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Going nuts with Orbi 950 WiFi authentication(?) issues (every 2 weeks)
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" an...
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.
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:
Ok this is super useful. I did not realize Guest had a limited time leash, but so I understand:
If leash expires, clients should ask for a new DHCP allocation and get an IP. Why would a limited lease prohibit clients from getting a new IP on renew?
The intent of GN is for limited use as most users/guests are visiting a guest location for a limited period of time. There is not need to have long least times. The lease time are set for one lease and after that would probably need to reboot or reconnect to the GN to get a new least and IP address. Again, something not designed or intended for for GN for long term IoT devices. Use the IoT network, it's what this is for.
(It's probably too far "down the rabbit hole", but......)
If you are able to run a packet capturing application, such as Wireshark (https://www.wireshark.org free for Windows, Mac, Linux) it would be interesting to capture the DHCP conversation for devices connected to the guest WiFi. On the primary network, Orbi routers typically offer a one day lease (actually, 86,400 seconds). Devices start asking to renew the lease when only half of the time remains and finally have to abandon the IP entirely if the router does not offer them a lease after it is completely gone.
Just for myself, I am not ecstatic about the idea of "guests get only so long". What happens when relatives come to visit for a week? I guess dropping the WiFi connection and reconnecting will gain a new lease period. Netgear does not document features such as this, so we can only speculate about motivation.
