Netgear Orbi for gaming

[BoutTime]

Morning all,

Is anyone using or has anyone used a Netgear Orbi (Router and Satellite) for gaming?

We are moving house and the new house is not networked with Ethernet LAN cables. It's a fair size and I don't think a normal router will have the range or throughput for gaming without excessive ping/latency.

My plan is to connect the Orbi Router to the modem in the hallway and then position the Orbi Satelite in the Study directly above upstairs. The Router and Satelite will connect using the higher 5Ghz 1733Mbps dedicated backhaul. I will connect my PC and Laptop to the satelite via ethernet. So although I will be wired the connection speed will be limited by the real world backhaul speed between the Router and the Satelite. A number of users have reported that they get a real world backhaul speed of 575Mbps. So it should be fast enough, it's just the latency/ping which concerns me.

My sons' XBoxes will connect via wifi but I'm not concerned as they already use wifi and the Orbi will be better then the BT SmartHub we currently have.

Many thanks in advance.

 

[Voicon]

A mate of mine was doing the Orbi external beta, I will ask him what he found, his son is a xbox gamer as well. I know during the trial he was experiencing drop outs between the devices but that was resolved.

I can speak to him tomorrow and report back.

 

[BoutTime]

A mate of mine was doing the Orbi external beta, I will ask him what he found, his son is a xbox gamer as well. I know during the trial he was experiencing drop outs between the devices but that was resolved.

I can speak to him tomorrow and report back.

Thats great. Very helpful of you. Cheers.

 

[pcfarrar]

Another option would be to try a UniFi AC LR and see if it will cover the entire house.

 

[kitfit1]

I've had my Orbi for about 3 months now and it's made a huge difference around my house. The router is connected to a Vigor 130 modem in the hall and the satellite is on the fist floor landing. All the internal walls are brick which made wifi coverage over the whole house impossible using my old Asus RT-N56U.
All the rooms in the house now have full speed wifi as does the garden. Having run speed tests in every room i can say i get 65mbps down and 18mbps up no matter which room i'm in and get 54mbps down and 16mbps up in the garden. In the house, pings to the BBC average 11ms in all rooms. So far the router has only dropped out once since i've had the Orbi.
The router is easy to set up and has all the security options that any good router should have. It isn't cheap but it does everything that Netgear claim for it and i would recommend to anyone looking for an easy to set up complete home wifi solution.

 

[Psycho Sonny]

google wi-fi does the same thing for half the price.

the website you want to look at for reviews is small net builder

 

[BoutTime]

I've had my Orbi for about 3 months now and it's made a huge difference around my house. The router is connected to a Vigor 130 modem in the hall and the satellite is on the fist floor landing. All the internal walls are brick which made wifi coverage over the whole house impossible using my old Asus RT-N56U.
All the rooms in the house now have full speed wifi as does the garden. Having run speed tests in every room i can say i get 65mbps down and 18mbps up no matter which room i'm in and get 54mbps down and 16mbps up in the garden. In the house, pings to the BBC average 11ms in all rooms. So far the router has only dropped out once since i've had the Orbi.
The router is easy to set up and has all the security options that any good router should have. It isn't cheap but it does everything that Netgear claim for it and i would recommend to anyone looking for an easy to set up complete home wifi solution.

Thanks for that. Has anyone in the house tried gaming with it?

 

[Voicon]

Sorry for the delay, I am seeing my mate at 5 tonight so will grill him on it for you, we got delayed meeting up

 

[BoutTime]

google wi-fi does the same thing for half the price.

the website you want to look at for reviews is small net builder

Half the price and not even half the performance. I've had a good look on SmallNetBuilders and to be honest the Orbi absolutely pi**es on every other Home Wifi Solution available in every review I've read that makes a comparison. I've just not read any reviews where someone has connected to the Satellite via ethernet and used it for gaming. Netgear seem to have by far the better solution rather than a traditional Mesh system because the backhaul is used purely for connection between the Satellite and the Router.

From the Orbi review on wegotserved.com......

"I was interested to see how the wireless backhaul performed so we tested it using a wired connection to the satellite unit. This gave a great performance of 465.1 Mbps which you can access through the four Gigabit Ethernet ports on the satellite. This goes to show that the Orbi satellite has ample bandwidth to serve both wired and wireless clients simultaneously. While it isn’t the same as a full Gigabit wired connection, it is enough to keep most users happy and outperforms any of the powerline adapters we have seen."

 

[BoutTime]

Sorry for the delay, I am seeing my mate at 5 tonight so will grill him on it for you, we got delayed meeting up

No worries.....thanks again!

