NETGEAR Mesh WiFi Add-on Satellite (RBS10) - Discontinued by Manufacturer

Before I get into my review of the recently released Netgear Orbi AC3000 Tri-band Wifi System (RBK50), I thought I would first give a quick history and background.I've been using a Netgear Nighthawk X6 AC3200 Tri-band Gigabit Wifi Router (R8000) in my home for almost two years (starting late 2014). I specifically bought that relatively expensive router because of its beam forming technology and promise of greater range and coverage. While it proved a worthy upgrade over my previous router from nearly two years before that (starting late 2012), an Asus RT-AC66U Dual-band Wireless-AC1750 Gigabit Router (itself an upgrade over a previous router, and so on and so forth), it was not without its flaws.Because of the way the Nighthawk distributed its bands, it needed two network names. While in most cases this was not an issue since both networks usually communicated with each other as if they were one, sometimes devices on one network segment wouldn't talk well with devices on the other network segment. And of course, because of the frequency, some devices would only work with one network or the other. Finally, while the 5.8 GHz band was the fastest, it was also of course the frequency that would lose range the soonest, often requiring my device (usually a smartphone) to drop one network and connect to the other.Perhaps more frustrating though was that regardless of network or band, there were still a few dead spots in my house. We have a three story home, and my cable modem is located in our mostly finished basement, so there was little flexibility in placement of the router, which needs a hardwired connection to the Xfinity cable modem. While the added power of the Nighthawk improved overall range and speed over my previous solutions, I still had a few notable dead spots, like in the bathroom and laundry room areas on the main floor.While I was considering range extenders, like the Keewifi kisslink Wireless Smart Router/Range Extender/Repeater (which I actually own), the downside to those is that they typically require their own network name, meaning I'd have a third network name to think about, plus there's a performance hit. While said performance hit is relatively modest, it's still there.Enter mesh networking. Solutions like eero, Luma, Securifi Almond, and the recently announced Google WiFi, among others, all work on the idea of a centralized router and one or more satellites. These satellites communicate with the centralized router over a dedicated channel, and, with more than one satellite, each other, creating extensive coverage areas with minimal loss of speed or dramatic increase in latency, especially in comparison to traditional repeaters. While all those solutions are or seem nice, I decided to go with the company with the greatest home networking experience and the promise of only needing a single satellite for my size home. As such, I ended up choosing the Netgear Orbi AC3000 Tri-band Wifi System (RBK50).The package is simple. In the box are the two nearly identical routers, two power supplies, quick start guide, and a flat white network cable. Perhaps the first thing you'll be struck by is that these routers are not particularly small. In fact, in comparison to the competition, they're rather large at almost 9 inches tall, 7 inches wide, and 3 inches thick. If you plan on making one of these devices part of your home decor, you may need to think twice about this particular solution and go with one of the other options. For me, though, my main concern is performance.Following the quick start guide, I unplugged the network cable that goes from from my Nighthawk to my cable modem and plugged it into the correct port on the Orbi. I then powered on the Orbi and let it set itself up with my modem. Of note is that there are only three NIC ports available on the main router, and I had four cables plugged into the four ports on my Nighthawk. Fortunately, I was able to plug the extra network cable into a powerline router (which I may phase out at some point since only a printer makes use of it now) and plug that into the port on the Orbi. Finally, I used the USB 2.0 port on the Orbi to power my SmartThings hub, which of course also took up one of those NIC ports.With that out of the way, it was time to place my Orbi satellite. I intended to place it below my standing desk on our main floor so my desktop computer and Surface Pro 3 dock could make use of the (four) NIC ports on the satellite. Unfortunately, its color light-based syncing wasn't working the way the quick start guide indicated, staying on the syncing process way too long.I tried moving the satellite to another part of the main floor, but it still wouldn't sync correctly. Finally, I moved it down to the basement to see if I could get any sync at all going. Fortunately, I was able to, so everything was at least shown to be working correctly. I moved it back to under my standing desk and it repeated the several minute syncing process, and this time it worked just fine.The Orbi comes preconfigured with a random default SSID and password, but you're prompted to change it to whatever you want after you login either via a desktop or mobile browser. I chose my Windows 10 desktop.While again, I had a few struggles initially, setup via Chrome on my desktop eventually went smoothly. I named the network the same as the primary name of my previous Nighthawk network so most devices would automatically see it (about the only ones that were on the 5 GHz network and wouldn't know about the main network were my two Xbox Ones, which I was able to switch over without incident). There were of course firmware updates for both routers, but that too installed without issues.My first performance tests on my desktop proved fruitful. With that out of the way, I walked around the house with my Apple iPhone 6 Plus, and, sure enough, even with a momentary drop in one bar of full signal strength as I walked about (which quickly returned to maximum), I had zero dead spots. The main floor bathroom and laundry area was perfect, and I even took a stroll in our backyard, again, with full signal strength at places the previous router could only dream of. Browsing on the mobile browser was as speedy as I ever experienced it.Although I've only been using the Orbi for a few days, I feel confident in saying that mesh networking is the clear solution for anywhere range and performance with existing single routers are currently issues. And the Orbi works exactly as the marketing materials say it does, which is a big plus.Naturally, if I come across any performance or other issues as more time passes, I'll post an additional review, a part 2, sooner rather than later. For now, though, the Orbi receives my enthusiastic recommendation for providing superior coverage and performance in our multi-floor home with a few dozen wifi-hungry devices.PLUSES:- Covers a large area (up to 4000 square feet)- Can be expanded with more satellites to cover an even larger area (up to 2000 additional square feet per satellite)- Excellent performance- Easy access to settingsMINUSES:- Relatively large routers that you may not want prominently displayed in your main living spaces- Initial setup is not necessarily seamless- Like other solutions of this type, it's relatively pricey

