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Orbi system - Faulty LAN / switching design - Will NG ever fix it?
Issue - Orbi system with 2 satellites (R1, S1, S2) will randomly drop LAN communication between segments. e.g. devices connected to S1 (both wired/wireless) won't be able to ping devices on S2 (or ...
I may not be a certified network engineer but I can certainly confirm that there are no other routers on the network when the Orbi is setup in router mode :)
With the orbi in AP mode, I use an Edgerouter ER-X as the router (although I also tried a TP-Link TL-470T+ as router when troubleshooting )
Also switches do maintain either an ARP table (managed switches) or a forwarding table (unmanaged switches) so that the switch knows where to send a packet if the packet is addressed to an entity on the LAN
I don't know if the switch is a managed or unmanaged one (br0 is the internal naming convention on Orbi) but it does have a crucial role to play in routing packets correctly
Let's take an example of the Orbi in AP mode with
Satellite 1 - Sat1
Satellite 2 - Sat 2
Orbi Router (In AP mode) - Orbi1
Router (upstream from Orbi1) - Router
e.g. if I have a wifi bulb (say LIFX_1) connected to Sat1 wifi and a phone (say iP_1) connected to Sat 2 wifi.
The LIFX app will try to send and receive packets from the bulb so I think the route packets will take are as follows:
LAN route (i.e the one prone to failure)
iP_1 -> Sat2 br0 -> Orbi1 br0 -> Sat1 br0 -> LIFX_1 (and vice versa)
while if I try open a webpage on ip1 then:
WAN route (works fine)
ip_1 -> Sat2 br0 -> Orbi1 br0 -> Router
The latter works fine but the former is what is prone to issues
To extend further, if I have another phone (say ip_2) connected to Sat2, i think the path would be
LAN route (works fine)
iP_2 -> Sat2 br0 -> LIFX_1 (and vice versa)
WAN route (works fine)
ip_2 -> Sat2 br0 -> Orbi1 br0 -> Router
In this scenario, both work fine
Just to add, the route in Red works fine after a restart
It's just that at some point in time, it will start to fail - the time duration could be minutes or hours (with the new firmware ) or it could be days to weeks (with 2.1.4.16) - but it will fail
What's funny is that this won't happen if I were to replace the Orbis with $20 equivalent routers setup as APs.
PS: The debug page will allow me to enable capture for WAN-LAN traffic (which works fine at all time )
The issue is with LAN-LAN traffic
Also adding another thread detailing the same issue
https://community.netgear.com/t5/Orbi/Random-ARP-Problems-w-WiFi-nodes/m-p/1799406
and the rest:
https://community.netgear.com/t5/Orbi/Serious-Satellite-Connectivity-Bug/td-p/1303604
https://community.netgear.com/t5/Orbi/Orbi-loosing-part-of-the-network-NOT-Internet/m-p/1298723
Thanks for the thorough explanation. It was the role of the other router that eluded me. ("Here" vs. "Absent")
I agree that every device with a brain maintains an ARP table, including the router and satellites, and that unmanaged switches (having no "brain") maintain only a MAC address forwarding table.
Thanks also for the tip about the LAN/WAN packet capture. Looking more closely, it appears that the Orbi captures packets that appear at the LAN or WAN interface, so a packet that remains entirely within the Orbi LAN does not. Any packet that contains the Orbi MAC address (either source or destination) or a broadcast address is captured. This makes sense. If the switch module has directed a packet out a specific LAN port, the actual "Orbi LAN" will never see it.
Seems to identify the Orbi LAN module as the critical piece in this. If the flaw is in the hardware module itself, it might not be "fixable".
My first thought was, "Aha. The MAC forwarding table is overflowing." but that just seems ridiculous. We had problems 25 years ago when our corporate network outgrew the tables in our early switches, but today? Surely whatever module this is can handle the number of MAC addresses in a typical residential installation.
The two satellites are linked to the router over WiFi or etherent?
The satellites are on the wifi backhaul.
My house conduits are rather tightly packed and drawing a CAT6 unfortunately will be a rather expensive and time consuming exercise .
I really doubt though that the issue is with the switching hardware. Network Switches are a very stable technology by now.
Also, I had no issues as long as I was on a 2 device setup.
I do believe that the LAN routing tables on the Orbi hardware get confused with 3 or more devices -
In a normal wired AP setup (say ubiquiti or even a basic cheap TP link), if i had 3 APs in a star formation with the central switch (say S1), a packet from a device on AP1 going to a device on AP2 would go : AP1 -> S1 -> AP2
I suspect the orbi stack maybe trying to optimize by routing packet directly :
i,.e. RBS20 -> RBS50 which obviously fails
instead of RBS20 -> RBR50 -> RBS50
Hi superczar , it looks like this is the most recent thread detailing your LAN / ARP issues. Are your devices still losing the ability to see each other? I'm shopping for a mesh kit and if I go with Orbi, my setup would probably look a lot like yours. I'm very worried about buying a kit that seems to be fine at first, but starts exhibiting this sort of behavior once the return period has elapsed. LAN-to-LAN traffic is very important to me, and I don't want to be stuck spending hours debugging what sounds like a longstanding firmware problem.
superczar I wanted to address your concerns.
I have been installing and servicing Wireless mesh systems since they came out. Comparing the Netgear Orbi to the competitors, I have found the Orbi systems are more powerful, stable and seem to give the best WIFI speeds over the competitors. And not to insult anyone, as it is not my intention, but 90% of wireless mesh problems are not the fault of the system, but rather, not in any order, connections, install and configuration, wiring, ISP device, switches, placement, interference, purchased used without testing, and more. To add to it, their are users that should just hire someone to install their system. I'm a big "Do It Yourselfer", but I would pay rather someone, for many things I don't understand.
Regarding the Orbi brand, I installed a competitor's AC2200 5000+ sq ft 3 device system in my home. It was great and covered quite well. I was very happy, but it never gave me excellent WIFI speeds. They were good but I knew they could be better. Then I installed an Orbi system, in a huge warehouse, and could not believe the coverage. So I replaced my 3 device system with an Orbi RBK50 3 device system. The speed and coverage difference was enormous. I could not be happier. The only complaint, that I don't use, is their support is as terible as the competitors. And to be honest, you get better support from the forums than you ever get from the manufacturer. Speaking for the Orbi forum, there are so many knowedgeable people participating, that you can see most issues get resolved.
