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Joey17's avatar
Joey17
Tutor
Nov 30, 2020

Orbi RBR50 Pulsing White and no Network Appearing

A week ago my Orbi mesh network completely went down (an RBR50 with 2 RBS50 satellites). The RBR50 was pulsing white and the network could not be found in any of my devices. I believe the satellietes were solid magenta at that time I'm not 100% sure. The issue was definitely with the Orbi routers because I was able to get the wifi working again by disconnecting the Orbi's and just using my xfinity router by itself. However, I still haven't been able to get the Orbi mesh network working again.

 

I tried all the standard ways troubleshooting methods I could think of (rebooting, factory reset, swapping power cords with the satelite). Most of this troubleshoting has been done without the satellites plugged in just so I can see if I get the RBR50 working by itself. Despite multiple attempts at factory resetting, the RBR50 never gets past the stage of pulsing white and the default network never appears (it blinks white for about a minute after starting up and then switches to slowly pulsing white, but never gets past that). 

 

The power LED is always solid green after it turns on. It responds to factory reset attempts as expected (solid amber for a few seconds, then blinks amber). But it the behavior is still always the same afterward. I've also tried using TFTP multiple times to flash older firmware versions on the router, but as with the resets it never ends up changing the behavior of the router. The TFTP flashing might not be working properly though because the router doesn't respond quite as described in posts such as this. That post describes that the power LED should turn solid amber then blink amber when holding the reset button while power cycling the router, but my routed is solid red and the blinking red rather than amber. The power LED also immediately goes dark when the transfer starts, and the router doesn't turn back on by itself. So it seems quite possible the router is just crashing as soon as the TFTP transfer starts. My computer does report however that all the bytes were transferred successfuly.

 

Are there any other things that would be worthwile for me to try? The next thing I'm planning on trying is to connect directly serial ports next as described here and see if that yeilds any useful results.

 

My router is just over a year old so the warrenty isn't valid anymore. Really sucks to have such an expensive router bite it after such a short amount of time.

13 Replies

  • FURRYe38's avatar
    FURRYe38
    Guru - Experienced User

    Can you access the RBRs web page with a wire connected PC pointed to 192.168.1.1 after the reset button press of 15 seconds then release? 

     

    If TFTP didn't work, then try the other recovery you linked. If that fails, then your RBR needs to be replaced. 

    • Joey17's avatar
      Joey17
      Tutor

      No, I've tried accessing the the web page at 192.168.1.1 via ethernet many times throughout the process and never been able to reach it. Will try connecting to the serial port and see what I can do.

      • FURRYe38's avatar
        FURRYe38
        Guru - Experienced User

        Let us know if that works for you. 

         

  • FURRYe38's avatar
    FURRYe38
    Guru - Experienced User

    If you get into the RBRs web page, what FW is currently loaded?