Arlo Ultra Cams Have No Signal, Even When Signal Is Plenty Strong

[BinaryDichotomy]

I have three Arlo Ultra cams, with the Hub hardwired into a switch in my server closet. I have 3 Arlo Ultra cams, yet even when they are put in a room with a wireless access point, they won't connect. What I don't understand is why they won't connect, even when every single other device in this room connect with a very fast and very strong connection. This is not environmental as this is happening to any Arlo Cam I put in this room, the cams themselves work fine in other rooms.

So my question is the following: Do the cams connect via wifi (and thus ultimately via a wired connection to the Hub), or do they connect to the hub itself? If it's the latter, this is a very poor design decision on the part of Arlo. If it's the former, then why can any other device I place in this room connect via wifi with well over 200mb/s connection speed, yet not a single Arlo cam I put in this room can connect? The assumption was that these cams connected via wifi, otherwise what's the point of having wireless cameras? I really need to figure out how to get these cams to connect, otherwise I'm returning all of them and going with a competitor.

[dcfox1]

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@BinaryDichotomy wrote:

So my question is the following: Do the cams connect via wifi (and thus ultimately via a wired connection to the Hub), or do they connect to the hub itself? 

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Yes the Ultra cams connect directly to the Smart Hub, not your wifi. Your other devices may connect to wifi but the cams connect on their own wifi system to the hub that must be connected via ethernet to your router or Wifi extender or powerline extender that has a ethernet  plug. 

I'm not sure what you mean though that they just do not work in that room. If they work other places they should be connected to the Hub. So it may be something interfering.

Some of the newer models a such as essential can connect to your own wifi. I believe the baby cam and Q cam that are indoor cams may also but can't say for sure. 

[BinaryDichotomy]

Thanks for your response. This is a very unfortunate design decision on the part of Arlo then, we live in a modest, but sprawling 2600 sq/ft home, and all of our smart home "hubs" are in a server closet directly connected to a 16 port aggregation switch. This means there are many walls between the hub and the cams. When I say they don't work, I mean they can't connect to the hub, and I was under the impression that Arlo used wifi as the connection backbone. Knowing that connections are hub driven explains all the problems we're having though.

So the question is: How can I architect my camera system so that these very expensive Ultra cams will actually connect to the hub? I could move the hub to another switch in my house and see if that helps, but then it'll be out in the open. I really don't understand why Arlo chose that design route, especially for sprawling homes like mine where we have a carriage house detached from the main house, outdoor areas we wanted to put cams in to cover the yards, etc. It's just a very confusing design decision from Arlo, and is effectively driving us towards one of their competitors at this point.

[dcfox1]

To  move the hubs to a different location even though they are out in the open  could help the problem cams with connecting. But I realize that's not want you want. I have done that with a wifi  powerline extender with a Ethernet Plug  and it helped with farther away cams or if you have a switch to connect the a hub closer as you said.