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Forum Discussion
Circle Continually loses connection/settings Orbi
We have been using the Disney Circle product enabled in the RBR50. We have noticed the following behavior Circle loses its connection Once it resestablishes connection, all settings are purged...
I noticed that this issue was raised in June 2019... we're in June 2020... so just wondering if anyone from Netgear is looking at this forum and actively trying to resolve this issue? or is it just a forumn so the community can just help eachother out?
Trying to determine if I should bother waiting for a fix or just think about potentially buying new wireless system from another brand that can allow parents to lock down kids internet access.
Thekraken wrote:Recently had to enable Disney Circle on my netgear RBK50.... and experiencing the same random disconnection from the internet. This was enable 4 days ago. First day it happened, i thought it was an ISP thing...the second day, it happened again, then i jumped on the router and ran a speed test. The speed test returned results indicating there was still internet. So i rebooted the router, everything was fine.
Day 3, i decided to turn off the Disney circle for a day, and that day i had no internet disconnection...
Day 4, I turn on Disney Circle and experienced another disconnect. I waited, didn't reboot my router, i ran a speed test from the Orbi, and it returned the stats for normal speed, After a few minutes my internet connect restored.
It seems like lots of people are having problems also. My router has the latest firmware V2.5.1.8AU
What a pain.. hope Netgear resolves this soon.
So, this is what I did:
- Factory reset of the router and all satelites.
- Factory reset the modem.
- Unistall Orbi App and Circle App
- Reinstalled everything but during installation, only intalled the router. I only added the satelites the next day, when I realized the connection was stable
- I used the factory SSID, I decided not to change it
- Withouth resetting the modem, the old parameter of the router were not erased. Don't ask me why. The factory reset only worked with the model reset.
- Installed the Apps again.
- After 3 months trying everything these steps solved my problem.
Good luck!
Ok, but what firmware are you on?
The last firmware update broke Circle for me while it was working fine in prior months. I think this issue is a combination of a 3rd party feature set integrated with Netgear firmware. My opinion of Netgear (and many network commercial companies) is that their development cycles are very slow. They don't seem agile and they don't address issues very quickly. Pehaps this will change over time, but issues like this which should get attention quickly seem to sit.
Perhaps they are not staffed properly or perhaps they don't have good change management and QA testing. Who knows? I do know that I wouldn't hold your breath on a fix based on prior experiences with their firmware release cycles.
That all said, I did just notice this page for the first time and it does list the Circle app as a known issue:
Thanks, PSUHammer, for the link. So, maybe, just maybe, Netgear is actually working on the problem since they are acknowledging it exists.
I agree, Netgear/Circle will most likely never fix this. In the last 2 months I have been advising family, friends, web forums, parent groups, etc to NOT purchase Netgear products for parental control. With more people/family home and online, and the world/media losing any sense of morality, this is ever increasing as a critical service. The personal thanks I've gotten (4 to date) for saving someone from making the wrong purchase is beginning to make up for the $300 I flushed down the drain...
It really is mesmerizing that now, of all times, this is when the ball gets dropped. When kids were home from school, now going into summer, and with people relying on internet and streaming so much.
My wife and I are looking at alternatives now, but they are all more expensive. Even Circle's new dedicated device and plan are much more pricey.
Apparently Norton has a decent product.
Thanks for the status link PSUHammer.
i wonder if we have to log an incident ticket so it gets registered? Maybe Netgear doesn't worry too much about what's in the forums and like all companies are only concerned when problems are registered as incidents and then the have to resolve these problems within SLA?
according to the status site, there's been no incidents raised the past 2 days..... so there is no problem.
- So, I've had an incident ticket open for this issue for about 6 months and Netgear has effectively given up helping me. They send me a note once a month saying they are waiting for a level 2 engineer to look at it. Their solution until then? Completely disable Circle. I asked for a refund and they said it's out of warranty and they gave me a "solution". IMHO, Netgear is trying to sweep this under the rug and move on. I wish someone would start a class action lawsuits as I know there are hundreds of us in this boat.
Thanks Piupolino
Hi All
Took Piupolino's suggest to do a factory reset on my Orbi system, and things seem to be working fine. Previously, it was a daily occurance that I had a drop out. After the factory reset it's been 5 days and I haven't had the same kind of drop out, although I had another strange router freeze (different behaviour from previous) and not sure what caused that.
So it went like this.
1. Update Router and Sat to the latest firmware version: V2.5.1.16
2. performed factory reset on both Router and Sat.
3. Reconfigured everything, connecting the Sat to the Router as well.
4. Set new SSID ( just because i wanted to)
5. Kept most settings as default on router:
Notes:
* operating in Router Mode
* the only settings I've changed compared to pre-factory reset is below. These are just best practice settings for the ORbi setup I have.
Like I said, it's working well, so hope it helps.
Hi Everyone
Update:
After running a few weeks, the problem still occured, although much less frequent than i experienced before. I've decided to turn it off completely.
I noticed there's a new Version 2.5.1.32 recently released. Will try this and see if anything changes, although the release notes does not mention addressing this issue.
Hi All,
I don't suppose there has been any resolution to the Circle debacle? I've had my Orbi for about 6 months and was wondering why wifi kept dropping out randomly for some devices every few days. It's been exasperated by working at home recently and children being home more.
After reading pages and pages of fixes on the internet - I've set bridge mode on my DSL modem, changed the wan_lease settings... you name it.... I finally turned Circle off as a last resort - and bingo - it's fixed.
The trouble is I now have no parental controls - except Apple's on the kids devices.
Having Circle was a big selling point for me when choosing the Orbi. It's astounding that it's been over a year and it's still not working (note I am now running the V2.7.0.70 firmware - but none of the others worked properly either!).