New - RBR850 / RBS850 Firmware Version v4.6.7.5 Released

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Chuck_M wrote:

 

Can you characterize how that satellite is connected to router (switch, hub, etc) and what kind of devices are connected to it?  I think you have something else going on with it.  Feel free to message me if you want to try and work this off line.

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Sure - apologies for the information dump as I've tried to put down everything I can think of that might be relevant.

My Orbi is running in AP mode and the satellite is wired. The connection to the satellite goes Router -> Network switch -> Satellite. Everything is wired up with CAT6 cable.

The network switch in question is an unremarkable, unmanaged 8-port switch that's never given me any problems. The switch has a number of other devices plugged into it (TV, consoles etc) which all work fine. The satellite doesn't have any other devices plugged into it at all (i.e. it is the end of the chain). I think FURRYe38 also mentioned that he had his satellites running off network switches without issue.

I did try reconfiguring my network recently to put the satellite first in the chain (so, Router -> Satellite -> Network switch -> Other devices). This showed the same behaviour (following boot, Hop Count was 1, then later 255) and I also started seeing the satellite randomly rebooting itself, so I put things back to the way they were. The reboots may have been coincidental but I don't think so. It's concerning if connecting other wired devices to satellites makes them less stable, but that may need further testing.

One other oddity which MAY be connected to the Hop Count issue is that a week or two after a reboot, the satellite starts to "misbehave" in the monitoring software. On the orbilogin "attached devices" screen, the satellite is currently showing as blank under "Connected Orbi" where it should say "Orbi Router" (I've previously even seen it say "Disconnected" here, even while it's clearly still working). And on the mobile app it's showing as daisy-chained off my other satellite - which is clearly impossible as the satellite is wired into the router. None of this affects its behaviour at all, it's still working as designed and the mesh is functioning fine, but it's like the Orbi software isn't quite tracking it properly. After a reboot this will all go back to normal for a couple of weeks.

As I mentioned before though, currently my system is working really well. This satellite gets the most traffic of my whole network and is the only one that consistently has AX devices connecting to it, at the moment it's handling everything without complaint. If I wasn't watching the debug pages thanks to this thread, I wouldn't know about the Hop Count problem, or the router memory creep, or the disappearing info on the attached devices screen. So - although there are clearly still issues with this firmware - I still maintain this is the best it's been for a while. Hopefully Netgear can get it over the line with a few more fixes and get us all back onto something stable and reliable.