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ChuckieLab's avatar
ChuckieLab
Aspirant
Sep 15, 2020

WIreless can't talk to wired devices

Devices on the primary orbi wireless network cannot ping devices wired to the orbi router.

 

I have an Orbi Pro router-satellite mesh system, which has apparently been working correctly for a year or two, but I have run into a wrinkle which may have always existed...or may not.  I have a DSL router wired to the internet input on the orbi router, and then a netgear unmanaged switch wired to port 1 on the router's outputs.  Almost all my devices are wireless (75 devices, mostly smart LEDs and IoT) but there are 5-6 things wired to the switch.  For the first time I need to reach a wired device directly from the wireless network, without needing to go out into the cloud (specifically, a raspberry pi running HomeAssistant).

 

I could reach it for the first week, and then not.  I reset the router, and it worked for a few hours, and then not.  I have tried all combinations of power-order for the switch/router/modem to no avail.  In troubleshooting, when the problem occurs I cannot ping any wired devices from the wireless network.  Everything is fine when my laptop is wired, pings and connectivity work as expected.  When I go wireless, regardless of the device nothing wireless can ping through to a wired device.  When I go to the router configuration web page, all the devices (wired and wireless) are visible, show MAC addresses and IP assignments, and believable signal strengths for the wireless ones.

 

Clearly the router can talk to all the devices, it's slmost like there is a security layer interposing to restrict them from each other.  The primary Wifi should be the administrative one, right, where devices can see others?  I have tried turning NAT off, no love.  Not sure what settings to mess with, as far as I know it should all work.  The problem also occurs when I wire a device directly to the router and remove the switch...so the problem must be with either router settings or the parts of the router I can't do anything about, meaning 'broken'.

 

In the hopes that this is something simple, I throw myself on the mercy of the community.  Any and all advice gratefully appreciated!

Chuck