I have been working with mesh systems for quite a while now and have some new observations. I had begun the journey with Google WiFi, a product that checked all of my boxes and had incredible performance, right out of the box. However, what I quickly realized with Google was that their business model and lack of flexibility really became the real issue and that led me down the path of unplugging it and replacing it with Amplifi.

The TL;DR: Orbi is much better than Amplifi.

The Amplifi system was lower performing than Google, but it featured one capability that was essential – I could set the DHCP range (Google utilized a non-standard range that messed with all of the static IPs and paths that I maintain.) Amplifi also had four Ethernet ports on each unit which meant I did not need extra switches in the mix in two of the locations. The other two locations are hardly used, and their mesh antennas brought the right mix of convenience and coverage (not great coverage, but a nice tradeoff for not having to have a wired infrastructure underneath to those two locations.

But with Amplifi I had two nagging problems. The first was my garage door opener. I have a Chamberlain My-Q device that allows me to open/close/check status remotely. How many times have you gotten a couple blocks away and turned around to double check that your door is closed? This device was a lifesaver, especially as your brain gets older. But the problem was, with Amplifi, about every 5-6 minutes the opener would lose connectivity and then reconnect after 1-3 minutes offline. This meant there was a good chance that when I used the app I would get an error. Not good. The other issue was that I would periodically see dropouts. Using iPerf3 I would see that performance like this:

• [  4]   0.00-1.00   sec  26.6 MBytes   223 Mbits/sec                  
• [  4]   1.00-2.00   sec  21.3 MBytes   179 Mbits/sec                  
• [  4]   2.00-3.00   sec  87.6 KBytes   717 Kbits/sec                  
• [  4]   3.00-4.01   sec   124 KBytes  1.01 Mbits/sec                  
• [  4]   4.01-5.00   sec  0.00 Bytes  0.00 bits/sec                  
• [  4]   5.00-6.00   sec  3.29 MBytes  27.6 Mbits/sec                  
• [  4]   6.00-7.00   sec  1.32 MBytes  11.0 Mbits/sec                  
• [  4]   7.00-8.00   sec   151 KBytes  1.24 Mbits/sec                  
• [  4]   8.00-9.01   sec  76.4 KBytes   623 Kbits/sec                  
• [  4]   9.01-10.00  sec  2.01 MBytes  16.9 Mbits/sec                  
• – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
• [ ID] Interval           Transfer     Bandwidth
• [  4]   0.00-10.00  sec  55.0 MBytes  46.1 Mbits/sec                  sender
• [  4]   0.00-10.00  sec  54.7 MBytes  45.8 Mbits/sec                  receiver

I will give Amplifi a big thumbs up on their support. I worked for months with them on this. They stayed with me the whole time, but the real problem was that once I finally gave up, I was out of warranty. I fundamentally believe this is a hardware/design issue and the answer was always “hey we have new firmware coming out”. The answer was always right around the corner. But it never got here. I finally gave up.

I purchased an Orbi system from Netgear, even though I have always been skeptical of the company; past experience had never been good. I plugged it in and set it up. After having set up two mesh systems in the past from different vendors, this was by far clunkier and more difficult, but once it was up and running it was solid, head and shoulders above the Amplifi and even the Google Wifi products.

Performance was solid, coming in approximately 2X faster than Amplifi and ~20% faster than Google. Most importantly, the drops that I would see periodically with Amplifi were gone.

Here’s an example:

• [ ID] Interval           Transfer     Bandwidth
• [  4]   0.00-1.00   sec  54.4 MBytes   456 Mbits/sec                  
• [  4]   1.00-2.00   sec  61.0 MBytes   512 Mbits/sec                  
• [  4]   2.00-3.00   sec  64.0 MBytes   537 Mbits/sec                  
• [  4]   3.00-4.00   sec  65.6 MBytes   550 Mbits/sec                  
• [  4]   4.00-5.00   sec  62.6 MBytes   525 Mbits/sec                  
• [  4]   5.00-6.00   sec  65.0 MBytes   545 Mbits/sec                  
• [  4]   6.00-7.00   sec  61.3 MBytes   514 Mbits/sec                  
• [  4]   7.00-8.00   sec  64.5 MBytes   542 Mbits/sec                  
• [  4]   8.00-9.00   sec  62.3 MBytes   523 Mbits/sec                  
• [  4]   9.00-10.00  sec  64.1 MBytes   538 Mbits/sec                  
• – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
• [ ID] Interval           Transfer     Bandwidth
• [  4]   0.00-10.00  sec   625 MBytes   524 Mbits/sec                  sender
• [  4]   0.00-10.00  sec   625 MBytes   524 Mbits/sec                  receiver

Most importantly, the nagging problem that I had with the Chamberlain garage door opener vanished with Orbi.

With Amplifi, I was seeing resets about every 5-6 minutes, which translates into 200+ reconnections per day. With Orbi running, my garage door opener connects to the system and sticks. Checking the opener’s console this morning, it shows that it has been running for 7 days since the last power up with 19 resets. Instead of 10 per hour, it is now less than 3 per day. To be fair, Amplifi is adding a capability for a secondary (non-mesh) SSID that will probably help resolve this issue as it appears to be the mesh handoff that is causing the problem. But it is not released yet. And it is too little and far too late.