Post concerns a RBR850 and 2 RBS850 satellites, all running firmware version V7.2.6.31_5.0.24. Summary: I have to turn off all WiFi devices near the router in order to get a successful reboot where devices get an IP-address via DHCP. If I don't, devices don't get a DHCP address and get a self-assigned DHCP-address instead. Background: I have a lot of WiFi-enabled devices. I suspect this was introduced mainly by the latest firmware that was probably installed automatically (I had auto-update on before). I cannot say for sure because as far as I know there is no log or notification when firmware gets updated, and the Release Notes of the firmware are of no help either because they don't mention the release date. My experience is: I had been adding several Wiz lightbulbs in the last week of April. Everything was working fine when I left for a trip on May 2. On May 3 I notice my house was offline in Apple Home. I asked a relative to reset the router and the Apple TV that is the HomeKit hub, but nothing helped: it stayed dark. When I came back on May 11 I started this journey to figure out what is going on. Coming back I could not get things to work AT ALL. I discovered I had to basically turn off ALL devices in the house that had WiFi, restart the router, wait for a minute or 10 and then slowly turn devices back on. If I did that too quickly devices would not connect (I suspect not get a valid IP) and subsequent devices would then also not connect reliably. Absolute nightmare that had me at the end of my wits for 3 days. I then decided to factory reset it all and set it up anew in a more organized way.Short summary from the top of my head: Scanned networks with WiFi-explorer and made sure I chose channels that are not having too much competition. This is a residential area with relatively large distances between the houses (next house is about 20 meters from my place). Tried to play all kinds of combinations of 2.4 and 5Ghz channels, but didn't make a big difference. Played with all kinds of tweaks on the router, no big difference.Hardwired first satellite to router. Made router connect quicker but no success neither.Named devices for ALL devices that should be online (Sonos, lights, etc.). I gave DHCP range 150-254 and organized the IoT devices below that.No big difference, so decided to set up the IoT network. Moved most devices over. Not a huge difference but at least it's organized.Decided to make IoT network 2.4Ghz only. Regretfully I cannot make the regular network 5Ghz only or assign it a different channel. seems sub optimal but not sure; this surpasses my skillset; I'm a "software guy".Finally I discovered the ONLY way to reboot successfully in about 80-90% of the cases (which I had to do countless times because assigning a device a fixed IP only works when you apply it and reboot it) is: Turn off ALL wifi-devices near the router (computers, lamps).Restart the router and wait for about 5 minutes or at least until the final satellite in the chain says the backhaul is "good".Then turn on back my wifi-devices in my office.Sometimes I need to do that 2 or 3 times but then it works fine. Sometimes for a few days on end. Now going 3 days already without a reboot. I also noticed it makes a huge difference if I move the router a few centimeters (!). I'm still figuring out the optimal position now. I currently am trying to find the best position for the router. I moved the RBR850 to another room with long cables to allow me to try and find the optimum spot. By the way; I had it running fine for YEARS with the router in my office and a wireless backhaul to the satellites. TL/DR: I suspect the latest firmware update made the router unstable and it seems to have trouble assigning DHCP addresses if wifi-devices are turned on before it finalizes its booting sequence. Assigning them IP-addresses via named devices doesn't seem to help; the devices need to be OFF. Not doing so makes the entire house fail in DHCP-assignments.

For everyone suffering from this issue: my network has been working flawlessly and I have been able to reboot effortlessly over 10 times when testing. Doesn't skip a beat anymore. I submitted this to NetGear: RBR850 + 2 RBS850. I have ~100 devices. Upon reboot multiple devices won't get an IP. Only way to get it reliably to work is to turn of all devices in the house, reboot the Orbi, wait ~5 minutes and then slowly turning things on. I solved the issue by running ISC DHCP on a Linux machine in my network and turning it off on the Orbi.Suspicion is that DHCP in Orbi is not thread safe, and upon reboot it cannot handle the simultaneous DHCP requests, **even with all devices being named**.Firmware version V7.2.6.31_5.0.24Hope this helps my fellow Orbi users that suffer from this issue. I have literally spent over 100 hours to narrow it down to this, thinking it was related to network interference, experimenting with router/AP placement etc. They probably just forgot to make the IP assigmnent method thread safe and things have clearly not been tested with large amounts of devices.

rdouma I see a few things that could be in play - not guarantee that they are, but possible. 1) It takes a while for the satellites to connect and sync to the router (unfortunately this is something across all Orbi lines). So when you reboot the router, all of your devices try to connect to the router - because that is all that is seen for a few minutes. If they don't have a great connection, they still try to connect and may pop on/drop off, pop on, drop off, etc. A lot of older devices, once connected, don't try to reconnect to a better signal once they have connected. Remember, it is the device that requests connection - not the router/satellite asking to connect to the device. That is why after your system (router and satellites come up), turning off and turning on your devices seem to make a better connection - they can connect to the closest and best signal. 2) On the flip side - if you have too much coverage - that do try to reconnect, may ping pong between router and satellite - thus providing crappy connectivity. Check your router logs and see if you have a device or multiple devices doing lots of DHCP requests - this is a sign of ping-ponging. If this is the case, you may want to drop the power level on your system (if that is still available on the 850 - it was previously). You can choose 100%, 50%, 25%. It has been seen previously that dropping the transmit power helps eliminate ping-ponging. 3) There are two methods to insure devices get the same IP address every time - Reserved Addresses - set on the router - and Static Addresses - set on the device. Make sure you are not assigning static IP addresses (on the device) within the DCHP Pool (you have set an address pool, I just don't remember what it is now). So - devices assigned by the router will only get addresses within that pool range, devices with static IPs will get outside of that range. I use reserved addresses for 90% of my devices - and they always get that address without fail. The only time they don't is if I forget to turn off MAC ID randomization on the device and it doesn't recognize the device. When you set your reserved addresses, you may need to turn the router off for 5 minutes or so to insure that all of your devices see that they are disconnected (sometimes this is slow) - or the other way to do this is to power off off and power back on the device to insure they forget. Some devices are just stubborn sometimes. Unfortunately, I don't use HomeKit for anything and don't know much about it - but if Homekit can assign or manage IP addresses - make sure you are not double booking IP addresses between static, reserved, and Homekit.

