NETGEAR - Orbi 770 Series

This is my response from a different thread but this applies: A sample size of one but I wanted to give you my perspective. I used to have RBR50 with 1 satellite with wireless back haul. I get 1.2GBPS at from my ISP. I used to get really good speeds (5-600) everywhere, but about 2 months ago it started getting worse and eventually died. I’ve had these for 5-6 years so I got my money worth. I bought Deco BE11000 and had it for a week. I hated it, it was unstable and the internet speeds were all over the place. Compared to my Orbi, I got higher speeds (800 deco vs 500/600 Orbi) when I was close to the router, but worse speeds (80/90 deco vs 200 Orbi) when I was far away from the router. Some of my smart devices didn’t even connect at all. My work computer kept on dropping connection constantly even at 15 feet! Then tried the 770. The firmware was a mess. Constant dropping connections with several drops. My TV which is about 20ft away kept on losing WiFi and it drove me crazy. Specially at the price of 770. I finally went back to RBK752P and it’s been a dream. I get 800+ pretty much everywhere in the house and connection has been rock solid. Take that for what at worth!

Tp link deco or Orbi 770, wired back haul - I have the same situation and got the 770, now I get a full 1.5gbps on all floors every room - put one mesh point on each floor (wired).

You probably want a mesh router. This means that there are two or three routers in a pack that all connect to one another automatically to keep your signal boosted. Go with TP Link Deco or Netgear Orbi 770.

Nice. I thought about the 970 but I’m the only real high usage person in my household, so I went with the 770. It covers an entire 2 acres of my property and I can get a 100mbps signal 1/4 mile down the street (probably a fringe case because I live at the highest point in the neighborhood lol) People like to crap on the 770 but it’s a real nice mid tier solution.

Avoid Netgear at all costs. They appear to be incapable of getting the firmware right for their WiFi 7 units.  I got an Orbi 770 and gave up. I went back to Eero with the Pro 7. Back to stable WiFi. 

Apple compatibility should be nothing to be concerned with. All this WiFi crap has to meet standards or nothing would talk. Your biggest issue with mesh is getting good WiFi paths back to the router. With mesh, you have two WiFi problems -- Client to mesh node and mesh node to router. Most people will recommend that you eliminate the mesh part and wire the connection from node to router for best coverage if you're able to. It's also generally cheaper to do this since you can get a simple AP setup. If you can't eliminate mesh then you should get something that's WiFi 7 and uses both the 5Ghz and 6Ghz bands (the Orbi 770 is tri-band so it does).

I switched to Eero 7 stuff, running 2x Eero Max 7 and 2x Eero Outdoor 7 in AP only mode w/ UniFi UCG-Fiber for my router/gw. No regrets. SO MUCH more stable than the Orbi 770 with its hourly lag/packet loss issues. The roaming is second to none. I've tested it thoroughly and I'm impressed. I know it seems basic, but it's stable and seamless. Performance is roughly on par with the Wi-Fi devices I have at least. I pull 1.3-1.5 Gbps on 6 GHz Wi-Fi 6E, 2.2-2.3 Gbps on 5/6 GHz Wi-Fi 7 MLO, and somewhere between 900 and 1200 Mbps on 5 GHz Wi-Fi 6/6E (honestly not sure what that mode even is linking as standard wise, but that's on my outdoor APs). The wireless backhaul performance is not as strong but it's way more stable. I've got wired backhaul for my important segment anyway.

They have flaws beyond that though. I get an hourly lag/packet loss spike that lasts 20-30 seconds on my 770 satellite even after segmenting or removing all other devices from my network other than my gaming box. No firmware, beta or not, has addressed it. This occurs on the 970 system as well for a lot of people. Netgear engineering engaged me for a minute with a few sporadic replies, but then ghosted me. I switched to Eero stuff. Good riddance, not to be flippant. But I wasted a lot of my life and spare time trying to diagnose that issue.

I've used Netgear Orbi, Eero, and Ubiquiti UniFi WiFi 7 systems all long term. If you want an excellent ecosystem all behind one very sleek pane of glass WITH better performance and reliability and control than the other stuff, just get UniFi. The only caveat is lack of a dedicated wireless backhaul channel but this is often inconsequential because of better range and overall bandwidth. If you want to set it and forget it and have tolerance when a forced botched firmware update is pushed with no rollback option, consider Eero.