Background: I moved into a row house that had a Verizon Fios hookup (which is great, BTW - very fast). The service came with a Verizon branded WiFi base station / router. It works OK if you're in range of the router, but one floor up and one room over, the 2.4GHz signal is weak and the 5GHz signal is undetectable. I'm in a fairly dense neighborhood, so my phone's Wifi Analyzer app can see 8 2.4GHz WiFi networks and even 2 5GHz networks belonging to neighbors. This means that picking a completely unused channel is impossibly, and interference from neighbors' networks makes the range of my own base station more limited than it'd be if I were out in the country with a big yard.I had bought a TP-Link RE-205 range extender, and that sort of helped, but it has some issues. Mainly, if you extend both 2.4GHz and 5GHz networks, it needs to be power cycled every few days because it gets into a state where it can't connect to the base station after a while(!). If you extend a 2.4GHz network but only allow 5GHz clients to the extender, it works OK, but the range is poor since 5GHz doesn't penetrate walls as well. One room away, my iPad had a weak connection to the extender, which is one floor up and one room over from the Verizon base station. Finally, since it's a second WiFi network, a wired device on the extender's network cannot be reached from a wireless device on the main network (that the extender is extending). So I have to make sure to be on the extender's wifi network to reach that wired device that's connected to the extender. That severely limits where in the house I can be when using that wireless device, since the extender's network has to be 5GHz in order for the extender to be stable.After some research I bought the Netgear Orbi RBK50, consisting of two oval towers, one of which is the base/router, and the other of which is the satellite. The things that made me buy it: (1) It comes with only one satellite, but you can buy additional ones if you need better coverage. (2) It supports wired backhaul. My first floor has an unused Ethernet cable that runs under the house and pops up in the living room (the router used to be there), so I could have the router in the back plus a wired satellite in the front if necessary. (3) The bandwidth for the price ($279) seems good - not as expensive and fast as the new, $700 WiFi 6 hardware, but faster than the dumb range extender I have now. (3) I've had Netgear hardware before and it worked pretty well, so I didn't expect this to be as flaky as the TP-Link range extender, which as I mentioned above needs to be power cycled about once a week to keep it working (!). (4) The styling is subtle, unlike the hideous Netgear Nighthawk XRM570.It worked pretty well when I got it. The out-of-box experience was pretty good, although the printed instructions in the quick start guide didn't match up with the Android Orbi app at all. Also, the Orbi app got confused part of the way through the setup process while I was trying to add the password to my password manager app. I guess they tested with people who memorize passwords or write them on post-it notes or something, but lots of people use password managers so it's disappointing that the app gets lost when you switch to another app and back a couple of times. Still, going through the setup wizard a few times was sufficient to get it all working.Now that's it's set up, the WiFi coverage and speed are outstanding. I am so glad I bought this kit. So far I don't need a second satellite; the one satellite is covering the whole front of the house successfully, and measured bandwidth on my iPad at the front of the house is 300-500Mbps, with a strong and stable signal. A laptop connected to the satellite via wired gigabit Ethernet gets similar bandwidth-test numbers. I am very happy with this setup now.The only reservation I have now is that the Orbi app doesn't let you configure much. For example, I can't find a way to change the address range; it's 192.168.1.x and I guess that's the only option.

