Netgear Orbi WiFi 6
The first 802.11ax mesh system leaves its rivals in the dust – but does anyone actually need it?
MESH NETWORKING SYSTEM
There are plenty of mesh networking systems on sale, but until now they’ve all relied on 802.11ac Wi-Fi, rather than taking advantage of the newer, faster 802.11ax (or Wi-Fi 6) standard. In its defence, 802.11ac works perfectly well for most purposes, including 4K video streaming – but 802.11ax is designed to cope better with ever-increasing numbers of connected clients, and has the performance headroom to handle any bandwidth-hungry technologies we’ll be using in a few years. Perhaps, then, it’s time to think about an infrastructure upgrade.
Enter the Orbi WiFi 6, the world’s first 802.11ax mesh system. The idea of serving up ultra-fast, next-generation Wi-Fi to every corner of your home is seductive, but it comes at a steep price. Let’s see if the cost is justified.
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The X factor
The Orbi WiFi 6 is a tri-band wireless mesh system supporting 802.11ax connections on both 2.4GHz and
5GHz bands, with a separate 5GHz radio dedicated to backhaul traffic. Each unit houses eight antennae and supports 4x4 MU-MIMO; Netgear claims maximum connection speeds of 1,200Mbits/sec on the 2.4GHz band and 2,400Mbits/sec over each of the 5GHz bands. To get the best performance you’ll naturally need an 802.11ax-enabled client, but the Orbi also works with older devices using 802.11ac or 802.11n.
The standard pack includes two units – one dedicated router and one satellite – with a claimed total coverage of up to 465m2. As it’s a mesh system, you can add extra satellites to extend your wireless reach, although the Wi-Fi 6 units won’t interoperate with nodes from older Orbi kits. The expectation is that the Orbi will replace your existing router, but it can also be switched into access point mode to provide upgraded wireless services for a separate router.
Physical design
The Orbi units look all but identical to one another, but (unlike some mesh systems) they’re not interchangeable, with one designated as the router and the other as a satellite. They’re of a similar size and shape to their 802.11ac forebears, standing 254mm tall with an oval 71 x 191mm footprint, which makes them an imposing presence on your shelf or coffee table.
To distinguish the new models from the old, Netgear has added a black trim with brushed silver edging; to my eyes this makes them look like something from the Starship
Enterprise, which you might love or hate. A more practical change is the addition of a pair of screw-holes in the bottom of each unit, allowing you to mount the nodes on a ceiling or wall.
There’s no display, but a downward-facing LED array in the front of each unit occasionally lights up and illuminates whatever surface it’s been placed on, glowing white when booting up or moody magenta if there’s a connection problem. A tiny secondary LED at the back shows when the unit’s powered and turns red if there’s a firmware error.
While the Orbi’s focus is obviously on Wi-Fi, we’re pleased to see that, as on the older units, each station has four rear Gigabit Ethernet sockets. With the rise of smart home hubs and NAS appliances, wired networking is if anything more prevalent than it was five years ago, and it’s frustrating when mesh systems offer only one or two sockets.
The router unit also sports a fifth Ethernet socket for your internet connection. This supports both
Gigabit and 2.5GbE speeds, or can be combined with the first LAN socket for an aggregated 2Gbits/sec connection. We doubt many customers will take advantage of these high-speed options, but knowing they’re there goes a little way towards assuaging the agonising price.
The only thing that’s notably missing from the Orbi is any sort of USB connectivity: this is normal for mesh systems, but it’s not unreasonable to hope that a high-end system like this would offer an easy way of sharing external storage or a printer over the LAN.
Setup and software
The Orbi WiFi 6 can be set up using either Netgear’s Orbi mobile app or a web-based wizard. I chose the latter, which automatically detected and set up my internet connection, tested the
“While the Orbi’s focus is obviously on Wi-Fi, we’re pleased to see that each station has four rear Gigabit Ethernet sockets”
signal strength between the two nodes, prompted me to set a secure administrative password and installed the latest firmware on both nodes.
The whole process took less than five minutes and only a few clicks.
Once you’re up and running, you can return to the web portal at any time to monitor and manage your
Orbi system. If you’ve used a Netgear router before there are no surprises: the interface is divided conveniently into Basic and Advanced settings, and all the expected options are present, allowing you to tweak your IP and DHCP settings, adjust your wireless configuration, bind IP addresses to specific clients, set up port forwarding and enable the guest network.
One neat feature is a built-in VPN service; you can use this to securely “dial into” your home network from anywhere in the world, using the free OpenVPN client for Windows, macOS, Android and iOS. You can even give your Orbi router an easy-toremember external address, from a choice of dynamic DNS providers. Sadly, as usual with Netgear, there’s no option to route your domestic internet traffic through a third-party VPN service.
Parental control provisions are very limited. The original Orbi system integrated with the Disney-branded Circle platform, providing categorybased filtering and monitoring for free, plus a range of optional paid-for extras such as device-specific time limits. Here, though, there are merely a few manual access settings: you can block websites containing specific keywords, and shut off individual ports and services, but category-based filtering isn’t supported at all. And while the scheduling feature lets you set start and end times for restrictions, there’s only one global timetable, and you can’t vary it on different days of the week.
We’re not blown away by the Traffic Meter feature, either. This tallies up your total internet usage over a specified period, but doesn’t break it down by client, making it more or less useless for working out what’s gobbling up your bandwidth. And weirdly, the QoS Setup page in the web portal only contains an internet speed test tool: hopefully a future update will add proper traffic prioritisation controls.
If you find the web interface daunting, it’s also possible to manage some settings via the Orbi smartphone app. This is less powerful than the web portal, but it lets you configure the guest network, browse connected clients from your phone (and suspend any you don’t recognise) and test your internet speed. It also includes a useful Wi-Fi Analytics module, which lets you monitor the airwaves to see whether your Wi-Fi network is using the best channel, and test the wireless signal as you wander around your home – a big help when it comes to identifying any “not-spots” or areas of poor coverage.
Finally, the Orbi also integrates with both Alexa and the Google Assistant, enabling you to carry out a few specific tasks via voice control. You probably won’t use this every day, but it’s handy to be able