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RBR50 + satellite randomly disconnecting specific devices from internet
I hope someone else has run into this weird problem and can offer some advice, so I appreciate anyone that can help! I'll be as detailed as I can to get started.
We have an RBR50 + satellite set up with over a dozen devices. Nothing at all has changed in the last few weeks, and before that the only change for months was to update to the latest firmware. This problem started on Sunday, March 14th.
Certain devices on the network will suddenly have no internet. They remain connected to the network, and can be seen by the router, showing up as connected in the attached devices list. Once this happens the only fix is to reboot the router.
These devices lose internet, but stay connected to Orbi and show up in the attached devices list:
- My cell (Samsung) (WiFi)
- Wife’s cell (Motorola) (WiFi)
- My laptop (WiFi)
- Roku, office (WiFi in same room as satellite)
- Wife’s desktop (wired into the satellite)
These devices do not lose internet:
- My desktop (WiFi, connects to satellite)
- Roku, living room (wired into Orbi base station)
- Camera system (WiFi, connects to base station)
As you can see, it’s a combination of connection types that stop working. Unfortunately testing is hard because if it goes down during the day I have to just reboot it so my wife and I can get back to work. It has only gone down twice so far outside work hours.
During those times here's what I've tried, all with no luck:
- Checked for firmware update (already on latest)
- Turn off WiFi on the affected devices and reconnect
- "Forget" WiFi settings on the devices and reconnect
- Made sure access control and parental controls are still disabled
- Tried connecting to the guest network instead - same result
- Get devices to connect to main router instead of satellite, or vice versa
- Turn off satellite
- Reboot just the satellite
- Release/renew ip, both on devices and on router
- Enable fast roaming
- Enable IGMP Proxying
- Turn off "Anywhere Access" inside app
- Changed DNS settings in router to use Google's DNS, just in case OpenDNS was having an issue
- Manually disabled individual devices inside the app then reenabled them
- Wait 8 hours to see if it fixes iteself
I can’t think of any other options short of a factory reset, which I can try this weekend, but I’m hoping someone has other suggestions or thoughts as to why this would just suddenly start happening now.
I found an old archived thread on Reddit where someone had what sounded like the exact same problem. One other person replied that they also had the issue, but there were no other replies.
So far, the reports seem to confirm that EITHER turning off DST *or* TM no longer triggers the problem, using the standard graphical interface.
There are other fixes that also work but require debug-level direct access, e.g., restarting dnsmasq (recovers). Note that setting clients to no longer relay DNS through dnsmasq has *not* been shown viable; it would allow clients to continue working using their current DHCP assignment but if dnsmasq crashes then new assignments and renewals would fail.
30 Replies
what orbi firmware are you running?
That's interesting. Yesterday (3/18) while I was at work, my wife, who works from home, texted me that we had no internet (her laptops lost internet and her phone which was latched on to wifi at the time). She did not check anything, as I'm the "computer guy" (SNL reference) for the house.
Within a couple of minutes, she said the laptops were fine, but her phone (only) kept doing the same thing. I was able to see the various IOT stuff in the house from work (plugs, switches, cams, etc.) so I don't know what else it may have been affecting, or if anything else was affected but by the time I looked at them the problem resolved.
From her description I knew the Wifi worked, since her phone stayed tapped in and didn't hop over to data, but was not connecting somehow to the internet. At the moment, I feared the dreaded DNS problem, since she described the phone as "reloading" and going through, but constantly happening (but could not describe what error she was seeing).
But all was well even with the phone in another few minutes. I have noticed over the last couple of days, the signal STRENGTH as viewed by the wifi icon, would drop a little, but I wouldn't lose signal completely, and the icon would show full strength within a few seconds.
hmmm...
This appears related to the recent DNS/NTP issue. The router appears to lose the ability to relay DNS requests.
To confirm, try to set the DNS on your laptop or phone to something other than the router.
Here's a link to one of many other threads on this topic:
It would affect only devices that are currently relaying DNS through the router whose DNS is set to 192.168.1.1 (the router).
You can get around this by either restarting the dnsmasq process on the router (as posted to the thread link I gave previously) or setting your device to use some other DNS (e.g., Cloudflare 1.1.1.1).
DOH sorry, the malformed HTML detection on these forums apparently stripped out the line in my original post with the firmware.
Both devices are on the latest, according to the update button: v2.7.2.104
Flibbidyfloo wrote:DOH sorry, the malformed HTML detection on these forums apparently stripped out the line in my original post with the firmware.
Both devices are on the latest, according to the update button: v2.7.2.104
and there lies your problem....v2.7.2.104
