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Forum Discussion
Anyone seeing internet connection drops with Armor enabled?
I installed Armor on my 2 1/2 year old Orbi and started having internet drops once I streamed content on my TV. I had the same issue when I thought I had removed Armor but apparnetly I had not. I figured I'd need a new router soon anyway, so I bought a replacement RBR50 and it set up fine. Then it dropped internet again. I did a factory reset and have not yet added Armor back in (I had purchased a year subscription). I have also had no internet drops. I want to add Armor back in but am a bit gunshy given the experience of the past week. I will likely do so soon, but am interested if I am the only one experiencing the internet drops with streaming or otherwise. Thanks.
53 Replies
- I had the exact same issue. Out of the blue I did not have internet, but would show connected to WiFi on my phones and through LAN on my laptop, but couldn't reach the router's web admin page. I know I had internet because my PS4 is hardwired to my modem (priorities of life) and I went through a full Rainbow six siege match during that time.
Anyway, I rebooted the mesh system manually, router and each satellite,then internet started working again after everything synced back up.
Happiness lasted less than 10 minutes.
My solution 2 days ago, disabled Netgear Armor, and have had no more disconnects since.
So, yes, it's a Netgear Armor issue.Thanks so much for the reply. I am fast coming to the conclusion that it has t be an Armor issue. I have pretty much narrowed it down to that. I unfortunately bought a year's subscription and will now have to ask them for a refund. Even if they won't I will not enable it again. I almost feel like I have ransomware on my machine as I have lost internet 10 times at least within a week. If anyone else reads this please post your experience. Thanks.
I do have 2 extra layers of security in my network, which has me at peace for now;
I have a Fing Box (great to secure your internal network and keep away spoofing devices from your wifi), and a Cujo Smart firewall, set up between my modem and my RBK system.
Those 2 devices block enough potentially malicious traffic to keep me feeling safe.
Plus, I also have Bitdefender Total Security in all the devices for my family (laptops, phones, tablets, etc.)
All in all, I'm ok keeping the Orbi just as my mesh system, and relying on something else for security.
But, yes, Armor is broken and a bit. Hopefully they will fix it by the time I'm up for my bitdefender renewal (9 more months, hehe).
I've had the exact same experience with internet dropping out periodically after I enabled Armour. When I updated my router and saw this new option I was excited to give it a try. So glad I didn't pay for anything yet. After I disabled Armour things went back to normal. So unfortunate that Netgear released such a troublesome program that is supposed to help not hinder.
Having the same issue after installing Armor. Router will lose connection every few days. I have to power cycle the router for it to work. Phone support has been terrible. Firmware is up to date.
I haven't heard from Netgear about this issue.
Bumping the post to see if they say anything.
Has there been an update to fix it?
I just updated my Orbi to V2.3.5.30, but don't want to risk enabling Armor and break everything again. (Although, the trial period ended for me already, so maybe it doesn't matter anymore).
My Bitdefender total security subscription is up in about 6 months, and I would like to know if it's worth it to get Armor instead, since it includes Total Security.
Does anyone know anything new about this?
Thank you.
I've been running Armor for over three months now; and the only time I experienced internet drops was when I had the daisy chain option enabled. If you only have one satellite, daisy chain will slow down your network and cause regular internet drops -- at least, this has been my experience. Once I disabled daisy chain, everything went back to normal, with no hiccups whatsoever. I have since added a second satellite, as the signal was weak in one area of our house. I re-enabled daisy chain, and now the signal is very strong in all corners of the property, with zero internet drops.
So based on my experience, if I were you, I would definitely go with Armor once the BD Total Security licence runs out since Armor includes BD Total Security on specific devices for protection when working away from the home network.
Seeing the same thing here. Every time it runs a vulnerability scan,
it kills my wifi. The only way to reconnect is to reboot the router, which is a nuisance.
Having same issue it seems. Internet just randomly stops. Can't access router dashboard. Unplug/plug back in, then it's back for a while. Tested all the cables, they're good. Called the ISP, no downtime of modem. Unfortunately just paid for Armor subscription.
- Exact same issue. Did all the recommended fixes with no results. Thought my router went bad. Replaced it. Same issue. Returned router and got Bitdefender to do a full refund. It is not ready for prime time. Have not had the issue since removing Armor.
Hi All,
Thanks for confirming I'm not going crazy.
I've only had Armor activated on my RBR50 for less than two days and I've already had 4 internet dropouts that required rebooting my router and satellite. That is more reboots than I've needed over the past 9 months in total since buying the device.
I'm surprised there isn't a firmware update for what is obviously a problem to do with this new offering they are trying to sell. I guess my free trial is going to go to waste now, because I'm not going to put up with this level of unreliablility. This new Armor offering is a nice idea but in practice it is worse than useless and I'm disabling it now.
UPDATE: I do also have the Circle option enabled. After reading another post, I'm wondering whether others in this thread also have Circle active. It is possible this internet connection drops are more frequent when multiple optional services are active on the same Orbi.
