Purple Ring when in router mode

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Kopper wrote:

I have TDS fiber and am unable to use my Orbi in Router mode.  When plugged directly into my ONT (no router or double NAT involved), I get a 6 hour DHCP lease from my ISP.  The Orbi seems to lose connection about half way through.  It provides excellent coverage in AP mode, but is really unreliable in router mode.

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DHCP protocol specifies that the device should begin asking to renew the lease when half of the lease time has expired.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_Host_Configuration_Protocol 

This sounds suspiciously like the ISP is receiving the renewal request and denying it.  The ISP Technical Support will almost certainly deny it.  I still recommend calling them and pleading the case.  Maybe they'll give you a 7 day lease so this happens only once a week?  Orbi's are pretty common, so maybe they have notes on how to support customers with Orbi.

It will be a chore to collect data to support (or reject) this possibility.  What I would do is use the Orbi feature to "Enable LAN/WAN Packet Capture" on the debug page (http://orbilogin.net/debug.htm).  Start the capture when there is about 3 1/2 hours remaining on the lease and capture until the Orbi loses connection.  Then save the file to a PC and use Wireshark (free) to look at the wan.pcap file. There is a display filter at the top of the page. Enter "dhcp" (lower case) and click the arrow.  This will show all of the DHCP packets that have been captured.

Wireshark records the packet time in seconds from the beginning of the capture, so if you started capturing about 30 minutes before the lease is half over, somewhere around 1800 seconds there should be a DHCP renewal packet from the Orbi public IP address and then a response from the ISP.  I don't know about fiber systems, but my cable sytem records the DHCP broadcasts from every computer on the subnet, so there is a lot of data to look through.

This is a lot of hassle and a significant investment of time.  Personally, I LOVE this sort of thing, and would do it even if the results turn out inconclusive.  You may realize that "this is not worth it."