Orbi doesn’t like spaces in the wireless network name anymore so we ended up having to rename our network. Once we did that everything seems fine.

The 970 system has been mostly fine for us, speeds and coverage as advertised. In a year or so we’ve had one major inexplicable no internet/unsync issue that mysteriously resolved itself. Being forced to use WPA3 for full wireless back haul speed rather than hybrid WPA2/3 makes some of our devices complain but that’s a tech limitation, not on Netgear. If you have the money to spend it’s a solid way to blast high speed wireless across a big house with a minimum of fuss and all the configurability most folks will ever need.

Have a 971 and 970 set up in my house 3400~/sqft. After the most recent firmware update, it’s been pretty damn stable. 50iah devices across tv’s, laptops, pc’s, game systems, iot devices, cameras. It did take some time to find the right placement for the satellite, and go through the firmware updates. Trial and error is frustrating but when it’s humming, it’s great. Hell I can get to my neighbors house a hundred feet away and still connect.

Have a 971 and 970 set up in my house 3400~/sqft. After the most recent firmware update, it’s been pretty damn stable. 50iah devices across tv’s, laptops, pc’s, game systems, iot devices, cameras. It did take some time to find the right placement for the satellite, and go through the firmware updates. Trial and error is frustrating but when it’s humming, it’s great. Hell I can get to my neighbors house a hundred feet away and still connect.

Orbi’s main network doesn’t handle 5GHz WPA3 and 6GHz WPA3 cleanly. **Solution →** Set the main network to pure WPA3, and split IoT devices onto a separate SSID (WPA2 only). If all devices support 6GHz → putting them on the main network is fine. But if you have IoT devices without 6GHz → they must go on the IoT SSID. Simply put: Orbi’s handling of 5GHz WPA3 + 6GHz WPA3 is messy, so if you don’t have 6GHz devices, you’ll run into problems. Even today, with MacBooks running Apple Silicon (M‑series) and Orbi updated to the latest firmware, the same issues remain: massive DHCP request storms are still unresolved. This brand gets criticized by many users for good reason. Its handling of mDNS on the main network is clearly broken, with no user‑configurable options. Automatic band steering introduces endless problems, which is why HomeKit devices consistently run into issues!! The Orbi 970 series has the same issues.！！！

I went from the 750s (Router + 2 sats) to the 970s (same setup) with 0 issues. I only upgraded because the 750s WAN maxes out at 1Gbit and my new connection is 1.6Gbit. I gave the 750s to a friend who's had no issues either. It's a shame the OP is having problems, but they've either got a faulty build or there are local issues causing the problems.

We’ve had the 970 for a couple of weeks, we’ve got an old house with very thick solid walls and three floors and have never had any WiFi at either end before, I’ve been using data on my phone in my bedroom even though we’ve had extenders. Finally decided to bite the bullet and pay up, I’ve got the router and two satellites and I get 11-1200 GBit on my iPhone everywhere, 8-900 MB in the garden. I am not a tech person, I wanted something ridiculously easy to set up, this was, I didn’t want to be able to play about with settings, it has also been easy to set up the IOT, it was just there - 8 know very technical -, some things automatically moved across others we’ve had to reset (the Sonos speakers in the kitchen for example which I had to put back to factory settings, but now work perfectly again.) so two weeks in we love it, although yes it cost an arm and a leg (I did get a good discount though). I’m happy, I don’t want to touch it again for many years so hopefully this will last.

I have had similar experience with Eero units and sold them eventually. Got Orbi 970 after initial hiccups have resolved most of the issues. Working well now