NETGEAR is aware of a growing number of phone and online scams. To learn how to stay safe click here.
Forum Discussion
Laptop and PC refuse to connect to satellite, but can connect to Router -- advice?
Hi All, I have a very frustrating experience with one of 2 RBS850 Satellites. The Router reports the connection to both are good, most devices appear to connect to either satellite, and also to ...
Hi Mikey94025,
Thank you for posting, and the link to your thread. That is exactly what I am seeing too. It does sound like a firmware fix is needed. Has NG made any comment?
Kind regards, TackMan
Hi Mikey94025, and Community,
My issue is resolved!! I wanted to share details to help others who may have the same issue.
Summary: IF you have a device connected to a satellite via WiFI AND wired ethernet connection, it will cause the other satellite on your network to misbehave (they provide good WiFi connection, but cannot pass traffic to the Router).
Solution: Disconnect the ethernet cable
In my case my MacBook Pro, was connected via WiFi, and also used an eithernet connection via a docking station when it was at my main desk. This is why:-
- I could never replicate the issue on my MacBook, as I disconnected it from the docking station to go to the misbehaving satellite
- Swapping the satellites never helped, nor rebooting, nor resetting, nor repositioning the satellites etc etc. The "good" satellite was alway the one with my MacBook pro connected and the "bad" satellite was the other one
It took me ages to find the issue, and it only struck me as I was trying to understand what was different between my 2 satellites. I spent ages with support, who suggested I try many things, but all those failed, until I discovered this. (I have asked the support team to flag the issue with their developers.)
Mikey94025, maybe this is what is causing your issue?
Kind regards, TackMan
So this one device was connect to the RBS via wireless and ethernet at the same time?
TackMan wrote:My issue is resolved!! I wanted to share details to help others who may have the same issue.
Summary: IF you have a device connected to a satellite via WiFI AND wired ethernet connection, it will cause the other satellite on your network to misbehave (they provide good WiFi connection, but cannot pass traffic to the Router).
Solution: Disconnect the ethernet cable
In my case my MacBook Pro, was connected via WiFi, and also used an eithernet connection via a docking station when it was at my main desk. This is why:-
- I could never replicate the issue on my MacBook, as I disconnected it from the docking station to go to the misbehaving satellite
- Swapping the satellites never helped, nor rebooting, nor resetting, nor repositioning the satellites etc etc. The "good" satellite was alway the one with my MacBook pro connected and the "bad" satellite was the other one
It took me ages to find the issue, and it only struck me as I was trying to understand what was different between my 2 satellites. I spent ages with support, who suggested I try many things, but all those failed, until I discovered this. (I have asked the support team to flag the issue with their developers.)
Mikey94025, maybe this is what is causing your issue?
Kind regards, TackMan
Hi FURRYe38,
Yes, this is a fairly standard thing to do on a Mac. Mac OS supports it really well.
Kind regards,
Peter
Well actually networking standards is to only have 1 connection per device. I've always used 1 connected on my Macs at a time. Not both.
Possible problem in that either Mac is causing problems with both connections being connected at the same time or Orbi doesn't support having two connections to 1 device at the same time.
FURRYe38 wrote:Well actually networking standards is to only have 1 connection per device. I've always used 1 connected on my Macs at a time. Not both.
Possible problem in that either Mac is causing problems with both connections being connected at the same time or Orbi doesn't support having two connections to 1 device at the same time.
Right, having two physical connections to a device is really bad, it can cause really odd problems with ARP address resolution on the local network and some services can get really confused by it.
NFS, for example (and possibly other network file systems), gets really confused by responses coming in on a different network interface to the one the it originated on.
TackMan wrote:Hi Mikey94025, and Community,
My issue is resolved!! I wanted to share details to help others who may have the same issue.
Summary: IF you have a device connected to a satellite via WiFI AND wired ethernet connection, it will cause the other satellite on your network to misbehave (they provide good WiFi connection, but cannot pass traffic to the Router).
