Monday, January 21, 2019

Home Upgrades: The Impressive Orbi

I had setup our home wifi about 7years ago. It has been running rather slowly, especially now that the kids have discovered Netflix on their devices, and coverage has always been rather lackluster. I had a router and then a wireless repeater to get coverage to the side of the house opposite where the Modem was and to provide coverage into the basement. Basement coverage was less than great, typically at most 2 bars and Netflix on the TV downstairs could be slow and coverage at the other side of the house was often not great either.

She who must be obeyed requested I fix this problem as it was becoming rather annoying, especially when she needed a strong connection for work while the kids would play.

So this weekend, I picked up a Netgear Orbi RBK to replace my prior system.

Setup was very easy.

I unplugged the old router and had the router plugged into the cable modem and the satellite setup where the old repeater had been. Withing a few minutes I was fully up and had all the devices around the house (printer, computers, everyone's idevice), reconnected to the Orbi and the Orbi network ID renamed to something the kids chose which was to them rather whimsical and clever but suitably edgy, and the default username and passwords changed.

Testing it out, the performance was impressively improved.

There was full reception in the basement and in the far reaches of the house, and the speed and smoothness was markedly increased throughout the house.

Two Netflix movies playing and computers could still connect and do work without issue.

Seven years worth of improvements in home wireless technology certainly has paid off in this device.

A definite recommendation if you're finding your home internet wifi slow and in need of an upgrade.

5 comments:

drjim said...

Thanks for the 'review', Aaron.

I've been looking for some way to get "high speed" Internet down in the basement.

I tried an access point, various USB 'dongles', and wound up with 'powerline networking', but I can barely get 100 MB/s. Right out of the router with an Ethernet cable I can get the full 350 MB/s.

I'll look into the Orbi. Sounds like it might be what I've been looking for.

Eaton Rapids Joe said...

So, did they name the network "Still your President"?

Old NFO said...

Yep, technology marches on...

Jeff B said...

Poke around the UI for the Orbi, see if there's an option to force 5 GHz for the WiFi.

MUCH faster than 2.4 GHz...

Aaron said...

drjim: You're welcome. So far its still going strong with great and clean reception in the basement whih is a nice change form the prior setup. It also doesn't drop like the other repeater did, repeatedly.

Joe Mama: Nope it was more a sarcastic technology related term.

Old NFO: That it does, and it is often, but not always a welcome improvement.