Netgear Orbi for gaming

BoutTime

BoutTime

BoutTime

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26 May 2015
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14
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 said:
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.
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Thats great. Very helpful of you. Cheers.
 
kitfit1 said:
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.
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Thanks for that. Has anyone in the house tried gaming with it?
 
Psycho Sonny said:
google wi-fi does the same thing for half the price.

the website you want to look at for reviews is small net builder
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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."
 
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.
 
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 said:
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.
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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.
 
Ok just for a little feedback for anyone considering an Orbi. I used my sons' gaming PC to play World of Tanks. It's wired to the Orbi satellite and connects to the main router via the dedicated wireless backhaul.
There is no noticeable increased latency at all. My two boys also connect wirelessly to the satellite when using both their Xboxes and they also never complain about them being "laggy".
A very impressive bit of kit with fantastic range and no disconnects when moving around the house between satellite and router.
 
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