Hmmm, thanks for sharing this and I will certainly look into this diagnosis. I do have both a macbook pro laptop (for work, connected to a dock like you) and a Windows desktop that occasionally connect both by Orbi wifi and also to a nearby satellite via wired LAN. It's not often the case, because Windows reboot will disable multiple connections to the same network, but I occasionally reconnect the wifi adapter if I notice it. Why? Because I thought it might increase network speeds and because I thought it would give me backup remote access (if the satellite or wifi go down). In short, I don't need the duplicate connectivity and can easily stop having both wifi and wired connected at the same time to a satellite.
This possible diagnosis would also explain why this one satellite has never showed this problem like my other 2 RBS850s (because it's the only satellite with wired devices connected to it). I keep these two RBS850s off because of this issue.
I'll stop the second network connection and then see if I can still replicate the problem. In the past, it usually took less than a day for the issue to appear.
Good luck Mickey94025. Please let us know how it goes.
TackMan wrote:Hi Mikey94025, and Community,
My issue is resolved!! I wanted to share details to help others who may have the same issue.
Summary: IF you have a device connected to a satellite via WiFI AND wired ethernet connection, it will cause the other satellite on your network to misbehave (they provide good WiFi connection, but cannot pass traffic to the Router).
Unfortunately this doesn't seem to be the root cause for my intermittent RBS850 network connectivity loss. I made sure that my two computers were not connected by wired LAN and wifi at the same time by disconnecting their network cables and only using wifi. I turned on my other 2 RBS850s and within 30min could reproduce loss of connectivity on my iPhone. Unplugging the nearby satellite restored Internet immediately to my iPhone.
I even tried temporarily disconnecting all wired devices from my office satellite, but the problem still happened again. So my problem is not caused by LAN connections (to the one working satellite). It might be some wired/wireless thing with devices connected to the RBR850 base, but I'm not willing to waste more time right now on this. I just keep the RBS850 satellites turned off right now and hope for someone else to figure it out and a future firmware fix. :-)
Hi Mickey94025,
I am sorry to hear that. Just one more thought. Did you reboot the router after removing the ethernet cables?
Kind regards,
TackMan
TackMan wrote:I am sorry to hear that. Just one more thought. Did you reboot the router after removing the ethernet cables?
Thanks for bringing that up! No, I did not reboot my Orbi after disconnecting all my LAN devices from the satellite. However, I tried that and it still did not resolve my internet disconnectivity problem.
I spent this afternoon experimenting with, and disconnecting, unusual aspects of my home network (I run several routers in parallel for my guest network and compatibility with problematic devices that don't like the Orbi AX, e.g., Nest, Roomba, MyQ). After disconnecting my other routers and still having the issue, I finally put my cable modem into bridge mode and that solved it for me. I know that Double NAT is not recommended, but I was using it anyways and ran my secondary routers in parallel to the Orbi AX to better isolate their networks.So for my particular setup it turns out that Double NAT prevented me from running more than one RBS850 satellite or else the network would stop working within 30 min. Note that this was true even with my secondary routers disconnected. I'm running the recent Beta firmware, with the DNS fix, but this problem has existed for me since last summer so I've kept my extra 2 satellites power down.
I'll know for sure if everything continues to work over the next few days. In the meantime, it's been hours and my RBR850 + 3 satellites are running fine (along with my other two routers now connected downstream of the bridged RBR850 instead of in parallel).- mikey
"problematic devices that don't like the Orbi AX, e.g., Nest, Roomba, MyQ"
I use Nest and MyQ with AX without any issues. For some reason the MyQ only connects to the router instead of a closer satellite but the connection is very stable and latency is excellent. The MyQ is on 2.4 and the Nest is on 5.
Mikey94025 wrote:So for my particular setup it turns out that Double NAT prevented me from running more than one RBS850 satellite or else the network would stop working within 30 min. Note that this was true even with my secondary routers disconnected. I'm running the recent Beta firmware, with the DNS fix, but this problem has existed for me since last summer so I've kept my extra 2 satellites power down.
No, this was not the (sole) reason for my disconnecting internet problems when running more than 1 RBS850. Today my network went down a couple times and each time, was restored as soon as powering off one of the extra satellites. They had nothing connected by wired LAN, only wireless clients. Oh well, I'm back to running just one satellite.
Very sorry that what looked like the solution slipped away. Unfortunatley I am out of ideas -- and your technical knowledge on network sounds like it is much better than mine! I hope you find a solution, without having to spend too many hours.
