Hi folks,

I have a frequent issue with my Orbi setup in AP mode which is quite annoying. When roaming around with my device throughout the house, I often find that I get no connectivity, while the WiFi signal is still great. When I check the DHCP status of my device in this situation, I often find it resorted to a 169.254.x.x (link-local, autoIP) address. The only possible reason for this IMO is that the DHCP request, which the device did after roaming to the other AP, timed out. I've actually verified this in the macOS logs on my MacBook (there was a request, but no timely reply, making it go into autoIP).

This usually recovers when I completely disable and re-enable the WiFi on my device, but of course, this is only a workaround and something which should not be required to do.

Below is a schematic of my setup. It seems to me that I encounter the issue the most when I'm getting closer to my 2nd floor station, which might indicate it's an issue with the wireless backhaul, because the other stations are wired.

The cause is not 100% certain to blame Orbi of course (especially with the smart switches in between), but my reasons why I think the chances are high that it is Orbi:

I didn't have this issue yet before I got Orbi (I was using the builtin FR!TZBox WiFi, together with a wired FR!TZ repeater in the attic, connected via the same switch path)
I seem to have the issue when nearing the only Orbi station which has a wireless backhaul
- To make this even more evident: before I reduced the Orbi's TX power to 50% I often had the issue in the attic as well. Afterwards much less often, which indicates that my device probably likes to switch to the attic station sooner (because the 2nd floor becomes too weak) and gets back on wired backhaul which doesn't have this issue.
The issue occurs after roaming, but can be workaround by toggling the WiFi on the client (why would a switch block a 1st DHCP request, but shortly thereafter allow the 2nd one...?) so this could indicate that the Orbi station handles roaming clients differently than "freshly" connecting clients (turning their wifi on)
Roaming with the previous FR!TZ wifi system worked fine with the same clients and network setup
I've disabled IGMP / MLD snooping, DHCP proofing and any other feature which I suspect of interfering with multicast on the smart switches
I've installed the latest firmware on everything
- One of the changelogs of the GS108Tv3 firmware indicated fixing an issue related to passing DHCP when there's an extra device in between, but apparently this fix didn't help

Any ideas?

Orbi setup

Forum Discussion

Orbi RBR350 in AP mode - not always getting DHCP IP when roaming