Circle seems to be randomly killing Internet ingress/egress from my Orbi starting this week

I have the exact same issue, i came across this Circle thread by accident.  I have been having the issue for a couple of months and it has been getting progressily worse.  To the point that it would happen 2 - 3 times a day, and almost always every morning.  The frustrating thing is one device would loose connectivity whilst another would continue to work.  I initially tried to rule out circle by disabling it in the iPhone App, but the issue persisted, so I went looking elsewhere. I was only today after reading this form that I found the option in the Orbi web app, when i disabled it there, everything that was disconnected came back.

The reason i am posting is becasue am on V2.5.1.8.  I upgraded to that version becasue the previous release (sorry i dont reacall that version) also had disconnect issues and I was hoping an FW upgrade would resolve. I was so frustrated that I replaced my Cable modem with a Netgear CM1100, when that didn't fix the issue. I had the cable company test the network and every thing checked out.  The cable guy told me he had seen disconnects with Netgear routers and told me to try the Arris 8200 which i am presently running.    

I am suspecting this is a DNS resolution issue. If I manualy configure the DNS setting on my laptop to use 8.8.8.8, i can get it to respond again. Whilst in this disconecte state I have been able to run continious pings to the router interface, the default gateway, and external host (by IP) and internal devices that are also disconnected. That all points to DNS issues and i suspect circle is simply using dns filtering to restrict acess.  I have been using circle for 18months with very few issues.   So the question is why did this just start happening and why isn't every circle user experiencing the issue.?

I just don't have time to mess around with firmware downgrades to troubleshoot bugs.  Let Netgear engineers who get paid to figure this out, figure it out.  I will just disable Circle for now.

Thanks all!

I also had performed the upgrade to Orbi, prior to activating Circle (paid) so I don't know if the interaction between the prior Orbi firmware and Circle was solid or not. If you do roll this back, please document the steps and respond here with whether or not it stabilizes and is successful. I have had zero issues with Internet service since this was turned off by me. I would really like to reactivate it.

Finally I decided not to perform the firmware downgrade and telnet to disable firmware upgrade after reading all the firmware release notes, there are a number of security update that has been added for almost each firmware upgrade.

I had to give Circle a miss for now until there's a firmware that is stable with Circle.

So, after my post 17 days ago, I have not had any more problems - the ORBIs have just been working again, 17 days+ uptime.  The only change I made was to disable traffic counting as I really don't need to care how many TB the kids are going through.

So, busy home with 3 kids on ipad/xbox/switch/smart tv, working from home all day with VPN into work, lots of zoom meetings and CIRCLE enabled- it's a busy set of ORBIs.

I guess we go into circle most nights to "reward" the kids while they are off but other than that, can't think of any different behaviour.

The plot thickens.

My only successful fix was to start fresh with a reset and forget network command through the orbi app.  

That said, I just added 2 to my 2 satellites, and I get some latency in getting some devices to connect, primarily TV devices like roku, firetv, samsung.

There seems to be a new firmware out, and I am waiting for some reviews prior to the upgrade.  Upgrades too seem not to work automatically.  I have to download then do a manual update.

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Smge1lc wrote:

I'm glad you guys are getting some reprieve, but last night I updated to .32 and enabled circle.

 

Today, everyone in the household is complaining about wifi drops and google home and alexa are in and out.

 

I just shut off circle again, so I hope that will bring back some normality.  Overall, the system was relatively stable at .16 with circle turned off.

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Do you use a satellite, and if so, did you update it seperately and first? Just as an FYI, are you using a modem or a gateway? If you are using a gateway, you can check to see if you have a dual NAT situation by using a Command Prompt, and typing "tracert 8.8.8.8". If the first two IP addresses are local private address, not public addresses, then you do. This can cause you to have problems. See if you can put the ISP’s gateway into bridge or passthrough mode. This will disable the gateway’s NAT, firewall, and DHCP functions and reduce it to a simple internet modem. Many gateways offer these settings, but not all. Log into the web-based GUI of the gateway and check for a NAT, passthrough, or bridge mode setting, but keep in mind that sometimes it’s hidden. If you don’t see it, search the internet for details on your particular model, or call your ISP’s tech support.