Going nuts with Orbi 950 WiFi authentication(?) issues (every 2 weeks)

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NutsWithWiFi wrote:

- 2.4 GHz channel. Auto (almost all of my IoT devices use this)

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The 2.4G channel setting affects only the router.  WiFi devices scan the entire set of channels looking for an access point that has a strong signal and offers an SSID that they recognize.  "Auto" means that the router scans the 2.4G channels and picks one of them based on some algorithm that is not documented.  Some users prefer to specify the 2.4G channel based on their own analysis.  If the 2.4G channel is changed, all of the WiFi devices will soon find it.

Information about the 5G and 6G capability is not relevant:

They went for the oldest (and cheapest) 2.4G WiFi chips, not even supporting 802.11n (2009).

The RBK953 package supports a separate Internet of Things (IoT) SSID.  See page 64 of the User Manual:

https://www.downloads.netgear.com/files/GDC/RBKE963/RBRE960_RBSE960_UM_EN.pdf 

I have a suspicion*, and it is only a suspicion, that the guest network may have a time limit on how long devices are allowed to remain on the network, which might explain why devices broadcast DHCP requests that are not answered.

* Actually, it's a very dim memory from a post in the last month or so.  With my memory, it could have been a dream.

You should be using the IoT specific network for any and all IoT devices. And not the guest network. Guest Network does have a limited least time and was never meant for long term use with IoT devices. 

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NutsWithWiFi wrote:

Good Morning! 

I have an Orbi 953 (Costco version of Orbi 960 with a few differences), along with 2 satellite devices. I have around 90 devices connected across two SSIDs, let's call them "main" and "main_guest". 

 

My issue is this: 

a) I have around 40 IoT devices connected to my guest network (mostly wiz wifi lights)  that every once in a while (1-2 weeks) are not accessible via their app

b) I have, after a lot of fiddling figured out that when it happens, randomly a bunch of devices are not able to get a DHCP IP address on main_guest. I've validated this by running wireshark on my guest wifi and I see a bunch of DHCP requests that don't get resolved. 

c) What seems to "always" fix the issue is if I toggle the authentication mechanism of main_guest. If its set to WPA2-PSK[AES], I switch it to WPA2-PSK[AES]+WPA3-Personal[SAE] or vice versa and boom - all devices connect immediately and get an IP address (password is same)

 

I'm confounded why this issue keeps happening. Almost always, the issue shows up on my IoT devices first (as I can't control them) and sure enough, switching the auth method seems to work. No amount of router rebooting helps.

 

FWIW, I suspect this same issue seems to happen on my main network - a few months ago my IoT devices used to connect to "main" and they would often not be accessible. I never really triaged this much then - I just assumed it was a network load issue and moved several of them to guest. When it started happening again is when I started diving in.

 

More details on my setup:

HW RBRE950

Firmware: V6.3.7.10_3.3.3

1 Router + 2 satellites

IP Address:  10.0.0.1 

DHCP: On

 

- 20/40 Mhz coexistence is OFF (read in many places turning it on may cause IoT connectivity issues)

- Preamble for both 2.4/5 is automatic, power is 100%

- No access control

- 2.4 GHz channel. Auto (almost all of my IoT devices use this)

- 5GHz channel 48

- 6Ghz channel 69

- Main is set to WPA2-PSK AES + WPA3-Personal SAE

- Guest I keep toggling whenever I see the issue as mentioned above

 

Any hints would be super useful. Thank you.

 

 

My setup:

 

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