After almost 2 years, I put my 3 Google Wifi Pucks – retired – on eBay. The first problems had already arisen a year ago, when one of the pucks had stopped working from one day to the next. It still worked, but it could no longer connect to the main access point on the other side of the wall. Even if he was standing right next to the other puck, he didn’t want to connect reliably anymore. The Google Wifi Puck was immediately replaced by Google, but the problem was not solved. Most likely, another network had spread in the neighborhood, and in fact, the neighbor below me had gotten a new, strong Wi-Fi. The automatic switching of channels is a nice theory, but it doesn’t really work well. Although the Wifis change their channels from time to time, but only to hang out together on the same channel.
When we were renovating this apartment in the almost 150-year-old house, the electrician asked us if we didn’t want Ethernet to be laid. “No, why, I have WIFI?” I said, and that was one of the worst decisions I’ve ever made. With 8 Sonos boxes, 3 to 5 mobile phones, 1 tablet, several smart home devices such as those from tado and lots of other devices in the WLAN, there is already a lot of stress here. The solution to my WLAN problem should therefore be PowerLine adapters from tp Link. These supposedly transmit up to 1,300 Mbit/s, and of course this is a theoretical value. In fact, however, they actually managed between 200 and 950 Mbit, depending on the room. Only in the study, where I needed the net the most, the connection was very insecure. Either it wasn’t there at all, or it fluctuated between 8 and 200 Mbit/s.
Since I am currently spending a little more time in the study (after the book is before the book), the poor WIFI connection was getting more and more annoying. And constantly connecting the Ethernet adapter (it has to be connected to the old Thunderbolt port on my MacBook Air, because the USB adapter only manages 100MBit/s), well…. Yesterday evening, the network kept failing, and then I looked again for other mesh networks. I had already read some good things about the Netgear Orbi. At 0:58 on Saturday morning I ordered the NETGEAR Orbi High Speed Mesh WLAN System RBK50-100PES (3,000 MBit/s Tri-Band Mesh Router + Satellite Repeater, 350 m² coverage) from Amazon, at 11:58 on the same day I had picked it up from an Amazon Locker station (Thanks, Amazon! Actually, this should not be delivered until after the weekend, but on the same day is already very nice).
Less than an hour later, it was set up. It’s not as easy as with the Google Wifi. The app is less understandable, some settings such as port forwarding can only be made in the browser. But the speed… the satellite is now in the study, and since then I have not had a single break. Better yet, the speed is better than what I’ve ever had. In the screenshot on the left you can see a Tx rate of 867 MBit/s. This seems to be the maximum my old MacBook Air can do on the 5 GHz band. Of course, we are not yet at the 3,000 Mbit/s that the network theoretically offers. But, to be completely honest, who should the MacBook connect to? My NAS has a 10 GBit Ethernet port, but is connected to a 1 GBit switch, to which the Orbi is also attached. My tests currently show a maximum speed of 330 MBit/s to the NAS when I write to an SSD there, which is a little more than 40 MByte/second. Not bad, if you consider that before I could only fear that my connection would last at all.
Of course, it’s no wonder that the Netgear device has more power on it: It’s a lot bigger, so there’s also more space for antennas in it. Yes, it’s more expensive compared to the Google Wifi, but for me it seems to be the solution to Wi-Fi problems, at least for now. The long-term test is still to come. Unfortunately, at least the Google Wifi pucks did not survive it.
Comments (since February 2020 the comment function has been removed from my blog):
Internet Speedtest says
- November 2019 at 16:05 Hello, I also use a Netgear Orbi RBK53 system with 3000MBit/s. It is precisely these 3000MBit/s that I would like to briefly explain to you or how they are composed.
1733 MBit/s (4MIMO streams with 433 MBit/s each in the 5GHz network for the Orbi router and the satellite) You don’t see this network, that’s only for the internal connection. 867 MBit/s (2MIMO streams with 433 MBit/s each in the 5GHz network for the clients) 400 MBit/s (2MIMO streams with 200 MBit/s each in the 2.4GHz network for the clients)
1733 + 867 + 400 = 3000 Mbps (which you can never get on a client)
Have fun with your Orbi system! I will never buy anything else for Wi-Fi again…