Will Netgear Orbi work on Vodafone FIbreX

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Wyvern

91 posts

Master Geek

#214182 1-May-2017 12:54

I am on the 1Gbps FireX plan with Vodafone and am looking to get into one of the Mesh wifi solutions that are out there.

I like the look of the Netgear Obri as it seems to provide:

a) one of the fastest wifi solutions

b) doesn't require a login to any of the vendor's own cloud based tools or have any remote chance of any network traffic being discoverable by the vendor (or am I wrong here?)

c) is on special at Noel Leeming at the moment for $639

But I'm not sure if its just a case of removing the Vodafone supplied wifi router and replacing with one of the Netgear Obi units? Is it easily done and are there any downsides?

Also as an aside, anyone know what the theoretical max wifi speed of the Netgear unit is?

MikeB4

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#1773445 1-May-2017 13:28

I am also interested in this as well as the Ubiquity Amplifi

Crowdie

228 posts

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#1773489 1-May-2017 14:06

Wyvern:

Also as an aside, anyone know what the theoretical max wifi speed of the Netgear unit is?

The specs sheet lists it as have six antennas across two spectrums so I am going to make the educated guest that it is a three spatial stream device. It appears too small to have an antenna array (hence I am assuming three antennas per spectrum) and the specs sheet doesn't specify which channel widths it supports.

The important thing to remember with consumer and SME mesh devices is that you lose half your throughput every jump. So if you have three meshed devices then you have two hops so you will experience a 75% throughput hit.

DG82

18 posts

Geek

#1773500 1-May-2017 14:12

While I'm not sure of the specifics of the NetGear unit - but if it supports VLAN Tagging on the router (FibreX runs on tagged Vlan 10) then you could replace the Voadone Router with the Orbi.

Otherwise use the Orbi as an access point and connect it to the Vodafone Router and potentially disable the WiFi on the Vodafone unit.

sbiddle

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#1773644 1-May-2017 16:14

Amplifi supports VLAN tagging on the latest beta firmware.

I would personally never use either solution and believe they're very overpriced for what they offer. Yes they make life simple, but you could get better performance for a lot less.

Aredwood

3885 posts

Uber Geek

#1773962 2-May-2017 00:44

Wyvern:

I am on the 1Gbps FireX plan with Vodafone and am looking to get into one of the Mesh wifi solutions that are out there.

I like the look of the Netgear Obri as it seems to provide:

a) one of the fastest wifi solutions

b) doesn't require a login to any of the vendor's own cloud based tools or have any remote chance of any network traffic being discoverable by the vendor (or am I wrong here?)

c) is on special at Noel Leeming at the moment for $639

But I'm not sure if its just a case of removing the Vodafone supplied wifi router and replacing with one of the Netgear Obi units? Is it easily done and are there any downsides?

Also as an aside, anyone know what the theoretical max wifi speed of the Netgear unit is?

That seems really expensive. As you can get Xclaim Xi3 access points for ~$360 And probably cheaper. I have 2 of them that I paid approx $270 each if I remember right. I probably only needed one but why not - overkill. I can walk down my driveway and stand on the other side of the road - approx 70m from my house and still have usable Wifi, and have managed to connect even at over 100m from my house. And anywhere on my property either inside or out, Wifi is kickass. 180mbit speedtest to my laptop in the same room as one of the APs, and 60mbit to my phone that doesn't support AC band Wifi. Sure the uplinks between the Xclaim's and my router are ethernet. But that is a good thing, as they will never overload. And you can login to them to locally config them, you don't have to use the app.

Since the Xclaim units just provide Wifi, you will still need the Vodafone router (just disable it's internal Wifi). Or replace it with something like an Edge Router Lite and a gigabit switch.