NETGEAR is aware of a growing number of phone and online scams. To learn how to stay safe click here.
Forum Discussion
Wired device connection
I have a solar panel system that connects to monitoring servers via ethernet through my Orbi router. Or used to. This stopped working on Aug 22, 2021. I tried going from a DHCP connection to a static IP connection, which got me a connection, but could not get the panels through their handshake with the server. I finally got a Wireshark trace on the Orbi ethernet connection. Or part of a trace. When I look at ARP requests on that network, I see the panels doing an ARP broadcast for the gateway (192.168.1.1) (from 192.168.1.100, which the panels have been configured to use), but there's never a response to this ARP from Orbi, which is why the handshake never goes any further. What have I overlooked?
3 Replies
Do I understand correctly:
- The solar panel network connection was working prior to Aug, 2021?
- One thing that might have changed last August was a new release of firmware for the RBR50 router. Although I personally had no problems with it, there were a number of issues reported on the forum.
A new firmware release was posted just recently, V2.7.4.24
https://www.netgear.com/support/product/RBR50.aspx#download
It might be worth taking a few minutes to download the new firmware and install it on the satellite and router. - With the solar panels being outside the house, that Ethernet cable connection might have been damaged.
- Where was the Wireshark capture conducted?
At the solar panel location?
At the Orbi location?
Using the Orbi debug 'Enable LAN/WAN Packet Capture'? - The normal IP subnet for Orbi systems is 192.168.1.x. Is this still the case with this system?
(It has not changed, for example, to 10.0.0.x?)
If you have a laptop computer with ethernet capability, I would be tempted to connect the laptop using that Ethernet cable to double check that the cable connection remains good.
Yes, from May through August 21 of 2021, the connection through the Orbi router worked fine for the solar panels.
My router is actually an RBR750, so the RBR50 firmware update wouldn't be the issue (and the 750 says it's current on firmware...V4.6.7.13).
The Wireshark trace was done from a laptop connected via DHCP on Ethernet to the router that the solar panels are connected to.
Yes, the router sits at its default address of 192.168.1.1. The solar panels are configured to use 192.168.1.100, and to use 192.168.1.1 as a gateway. They are also configured to use 8.8.8.8 for DNS. The panels are showing that they get a connection and that they see 8.8.8.8, but that's as far as they get in their 8-step handshake to get to the monitoring servers.
I've played mix and match with the ethernet cables and tested them all with a circuit tester, so they're all good.
Total Brain Fart on my part about the firmware version. (Post header clearly states RBR750) Sorry. I saw August, 2021 and lost my mind.
I believe the only way to determine if the Orbi responds to those ARP broadcasts is to capture the LAN/WAN traffic and open the lan.pcap file with Wireshark. I just verified on my network that:
- ARP requests are broadcast packets, and thus Wireshark will see them anywhere on the network.
- ARP replies are unicast packets, so Wireshark will not see them.
Since the solar panel unit appears to be able to reach 8.8.8.8, that indicates that the connection from solar panel to Orbi is working.
This is a real puzzle.
p.s. Typical consumer cable testers verify that wires are terminated in the correct position, but are not capable of validating that the connection will support 100mb or 1000mb speeds. There have been several posts recently where the "cable was the problem" even though every indication was that the cable was OK. In this case, being able to send an ARP broadcast that can be seen on the LAN means that at least in one direction the cable is good.