Thanks, Matt
The problem went away for a couple months. It's back to random failure
splatooft wrote:Having same issue it seems. Internet just randomly stops. Can't access router dashboard. Unplug/plug back in, then it's back for a while. Tested all the cables, they're good. Called the ISP, no downtime of modem. Unfortunately just paid for Armor subscription.
Firmware up to date. Lights on router all normal showing there's internet, but nope there's nothing. No lan, no wifi, no internet, therefore, no administrative dashboard. Have to unplug the router for 30 seconds. At least now it's not completely factory resetting the router as had been happening.- Yeah, I've been trying to deal with the Orbi's endless random issues, but all these disconnects by the satellites, the web and app showing no satellites while I'm connected to the furthest one, missing devices that are streaming at the moment, and so many other issues, pushed me to find a different solution, so I'm retiring my Orbi system next week.
Too bad they were never able to fix some of the issues that make this otherwise powerful system a very expensive set of bricks.
I had the same drop connection issues as you did. At first, I thought that Netgear Armour would be a nice and effective network protection for my home network and smart devices as well as for all my PCs and tablets. I activated the Armor two times and immediately after the activation, I began to experience wifi disconnection from phones and tablets frequently without warning. My PC which was wired connected to the router directly with an ethernet cable also lost its connection and so did the internet. I reset the Orbi and again activated Armor one more time and the drop in wifi and wired connection happened again including my main PC. What puzzling me was that there was no explanation whatsoever as to what caused the problem. Finally, I gave up activating Netgear Armor and just used Mcafee Internet Security on my PCs and tablets and the internet and the connection worked perfectly with no issues. I can not survive on an unstable internet connection like that. Hopefully, the Netgear community could find a solution to this.
Hello TechGuru1986,
Thanks for sharing your experience. If you're interested, we'd be glad to work with you on the issue(s) your reporting. If so, please send me a private message with your contact info and serial number.
Thanks,Christian
Any resolution to these problems? I am in the same boat as the OP and have disabled Netgear Armor in order to get back to a stable connection.
Had many problems dropping connection. Verified that WAN was operating well. Finally turned the Netgear Armor off. Performance is close to normal now.
mgdurand1 wrote:I installed Armor on my 2 1/2 year old Orbi and started having internet drops once I streamed content on my TV. I had the same issue when I thought I had removed Armor but apparnetly I had not. I figured I'd need a new router soon anyway, so I bought a replacement RBR50 and it set up fine. Then it dropped internet again. I did a factory reset and have not yet added Armor back in (I had purchased a year subscription). I have also had no internet drops. I want to add Armor back in but am a bit gunshy given the experience of the past week. I will likely do so soon, but am interested if I am the only one experiencing the internet drops with streaming or otherwise. Thanks.
Same issue with my R6700v3 router. With working from home and having to connect to my company's VPN, it was dropping the connection every few minutes. I finally had to just disconnect the router altogether and wire my work laptop directly to the modem until I figured it out.
I reset to factory settings and did not re-install Armor. No problems. I like the concept, but it definitely wasn't stable enough to release.
I hope I can get my money back! Hopefully they will resolve the issues with Armor and i will give it another try...someday...
Kelly
- Had the same problem. Had to constantly reset it.
Will not be using armor anymore. It is a good idea executed poorly.
Just an update: my Armor experience didn't go well and I'm done with it. Christian_R I have posted detailed feedback in the appropriate thread here:
Best of luck to those continuing to work with Armor.
- There's definitely an issue with Netgear Armour. I'm not technically minded enough to know the problem, but streaming services are certainly an issue. Tried downloading Prime for Google TV on chromecast today, wasn't having it. Knew something was up when I created a hotspot via the phone as WiFi and downloading it worked via that. Then went back into the app after reconnecting it to the orbi and it worked for approx 1 minute. Kept crashing and buffering constantly...then turned off Armour and bingo, Prime started to stream without issues. Maybe it creates a firewall or something and some apps just don't get on with it??
Tried to use Armor for months. Kept dropping conneciton no matter what I did. Finially disabled it, got a refund (I had purchased the service) and never looked back. Problems disappeared and never came back. Armor is definately not ready for prime time.
I had the free trial for one year with the purchase of my orbi, all seems to work flawlessly. I let the license expire and deactivated it. About 6 months later I re-activated it, and had very similar issues to what you are describing. All of our computers were dropping connection, the router was dropping connection, and web pages would not load consistently.
Could not figure out the issue, and I was ready to call and cancel the Armour service. Turns out I was just too lazy to read the errors that my machine was popping on me when it would not load properly. I simply ignored them and tried to refresh, the answer was right in front of me.
My son kept getting an error on his windows machine, could not connect to DNS server. He came and asked me if that could be the problem and did I know how to fix it. It was an ahh-ha moment. I went into the router settings and changed the DNS server to the google server 8,8,8,8, and it's been smooth sailing ever since.
I believe the Netgear Armour possibly changes the DNS, or simply does not play nice with my internet providors default DNS. However, with this fix all seems to be working properly now.