I have a specific problem, I have 2Gig connection, I use cat 6 wires for most of tvs and computers, I recently got a eero pro 7, I have ring outdoor cameras and they play shitty with my eeros, also WeMo's keep dropping with eero, I tried Orbi 770 and even worst experience of dropped connection more often. Does any one has a suggestion for me to replace eero pro 7 that works well with ring cameras and WeMo's?

I absolutely hated my Orbi seven hundred series mesh experience. Bad firmware bugs when I first got it, and stability only went down from there.

“Best” can be vague. How much of a hobby is home networking for you? Do you have work requirements that also justify it? Do you have or have the ability to run quality cat5e/6/6A between your basement where the poe switch is/will be and the other floors where you want the access points? Or must it be wireless mesh. I migrated from orbi to unifi. I have hard wired access points. ***I wish I had just started with unifi.*** My wants and needs might not match yours. If the unifi price tag is giving you pause, “better” solutions are provably not worth looking at.

Orbi is trash compared to unifi. -sincerely, and ex Orbi user. Edit: if they don’t want to spend unifi money (which Orbi is too) there are plenty of other options that aren’t with Orbi’s pos firmware updates and years of doggy updates.

I’ll use an isp provided wifi setup before I ever use orbi again. I’m sorry unifi is giving you trouble. I’ve deployed a number of sites using their gear and don’t recall too many issues with the unifi stuff. Protect has been… less smooth. What are you deploying and what’s the issue with the firmware update (loop? Failure to apply? Dead after update?) Honestly unifi usually gets high marks from even non networking enthusiasts for being a pretty polished interface and easy to setup for beginners.

Just for another data point. I hated Orbi with a passion. Unstable. Features removed with releases. Several bad firmware releases by them. Missing features compared to competitors offerings. Even if you think those issues won’t affect you - I’ll give you something else to consider. You need big bang upgrades on orbi hardware typically as they don’t have wide support between new satellites nodes (rbs) with older router nodes (rbr) and Vice versa. Like sometimes even one model back. Which sucks when say you want to add one satellite that supports some newer standards to maybe replace one older. You pretty much end up needing to replace all the orbi hardware at once. They also have a more limited device ecosystem. Want modern outdoor units? Nope. Want to manage your wired physical switches? Nope. Leaving orbi was one of the better decisions I’ve made. My wife has not texted me a single time since leaving orbi asking what’s wrong with the internet or wifi. That used to be a weekly thing with orbi. There are just as good options as Orbi for much less or much better options than Orbi for the same price - IMO.

Orbi satellite compatibility chart can be found over here: https://www.netgear.com/hk-en/blog/home/orbi-satellites/ I stand by my statement that people can’t usually mix their old orbi hardware with anything that supports newer technologies at the access points. Unlike some orbi competitors that have much better track records for mix and match. Also let’s be honest. Orbi tops out at 3-6 satellites depending on the model / generation. That’s not enough for a lot of people now. Orbi also doesn’t support Vlan tagging on wifi clients. That’s basic table stakes now for a flagship system that runs 1k and up these days. They don’t have switches. Onc Orbi doesnt have the ability to manage netgear switches so if you have any meaningful wired infrastructure in your home you are out of luck. The Orbi app is a pos. It’s had known bugs for about a decade saying things are offline while they are also saying clients are connected to them and passing traffic. All of those things would be more palatable if Orbi didn’t want ~1k usd for their current setups. If they were priced like the bottom tier pos they are I’d give them a bigger pass. For 1k usd people can do so much better. For 300-500 they can get something that’s more stable than Orbi and has feature parity. Also you do you, but I’m not bragging about running 9 year old equipment with known vulnerabilities