 

[kitfit1]

Thanks for that. Has anyone in the house tried gaming with it?

Nobody in my house is a gamer i'm afraid, that's why i posted the ping times because it would give you a good idea of latency. If wired via ethernet the ping times are the same.

 

[kitfit1]

Half the price and not even half the performance. I've had a good look on SmallNetBuilders and to be honest the Orbi absolutely pi**es on every other Home Wifi Solution available in every review I've read that makes a comparison. I've just not read any reviews where someone has connected to the Satellite via ethernet and used it for gaming. Netgear seem to have by far the better solution rather than a traditional Mesh system because the backhaul is used purely for connection between the Satellite and the Router

That is exactly why i chose the Orbi. Reviews of Orbi show a maximum throughput of 395Mbps at long range (10m). Google wifi at close range has a maximum throughput of 148Mbps and 39Mbps at long range. There simply is no contest between the two, the Orbi beats Google wifi in every single department and by a very large margin.

 

[BoutTime]

From the Netgear orbi Forum.......

"In my experience, the satellite backhaul adds roughly 2-3ms of latency."

Job done, I'me going to pull the trigger on an Orbi.

Thanks for your help fellas.

 

[Psycho Sonny]

if I was spending £400 I'd definitely be going down the ubiquity route personally. Seems crazy money to pay for a system which cannot be upgraded piece by piece but needs a whole new system in future.

with ubiquiti you can upgrade individual components on a as need basis.

 

[pcfarrar]

if I was spending £400 I'd definitely be going down the ubiquity route personally. Seems crazy money to pay for a system which cannot be upgraded piece by piece but needs a whole new system in future.
with ubiquiti you can upgrade individual components on a as need basis.

I agree the Orbi isn't even a mesh system, it's very much overpriced for what it is. Ubiquiti route will give a far more stable reliable system.

Also Google WiFi has a serious bug, in that it currently crashes if you use Windows 10/Xbox One. People on the Google forum have been waiting 3 weeks+ for a fix now:

https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/googlewifi/5a5zwH7MPyY

 

[Voicon]

From the Netgear orbi Forum.......

"In my experience, the satellite backhaul adds roughly 2-3ms of latency."

Job done, I'me going to pull the trigger on an Orbi.

Thanks for your help fellas.

Might be a bit late anyway but I spoke to him and he said it added between 3-5ms of latency from the main wifi, his son uses xbox on the satellite and he has no issues with the latency at all.

He liked the units but did say he would struggle to pay the price for them and compared to my Unifi system he would purchase that first. Although saying that he has cables around that could accommodate the unifi where others might not and 2 unifi APs would cover his house so it would be a lot cheaper already having a decent router.

 

[BoutTime]

Cheers for the I put everyone. We move house tomorrow so I'll have a better idea of what is needed over the next week or so and then decide for sure. None of these solutions are future proof as you will always be limited by the slowest component of a system.
I realise the Orbi is not a Mesh system, but in truth that is it's strength. The standard two piece system will cover a 4000 sqft property and you can always add an additional satellite if you need more but who needs more than 4000 sqft? The isolated 5Ghz backhaul provides over 500 Mbps connection speeds so is as good as it gets when looking for a network without ethernet.

 

[dewi]

From the Netgear orbi Forum.......

"In my experience, the satellite backhaul adds roughly 2-3ms of latency."

Job done, I'me going to pull the trigger on an Orbi.

Thanks for your help fellas.

I just tried a speedtest. I got 18 ms ping connected to the Orbi satellite, 16 ms ping connected to the Orbi router and 16 ms ping from a wired connection, which confirms the above.

 

[sparkymark75]

I agree the Orbi isn't even a mesh system, it's very much overpriced for what it is. Ubiquiti route will give a far more stable reliable system.

Also Google WiFi has a serious bug, in that it currently crashes if you use Windows 10/Xbox One. People on the Google forum have been waiting 3 weeks+ for a fix now:

https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/googlewifi/5a5zwH7MPyY

Not sure what the specific circumstances are but my Google Wifi works fine with multiple Xbox Ones.

 

[BoutTime]

I just tried a speedtest. I got 18 ms ping connected to the Orbi satellite, 16 ms ping connected to the Orbi router and 16 ms ping from a wired connection, which confirms the above.

Thanks for that. Mine should hopefully arrive tomorrow. To be honest the BT SmartHub is already giving me the coverage I need, just not at a high enough throughput and low enough latency at the far ends of building. This is where I'm hoping the Orbi will take care of business.