RBRE960 anywhere access broken

Thankyou, your reply is most useful.

It's strange Orbi support are checking and on about re-flashing it with zero troubleshooting to whether they can see the connection attempts to their "secure cloud" I work in networks myself so have a decent handle on things.....

I've attached the app screenshot it's cloud connection via any WAN im using whilst not on-site, I can connect locally and reach out to the internet perfectly, the RBRE960 is definitely doing weird things as it's dropped it's local satellites which should have been stored in it's NVRAM memory one would have thought, few reboots and nothing changes....

PS - I can connect to anywhere access locally, I even tried to resync a local satellite and it didn't find it after i pressed the synch button on the respective satellite and click next on the app to find it - but it didn't!

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uk_orbi wrote:

I've attached the app screenshot it's cloud connection via any WAN im using whilst not on-site,

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My sense is that there are two separate issues:

• Anywhere Access
• The Orbi app displaying the network map correctly.

Anywhere Access:

The red dot on the screen shot next to "Connected via Anywhere Access" and the notice at the bottom of the screen ("Unable to connect to router") support the conclusion that Anywhere Access is  not actually "Connected".  This is not especially helpful because there are so many potential causes:

• Something is wrong with the iOS version of the app and it is failing to get connected to the "Cloud"
  • Maybe it isn't getting to the cloud through the WAN connection at all
  • Maybe it isn't presenting the correct credentials to the cloud to match it with the router
  • Maybe the Cloud internal tables are screwed up
• Something is wrong for this specific user account and/or router inside the cloud.
• Something is wrong with the router.  Perhaps Anywhere Access is turned off in the router and it is not connecting to the Cloud.

What I do not know is whether installing an Orbi router automatically opens a connection to the Cloud, or whether a connection is established when the first Orbi app (connected Locally) enabled Anywhere Access.  Enabling the feature is on a device basis.  A customer might have several devices with the Orbi app and some could have Anywhere Access enabled and some might not.  Once a device with Anywhere Access not enabled leave the LAN, it cannot connect.

On the second issue (Device Map incorrect) maybe it would be worth looking at the Orbi web browser interface to see whether it detects the satellites (or not).

Yup good point sir, I actually had in the back of my mind that I did an iOS update to 16.1.1 and has that caused it!?

Just tried re-installing the Orbi app and still fails to discover it....

Hummm yes shall try the local Orbi web portal when im on-site and report back.

The other thing is those satellites "had" rings and hives connected to them and now they all connect to the RBRE960  router wifi instead I checked this via the connection manager and it plays into the theme something is up with the RBRE960 router, I mean why would those satellites not have the local devices connected to them instead?

All lights on the satellites are off too indicating they're running ok

Tried my daughters iPhone on iOS 15.6.1 and still finds the Orbi as offline with anywhere access.

My bets are on the RBRE960 router.

• It's dropped it's satellites
• doesn't find them when trying to resynch one of them
• doesn't connect to the secure cloud /or some issue associated with that

I have the pro extended support their advice seemed to be re-flashing it but being an engineer it makes me wonder why? how? what caused this?

Can it be hacked?

Does it have an inbound firewall to block all ports?

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uk_orbi wrote:

I have the pro extended support their advice seemed to be re-flashing it but being an engineer it makes me wonder why? how? what caused this? Ever since the first IBM PC (1982), the "last resort" has always been, "wipe it and start over." 

 

Can it be hacked? Damn difficult.

 

Does it have an inbound firewall to block all ports? Absolutely. Netgear routers reject all connections except for those that the user has specified using Port Forwarding.  Every Internet of Things device opens an outgoing connection to its Cloud.

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Every update to iOS brings new adventures.

Hello uk_orbi ,

Thank you for your post!

I understand that you are having issues with Anywhere Access on your Orbi app version 2.21.0.329 with iOS 16.1. 

Please PM the following information so I can endorse you to our support team:

Name:
Email:
Phone Number:
Device Model:
Firmware:
Serial Number:
Preferred time to be contacted:
App version:

Please provide this information as soon as possible!
I look forward to hearing from you!

Best,
Kevin
Community Team

yeah was thinking the same as rings/hives outbound to the cloud first to prevent extra user port-forwarding nats and unnecessary security holes being opened up!

I might just re-flash and see how that goes, im hoping the rings and hive hubs re-connected without any issues thereafter (the rings use the default wifi creds in any case and post factory reset, the hives use a wired connections to the router and satellites respectively).

Thanks for lending a hand man appreciate it!

Support Case ##########

So I went to site today to check web access after passing the default credentials page it asked me city of birth and mothers maiden name for which it didn't accept on a number of occasions (I wouldn't have put anything else) so I'm wondering the router was hacked and sabotaged that or it's had some major failure with it's software/hardware.

Just seems like I need to start again with it and re-flash it, Netgear pro support have been useless promised call backs yesterday and today received nothing!!

The Password Recovery feature has been a complicated issue for some time.  I, myself, had an experience with it.  After having the admin password rejected three times in a row, the Password Recovery page popped up.  I entered the router serial number, and it rejected every attempt to "answer the questions."

Finally, I did a Factory Reset, and this time I was very deliberate about entering the recovery questions. i.e.:

• Click on the "Down arrow" to expose all the questions
• Select a question
• Enter the response

After completing the process, clicking Apply to ensure that it was all done.

Then I tested the process.  Entered incorrect password three time. Did Password Recovery, and it worked!

My conclusion was that somehow I had not actually created password recovery responses the first time, and thus the router had nothing to compare my answers against.  A frustrating experience.

that makes sense and prob the most likely reason it didn't accept my responses.