Fácil de instalar, desde que salió esta tecnología me ayudo a cubrir todos los puntos de casa y jardín.

After installing the Orbi mesh system I had solid wifi signal throughout my home. I highly recommend this product

I bought this satellite to add to my existing Orbi RBK50 network. The coverage has imrpoved and there are no deadspots now. I get the same download speeds over my WiFi as my ISP allows - 300Mbps. All 3 units work as one and ensures a single SSID network spans my home. So no disconnections even if I move from one area to another while on a video call or conference within my home. Not once the router had to be restarted after its latest firmware upgrade that was done 6 months back. Reliable and steady performance and I am happy with it.

I purchased the Netgear Orbi RBK50 for my home for the purpose of providing whole home wifi. I am very happy and satisfied with my decision and my review is as follows The Problem :1. I have more than 30 devices, on both 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz which were overloading my earlier router.2. Earlier router wasn't able to reach to each corner of my house, at least the 5GHz band wasn't able to. So although I had a 100Mbps UP/DOWN internet line, I was unable to get the full speed at most of my house locations.3. My smart home devices would lose connections and my in-home streaming setups like plex or steam link or chromecast would lag and buffer making the experience a dull one.4. Although my home is pretty new, it does not have ethernet cabling, its not possible for me to run a ethernet cable down my house too. The Solutions I tried1. I tried using wifi extenders, but they end up eating away half of my bandwidth. This was fine for smart home products, and light web activity, but in-home streaming was suffering. 2. I tried dedicated WDS routers and router in Wifi client mode. That worked, but it had its own challenges of manually switching to the best signal every time I changed rooms, also the nuisance of handling multiple SSIDs.3. I tried powerline adapters, although I liked this setup, but I felt them to be slow, and again I had to put a router at the end of the powerline adapters to extend the wifi coverage, which again kind of repeated the problems mentioned in point 2 and 3.So I was left with 2 choices, either try a high end routers with dedicated amplifiers or go for a good mesh wifi system. After a lot of research I decided to go with the RBK50. Here are my points regarding the pro and cons.Pros:1. Dead simple setup. The Orbi app and the web interface both are neat and well guided. 2. Good configuration control. Not as highly configurable as the Nighthawk series, but this was not meant to provide that can service, so expecting those features from Orbi would be unfair. It does what it was designed for, that is to provide a seemless mesh Wifi setup.3. Range is awesome, I get great 5GHz coverage. 4. Throughput is great. I can use in-home streaming over plex, while I am playing games on steam link over wifi, while my wife is watching netflix in 4k, without a bit of lag or stutter. 5. All my devices, including my smart home devices readily connect to it, and so far it hasn't needed any power cycle.Cons:1. I am not sure there is any. Maybe the mobile app needs a bit more polishing.Double edge sword :Although having single wifi ssid for both 2.4GHz and 5GHz workss like a charm, and normally gets the job of allocating the device to proper band, done smoothly, I have seen it to fail sometimes too, like my iPhone still attached to 2.4GHz even when I was sitting right next to the router. I simple re-connection solved the issue though.One more issue that I had was a very particular one, with a particular brand of smart home devices. Somehow the vendor app wanted me to connect to 2.4GHz wifi to be able to configure my devices, which kinda make no sense, but in this case I was unable to switch to the 2.4GHz on my iPhone, and ended up having to use an older phone that had only 2.4GHz wifi chip to configure my devices. But once configured, the devices worked flawlessly with the Orbi.I must say this one is a awesome product and netgear never ceases to deliver the very best. I am thoroughly impressed and planning to buy one for my parental home too. Thanks Netgear for such an awesome product.

Estuve viendo las posibilidades para poner una red en mi casa que llegará a todos los rincones - el problema que siempre había tenido es que en 2 habitaciones siempre se perdía un poco la señal - Traté con repetidores, extensiones de red, pero la verdad ninguno me daba la velocidad deseada. Entonces empecé a investigar sobre Netgear Orbi - también consideren que siempre me ha gustado la marca Netgear - y después de instalarlo y poner un satélite en la parte de arriba un poco alejado y otro aquí - puedo decir que este sistema funciona de maravilla, todos los rincones de mi casa tienen red inalambrica y la señal siempre es la mejor. No solamente es fácil de instalar para los no expertos, pero también tiene funcionalidades avanzadas para los más expertos en redes en el que puedes incluso configurar un NAS dentro de esta red. Así como también tiene la posibilidad de conectar un VPN directamente desde el router en toda tu casa y con una interfaz sencilla. Lo recomiendo ampliamente.