>_You are mixing apples and oranges. Is the Orbi system perfect, hell no. Does equipment need to be updated periodically, hell yes._ It’s _how_ it needs to be upgraded that’s the issue. You have to whole sale replace everything. >_Again, while it's not a great idea to run 9 year old mesh routers, give me another system with similar longevity and zero failures except for power outages and ISP failures._ Eero, unifi, omada, Meraki, Aruba… you want me to keep going? >How in the hell do you use a router to manage switches? You really are unaware what else is out there aren’t you. It’s like Stockholm syndrome in orbi land. The rest of the of the netgear soho ecosystem stuff that’s in the orbi netgear price point? All of Unifi? Omada? I feel like mentioning anything from Aruba, Nokia, meraki/cisco here would be redundant but also rapidly moving into enterprise level. >I used to regularly do that and just connected directly to the switch. Also, 3-6 satellites for a home?? I have 2 and do well with a 2,000 square foot home. My sister's similar system functions well in a home twice as big with 3 levels. Once you get into modern 6ghz the penetration is less. It’s easily to want / need many access points depending on the building materials used in the structure. Like concrete walls vs brick walls vs timber framing. I have three indoor access points, one for each floor logically. I could go more dense if I wanted more 6ghz coverage. I have two outside for the front and back. I could easily add one or two in the outbuilding/shop or near a fence line. If I don’t have wifi coverage, I’m not getting a phone call most of the time, cell coverage is still terrible in places. >Oh...the system the original poster mentioned, orbi 370 BE5000 Dual-Band Mesh Wi-Fi 7 System with one satellite lists right now at $250. That's a bit off your $1,000 quote. Orbi 970 is 1k easily. The orbi 370 has no 6ghz radio. >Also, I have absolutely no problem with the Obi app and in my home it connects close to perfectly with 7 computers/tablets and a couple dozen IOT devices. Yet any given week there are posts on the orbi sub about “why does the app say it’s offline” and the responses are “known bug”. >They all show up in the app. I did have to do a bit of detective work with my IOT Dyson fan but that was because Dyson broadcasts a combo of letters and numbers without any connection to a fan or the Dyson company. But it showed up and I can use my Amazon Alexa apps to control/communicate with it, my TV, my satellite dish, my kindle tablets, iPad, iPhone, dish network video/stereo receiver, etc., etc. etc. The system also works well when my daughter's family shows up and add another half dozen devices. Isn’t that bare minimum table stakes? Are you doing anything beyond just letting them raw dog your network? >And probably most important for the vast majority of users, it works with minimal IT skills. BTW, I ran an entire school districts computer system for over a dozen years until I retired. Bragging you ran a school district it isn’t a good look if your are bragging that your are running gear that years past its EOL with multiple known published vulnerabilities. >I built the system from a few dial up computers to a system that provided one on one fully networked computers for every student and multiple labs in every school. Would I recommend an Orbi system for those schools?, hell no. But the larger of those schools at times will have 300-400 computers operating on Wifi at any given moment. (Those schools are currently using Ubiquiti Unifi systems with VLANs connected with Cisco Switches and routers.) So you do have experience with setups that can manage WiFi access points and switches as a single pane of glass?

I think you are an orbi apologist that has stockholm syndrome for their products because you arent willing yo admit to yourself that the brand you have fell off and compared to similarly priced systems there is significantly better options out there up or down Orbi’s product offerings. I’ve don’t volunteer work on schools on reservation land and broke af charter schools. I’m familiar with their struggles. None of that changes the fact that orbi is a terrible option to recommend someone go buy today with their current offerings.

If you’ve had 9 years of “bullet proof” or even 6 years of bullet proof service from orbi and you can prove it with actual fucking monitoring and metrics, not just “I never noticed it went out” - I’ll eat my hat. They pushed bad firmware after bad firmware for at least 3 years you supposedly had bullet proof service. They have a list of vulnerabilities long enough that you probably never patched. And then your going to tell me patching shit just isn’t something done in school it workers, cuz you are sooo knowledgeable about shit. Orbi is crap. If you could pull your head out and look around you would know it. There are plenty of less expensive options. There are plenty of options that cost the same that are far better, and easy as hell for people to use.

I work for a data center company. Shitting on orbi is just a hobby. Saving people from making the mistake I did.

The Orbi 770/870 have great range but the buffer bloat is terrible. I returned mine and purchased an eero 7 Pro 3-pack. It’s been easy-sailing since then.

Get an Orbi Wifi 7 router with two satellites. I struggled with WiFi routers for a long time in my house until I discovered Orbi. Expensive, but you won't regret it.

Orbi Wi-Fi 7 products perform incredibly well compared to older Netgear products I’ve had. Downsides are they’re expensive, physically big and unless you have a complex house layout, they may be overkill.