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Forum Discussion
Orbi in Router mode continues to stop outgoing WAN connections
So i've had my Orbi RBK23 kit for sometime now, but from the beginning I have been using it in AP mode while being connected to my Fios Quantium Router. Things were going ok but I realize in AP mode...
When you log into Orbi router, from the homepage click on "Internet", takes you to "Internet Setup" menu and right at top, you will see "Test"
evilhomerclone wrote:
When you log into Orbi router, from the homepage click on "Internet", takes you to "Internet Setup" menu and right at top, you will see "Test"
Well, duh. That's embarassing! When I just did it (for the first time ever I think), there was one of those long "Orbi pauses" and then it popped up a box wanting me to "Begin Registration". What the hell? Did this Orbi not get registered after being set up dozens of times over the past two years? Since it is so far out of warranty, I closed the box.
I will see what a debug WAN capture says the Orbi is doing. What it feels like is your Orbi has lost its IP address lease and won't talk to the internet until it gets a new one.
Could you do another check. Look at the Advanced Tab Home Page, under Internet Port, click on "Connection Status" and record the IP address Lease and Time to Expire. DHCP protocol is for the device to wait until half of the lease has expired and then ask to renew it.
For example, my lease is for 20 hrs, 8min and now has 19 hrs, 52 minutes remaining. (Which sort of confirms that the "Test" I did about 10 minutes ago did in fact renew the IP lease.) So, when there is about 10hrs, 4 min remaining, the Orbi should ask to renew. i.e. about 9hrs, 42 min from now, keep trying until the lease expires, and then start over asking for a lease. And not access the internet until it gets one. My hypothesis is that something is not happening correctly with the Orbi IP lease.
CrimpOn, no worries I appreaciate the effort with trying to help someone. In all of my years in IT, it would be a lie if I didn't have one of those "wish i could have that back" moments.
I didn't want to put in my inital posting that I thought it was a DHCP problem even though with my limited networking skills, this is what I thought was the problem. What just doesn't make anysense is that if this was having a DHCP problem at the WAN connection, why can the outside world get to my device???
I know about the debug.html pages but trying to build a log and view it leaves me in a world of stuff I just dont have any understanding, so many different files are apart of the debug.log zip. Is there a specific file I need to focus on?
As another form of troubleshooting, I have disabled today the Circle parental controls to see if that resolves it. I'm going to be annoyed if it does as putting my device in Router mode was soley done to access these features and going back to my inital post, I am starting to wonder why things started to go "crazy" on my end once the inital trial periods for both the Netgear Armor and Disney Circle Prem expired....
Oh and for the Lease thing, I just did what you suggested and the lease expires every 2 hours. So i know for sure I go longer than 2 hours before having problems.
evilhomerclone wrote:What just doesn't make anysense is that if this was having a DHCP problem at the WAN connection, why can the outside world get to my device??? My guess, and it is only a guess, is that the Orbi has asked to renew the IP lease and the ISP believes that the lease has been renewed, but the Orbi does not. As far as the ISP is concerned, traffic to that IP is still good. But, the Orbi has decided that it has to stop until it gets permission to speak. Clicking on "Test" appears to start an IP lease process that "works".
I know about the debug.html pages but trying to build a log and view it leaves me in a world of stuff I just dont have any understanding, so many different files are apart of the debug.log zip. Is there a specific file I need to focus on? The relevant file is WAN, which is a record of every packet into and out of the WAN interface.
As another form of troubleshooting, I have disabled today the Circle parental controls to see if that resolves it. I'm going to be annoyed if it does as putting my device in Router mode was soley done to access these features and going back to my inital post, I am starting to wonder why things started to go "crazy" on my end once the inital trial periods for both the Netgear Armor and Disney Circle Prem expired....
Oh and for the Lease thing, I just did what you suggested and the lease expires every 2 hours. So i know for sure I go longer than 2 hours before having problems. If this process failed every time, your connection would cease every two hours. But, apparently it doesn't fail consistently.This appears to be a rare situation. It has never happened to me, and there have been only 2-3 users to report symptoms similar to yours. And, I have no idea how to interest Netgear engineers in the problem.
Try disabeling Circle and/or App Armour and the issue will go away.
Now both of these was the reason I bought the Orbi in the first place, but I prefer to have a working network over the ability to contol the kids.
Debugging didn't provide enough information for me to figure out exactly why there was issues with Circle and App Armour, but it could have had something to do with the cpu usage on the router (I could see CPU spikes around the time when the router went into internet lockdown).
When testing, I tried factory resets only enabling either circle or app armor, and both made the router go into lockdown. For some reason, Circle did this faster and more often than just App armour.
I gave up on both Circle and App armour and have a fairly stable network now. I've had issues like network drops happinging only twice the last 6 month, so there are still some issues with the Netgear software also.
I know it's related to the netgear software, because my old Asus AC68U is not having any issues with the fibre network at all (I put them both up connected to the fibe to check for network disruptions and only the Orbi got them for some reasons).
Lastly, the "Test" button also fixed my issues when they happened, these were my observations when the issue happened:
When not pressing the test button, the internet part of the router was blocked for 2-10 minutes before coming back up. When just waiting, the router kept the public IP.
When the "Test" button was pressed, the internet blocking was off after a few seconds and the router came up with a new public ip, meaning that the router probably just refreshed DHCP to test conectivity. I'm also guessing that services like Circle and App Armor restarted when they discovered an IP change and in that way, the internet connectivity was fixed.