NETGEAR is aware of a growing number of phone and online scams. To learn how to stay safe click here.
Forum Discussion
How to turn off firewall on Orbi
I am trying to connect a Lutron Radio RA2 repeater to my network and the aoft3are is not finding it even though it is plugged in to my main Orbi router. It has been suggested that I turn off the fir...
I am not aware of any method to entirely disable the Orbi firewall. There are clear procedures to open ports through the firewall for specific applications in the Orbi web interface, Advanced Tab, Advanced Setup.
I may be looking at the wrong product. "Lutron Radio RA2 Repeater" brings up this product: http://www.lutron.com/TechnicalDocumentLibrary/Main_Auxiliary%20Repeaters_369-227a.pdf
The impression I get is that these repeaters are designed to connect Lutron dimmers and wall switches to a network for control by a smartphone app (?) Perhaps it would help if you could describe more about what is going on?
That is the correct technical document. It is the main repeater that is the problem.
The way this system works is all of the intelligence lives in the main repeater. It uses RF to communicate to the dimmers, keypads, switches, occupancy sensors, etc. However, the program that configures everything is a Windows app. The first thing you do when you start the Windows app is look for the presence of the main repeater, and that is where the problem is. Basically, the software can't find the main repeater on my network, even though it is directly connected via Ethernet.
The Wisconsin Lutron rep suggested turning off the Firewalls and that should solve the problem. When digging through the Lutron forums over the weekend, the problem may be more complicated. I am actually running the Windows app under Parallels on a Mac and a couple of people indicated that they have seen this problem with this configuation.
I actually bought a very cheap Windows laptop yesterday to see if that would solve the problem but haven't even opened the box yet. I thought it worth trying the reps suggestion before I open the box and go to a pure Windows implementation.
So, that is what I am trying to accomplish. The Orbi doesn't seem to have a "Firewall On/Off" button anywhere that I can find, which is why I posted to this forum.
My guess is the firewall is not relevant. The firewall blocks connections from the internet. It does not look at or interfere with packets within the Orbi LAN. It will be interesting to see if using an "actual Windows computer" will make any difference. (I think the odds are "not", but I have reached the point of "trying anything" many times.)
When the repeater is connected to the Orbi ethernet LAN, does it appear on the Orbi web interface display of "Attached Devices"? I'm wondering how the Lutron app finds repeaters. Some systems do broadcasts, "Any ??? on the network?", and wait to see if any device(s) respond. That way, they learn the IP address(s) of the devices and can talk directly to them through the LAN.
Another possibility is to connect the repeater directly to the computer for setup, which gets into the idea of assigning static IP's.
I just looked at attached devices and the repeater is correctly recognized as being directly attached. I think I will fire up the Windows computer tomorrow and try that as the next step.