Setup and Monitoring- Web Browser

At this stage, you presumably have at least the router unit powered on and the WAN port connected to your modem via an Ethernet cable for Internet access. Time to set things up? Not so fast—NETGEAR in all their.. wisdom.. has provided multiple ways to set things up. Normally, this is good in that you could go with, say, a mobile app or a web browser, but there are a total of four separate options here for setup and monitoring, so we will cover them briefly over the next few pages. I chose to use the web browser route for actually stetting up the router and satellite alike, and this is done by manually connecting to the default SSID via the credentials on the unit and navigating to Orbilogin.com in a browser. I used Google Chrome version 64 for this purpose, but the process will work with all functional browsers. The GIF above goes through the steps involved in setting up the router unit alone, which is fairly straightforward as long as the modem is passing on a working Internet connection.


The setup tool will then prompt you to set up an Orbi satellite unit, if applicable. If you have not powered on the RBS50 unit by now, do so and keep an eye on the color of the LED at the top. If the satellite unit is too far away, you may get an error message that says so even if it is powered on, and I recommend having the satellite unit close by for at least this part. The process will then automatically detect the satellite unit and set it up as well.


With both units set up, it is time to set up the account and Wi-Fi settings. Here, you get to choose admin login credentials for admin access through the browser portal in the future, along with security questions that will be asked should you forget these login credentials. Next up is setting up a custom name and password for the Wi-Fi network, and the default option here is to have a single SSID for both the 2.4 GHz wireless N and 5 GHz wireless AC networks for ease of use, although you can change that later. After being prompted to now connect to this new network, a quick connected check is done before you move on to the next step.


There are a few more steps before we are done with the setup process. Once you are connected to the Wi-Fi network you just personalized, a quick summary table pops up with the current firmware on both units and a check to see if a newer firmware is available. This process is automatic, entirely skippable, and you can check for firmware updates at any time later on if need be. I recommend getting this done now, just so the units are not on an older firmware with a recognized bug that has since been solved. Treat this as you would a GPU, with drivers kept updated in a perfect world. As it turns out, the firmware on both units was quite old here, so the update process was done then and there.


Another skippable step is to register for a NETGEAR account, and in turn register the kit to your account for book-keeping and technical support if needed. I will give them props for at least attempting to incentivize this with a draw for an Amazon.com gift card, but I leave it to you—at least for now. We will get back to this soon as it will be needed for a specific feature that may interest you. Regardless of what you chose here, the setup procedure is finally complete and you are now directed to the monitoring portal in your web browser.


The monitoring portal is split into basic and advanced settings, some of which are shared across both. The homepage for the basic settings tab shows you a quick summary of the Wi-Fi network, including the number of devices connected to it and the status of the guest network. Parental control is a tab here, but it just redirects you to a webpage that tells you to get another program to set it up and does nothing else but to show you its status if you do so elsewhere. You can go through more settings for the Internet and wireless connections alike here, including setting up a static IP address if possible, changing the router MAC address, and going with separate SSIDs for the wireless networks. Other options here include adding a network printer, configuring a guest network, and adding in a satellite unit if you either skipped it before or ended up with one.


A lot more options in the advanced settings tab, with the homepage here also providing a specific and detailed summary on your particular router, Internet connection, Wi-Fi networks, and guest networks. You can also go through the entire setup wizard again if you missed a step or are adding new kits, and also get other setup-related LAN, WAN, QoS, and device naming options. The QoS section just contains an integrated Ookla Speedtest that is hilarious and sad at the same time, but settings elsewhere do make up for it. Under the security menu, we see more options, including parental control that again takes you to that same webpage, but you do get separate access controls for every connected device, including setting up schedules for access by day or time of day. There are more rudimentary access control options available by setting up a blacklist of domains and services manually or via keywords, be it forever or on a schedule, so you could argue that there is some form of parental control built in already. If you wanted to go all in on the big brother act, NETGEAR allows you to specify an email client to send logs and warnings to, including if attempts were made to circumvent the access controls from before.


There are two more menus of advanced settings here, so we can definitely say that NETGEAR has been good in providing a good amount of user control on the device even via the web browser portal. The administration menu allows you to view and save logs, get more information on various connected devices, including IP and MAC addresses, back up and restore current settings, edit the login credentials to the web portal, and check for/update firmware on both units. The final menu, named "advanced setup", has a lot of options we already saw before in the basic settings tab, but also a few newer ones that merit a mention. In particular, you can configure the backhaul topology and add a password to it, switch between router and access point modes, set up port forwarding and triggering, use a dynamic DNS service if you have one from a service provider, enable a VPN with options configured for OpenVPN right on that page, add static routes, toggle remote management on/off, and more.