rdouma wrote: Hope this helps my fellow Orbi users that suffer from this issue. I have literally spent over 100 hours to narrow it down to this, thinking it was related to network interference, experimenting with router/AP placement etc. They probably just forgot to make the IP assigmnent method thread safe and things have clearly not been tested with large amounts of devices. At approximately 100 devices you are definitely at the published limit for the number of concurrent devices listed for the 8 series and probably the user with the highest number of connected devices I've seen on the forum. Great research and testing - hopefully someone at NG is taking this in and verifying/resolving.

FURRYe38 wrote:Had you seen this behavior on FW v.21 as well? Since v.31 has been out, though were seeing more issues with 750 series and some on the 960 series, not really confident that v.31 is a stable FW as v.21 is. I didn't know there was an update, I will try. To be honest I'm quite weary by now of upgrading firmware as it was the latest upgrade that introduced me to a world of pain... while I was outside of the country my house went dark. 😬 But I have the previous firmware version here and a backup; I should be good with that. Just have to find some motivation. Sort of enjoying the situation where I'm not losing sleep trying to fix my network 😂

Hello rdouma , Thank you for that information! There has not been any cases regarding this issue with the Firmware v7.2.7.15. DHCP issues can occur with over saturation of a network. Though the issues sound the same, due to the differences in firmware and number of satellites, this will be treated as a entirely different issue. I do understand your premise on if its not broke don't fix it. However, if you ever get curious:https://www.netgear.com/support/product/rbr850/#download Best, Kevin Community Team

rdouma

Guide

May 30, 2024

Orbi RBR850 unstable/DHCP assignment issues after reboot

Post concerns a RBR850 and 2 RBS850 satellites, all running firmware version V7.2.6.31_5.0.24.

Summary: I have to turn off all WiFi devices near the router in order to get a successful reboot where devices get an IP-address via DHCP. If I don't, devices don't get a DHCP address and get a self-assigned DHCP-address instead.

Background: I have a lot of WiFi-enabled devices. I suspect this was introduced mainly by the latest firmware that was probably installed automatically (I had auto-update on before). I cannot say for sure because as far as I know there is no log or notification when firmware gets updated, and the Release Notes of the firmware are of no help either because they don't mention the release date. My experience is: I had been adding several Wiz lightbulbs in the last week of April. Everything was working fine when I left for a trip on May 2. On May 3 I notice my house was offline in Apple Home. I asked a relative to reset the router and the Apple TV that is the HomeKit hub, but nothing helped: it stayed dark. When I came back on May 11 I started this journey to figure out what is going on.

Coming back I could not get things to work AT ALL. I discovered I had to basically turn off ALL devices in the house that had WiFi, restart the router, wait for a minute or 10 and then slowly turn devices back on. If I did that too quickly devices would not connect (I suspect not get a valid IP) and subsequent devices would then also not connect reliably. Absolute nightmare that had me at the end of my wits for 3 days. I then decided to factory reset it all and set it up anew in a more organized way.

Short summary from the top of my head:

Scanned networks with WiFi-explorer and made sure I chose channels that are not having too much competition. This is a residential area with relatively large distances between the houses (next house is about 20 meters from my place). Tried to play all kinds of combinations of 2.4 and 5Ghz channels, but didn't make a big difference. Played with all kinds of tweaks on the router, no big difference.
Hardwired first satellite to router. Made router connect quicker but no success neither.
Named devices for ALL devices that should be online (Sonos, lights, etc.). I gave DHCP range 150-254 and organized the IoT devices below that.
No big difference, so decided to set up the IoT network. Moved most devices over. Not a huge difference but at least it's organized.
Decided to make IoT network 2.4Ghz only. Regretfully I cannot make the regular network 5Ghz only or assign it a different channel. seems sub optimal but not sure; this surpasses my skillset; I'm a "software guy".

Finally I discovered the ONLY way to reboot successfully in about 80-90% of the cases (which I had to do countless times because assigning a device a fixed IP only works when you apply it and reboot it) is:

Turn off ALL wifi-devices near the router (computers, lamps).
Restart the router and wait for about 5 minutes or at least until the final satellite in the chain says the backhaul is "good".
Then turn on back my wifi-devices in my office.

Sometimes I need to do that 2 or 3 times but then it works fine. Sometimes for a few days on end. Now going 3 days already without a reboot.

I also noticed it makes a huge difference if I move the router a few centimeters (!). I'm still figuring out the optimal position now. I currently am trying to find the best position for the router. I moved the RBR850 to another room with long cables to allow me to try and find the optimum spot. By the way; I had it running fine for YEARS with the router in my office and a wireless backhaul to the satellites.

TL/DR: I suspect the latest firmware update made the router unstable and it seems to have trouble assigning DHCP addresses if wifi-devices are turned on before it finalizes its booting sequence. Assigning them IP-addresses via named devices doesn't seem to help; the devices need to be OFF. Not doing so makes the entire house fail in DHCP-assignments.

Forum Discussion

Orbi RBR850 unstable/DHCP assignment issues after reboot