Review on NETGEAR Orbi System RBK50 Renewed by Eric Wohlman

They were easy to install and use and had good wifi coverage however there were a few things that didn't work and comm return. When they worked, they were great - good signal, good speed, low latency, and generally out of sight. I chose this model because I could also use the satellite as a wired bridge between my house and garage, and the devices in the garage require multiple Ethernet ports. I bought this as a refurbished product so it may be defective and the new product will not have these issues. These issues persisted through updates, bug fixes, and all kinds of testing. I've been in IT for 30 years and my son works as a troubleshooter for a large company in Silicon Valley, so it's not user error - we both struggled with this for a few months without success. Problems: 1. Roaming from one node to another was not smooth. We often had to toggle Wi-Fi on and off on Android and Apple phones to allow them to move from one location to another. This was not a critical error, but still quite annoying.2. Critical Error: Sometimes the whole system froze, requiring a reboot. Then it worked fine after turning it off. This was totally unacceptable - I only need the network to WORK all the time. I can handle occasional reboots as a maintenance procedure, but random freezes are a deal breaker. We only have about 20 devices on the network and nothing very intensive. Most freezes occurred during off-peak hours, usually when everyone was sleeping, which makes me wonder if the system hung during the upgrade process.3. Which firewall? The first thing I noticed after we installed this was that there weren't really any options to set it up other than the network name, password, and a few other general setup items. Of course, most people don't need to mess around with extensive network settings, and the manufacturer can hide them to avoid configuration errors, but you can't do without such an important feature as blocking incoming connections! After working for a day, my NAS was clogged with incoming connections and I was hooked! Where's the firewall?!? Turns out the firewall is supposedly just "on" and you can't turn it off. Well, if the firewall doesn't block unwanted incoming connections, what does it even do? In fairness, the replacement, the Deco X20, doesn't actually have any firewall configuration options either, but I've learned my lesson and will install an older router on the edge if the firewall on the replacement can't block unwanted connections either. In summary, I think this device has potential, but the implementation is either too buggy or the specific part we encountered is defective.