Orbi 6E Router RBRE960 only shows error on Access Control page

Just replaced my RBR50/RBS50 setup with a RBRE960/RBSE960 setup. Things worked pretty well. I did everything step by step over something like 6 hours, bringing my switches and devices online in secti...

TC_in_Montana
Mar 25, 2022
tuna_ertemalp

Sorry it took so long to respond. FURRYe38 asked me yesterday to take a look at this, but I was caught up in some other stuff and couldn't get to it until this morning.

So, it appears doing your reserved addresses were done correctly. Even updating the device names seemed to be done correctly.
I do not think the number of entries is an issue - I have 29 devices with reserved addresses. The only difference between how I did it and how you did it is I selected and updated them AFTER they were on the network. But, then again, I used the same SSID as my prior router so they all automatically connected when I hooked up the 9xx series Orbi.

The one BIG difference I see - is that when I pull up the Access Control Tab, is that at the top of my Access Control Page - it says "To use access control, please use the Orbi App". I am sure that is in hopes that people will use Armor/SPC for access control. I personally don't use the Access Control but then again, I'm out in the country and pretty insulated/isolated from lots of internet traffic. But I do believe all of the Access Control functionality has been moved over to SPC.

I have seen in the past (not on the 9xx series) where people have updated the Device Name/Location on the attached devices page - and putting in special characters or too many lines of data has corrupted other screens that is trying to display device information. All of this data is stored internally on the router and if something gets out of alignment, other things get out of whack.

You might want to take a look again at your attached devices page - see if there any any special characters or extra long lines of data and modify it and see if that helps.

tuna_ertemalp
Luminary
Mar 24, 2022
- Browser caches: Yes. Plus, I never use Safari on my iPad, so it was fresh to start with. And, the 2nd PC where I used Google Chrome had never before visited this router than I just installed yesterday, so even if I hadn't cleared the cache, it would have been fresh for this purpose. Also, since I used 2 PCs and 1 iPad, with different browsers, all showing the same problem with the Access Control page on the router, we cannot blame the browser brands/versions or browser caches or the operating systems.

- The RBRE960 + 3x RBSE960 I set up all day yesterday literally arrived from Netgear & got unboxed yesterday morning. So, they are not only factory-reset, but they are all straight from the factory, first time install.

- As I mentioned, they already came with the latest FW, therefore cannot be updated.

- I have been in this community since June of 2019. It is sad to see that a "factory reset and set up from scratch" is still something that gets suggested after 2.5 years. It was not good customer experience then, it won't be now either. Expecting a customer to repeat their hours upon hours of work just to see if the same thing will happen again or if they'll just get lucky this time around is not ideal. And, I had already mentioned in my original post: "I don't think a Backup/Reset/Restore would fix this; any corruption will just go into the backup and come back."
- FURRYe38
  Guru - Experienced User
  Mar 24, 2022
  How did you initially set up the RBR for your devices, IP address reservations and adding devices to the access control feature?
  
  Did you add them all in at one time or did you add them in one at a time and then try to save and apply?
  
  Factory resets is a valid troubleshooting step and has been for many years. Though we try to keep it a a minimum, we do ask about it since we don't have any prior knowledge of what users have done nor how long they have had there units for nor the FW update history. Yes we hope some day resets may not be needed, however since FW and the human condition are at play here, it's remains on the table. Been using it since the 80s.
  - tuna_ertemalp
    Luminary
    Mar 24, 2022
    I first brought down all of my network, literally turning off devices and unplugging all my switches. Once I replaced the old RBR/RBS50 hardware with RBRE/RBSE960 devices, I used the ORBI mobile app to bring them online. Once online, my iPhone was the only thing on the network. Then I plugged in my main PC directly to the ORBI router to get access to the admin page. I had saved screenshots of all my old RBR50's admin pages. Then I used Advanced/Setup/LAN Setup menu to enter all the 25 IP reservations at once. From my old experience 2.5 years ago, I knew that doing them one by one while the devices were already on the network was a horrible idea; that required so many reboots of the network and devices (along with ipconfig /release /all) for those reserved IPs to stick. So, this time, I did them when NOTHING was on the network except one PC and my iPhone (both on DHCP). Then I started turning on my switches and devices connected to them, block by block, sort of starting at the top of my switch-tree and going down. Eventually everything was online, all the reservations worked awesome, etc. At that point I could have stopped, like most other people would, but...
    
    The way ORBI recognizes devices and names/brands/models them is not... ...satisfactory. My LG washer/dryer were labeled as fridges. All of my SONY Blu-Ray devices were named with the same all lowercase industrial name. My Kindle had become an Echo Dot. Etc. Even my SEVEN Netgear switches, all the exact same GS108Tv3 with the same FW were labeled in two different ways...
    
    So, given my screenshots from RBR50, I was able to use the Advanced/Administration/Attached Devices menu to one by one change the Device Model/Name/Type to show what each device actually is and where in the house it is located. That helped me greatly over the years in chasing ghosts around my network.
    
    Anyways... As I entered these changes, first every 4-5 edits then every ~8-10 edits for the first ~30 devices, I would check to see if the Access Control page was showing the proper things, as well. And it was. That is also how I discovered the iPhone/iPad/AppleWatch's "Private Wi-Fi Address" thing, seeing the "disconnected" devices on the Access Control page with Apple's fake "privacy" MAC addresses. So, with that confidence in its functionality, I stopped looking at Access Control, and finished all my devices, brought a few other wireless things, like printers, back into the network (I purposely named my SSID differently than previously to kick out any devices that had been to my house over the years). I was done. I was happy.
    
    Then I looked at Access Control, expecting a beautiful summary of all that happened, device connected or not, and boom...
    
    Rest is history.
    
    I really really don't want to repeat all of this, turn off everything, reset all ORBIs, recreate everything manually, every single line. That'd be horrible, without even knowing if it'll help.
    
    Ideally, I need someone at NG to look at the backup.cfg, remove what is the offending entry, remove it, and send me back a fixed cfg. And, fix the FW to never cause this again.
    
    As I said in another post: $2000 for this RBRE960 + 3x RBSE960 begs for better stability & more support. I wonder if calling NG would be helpful, but I am guessing their first level support won't even escalate this without first asking me to spend huge amount of time redoing everything.
    
    Is there a NG escalation person in this community I could tag here?
    
    Thanks
    Tuna

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Orbi 6E Router RBRE960 only shows error on Access Control page