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RBK735S 3 unit mesh drops WiFi daily for 2-3 minutes - Anyone Experiencing This?
(reposting to correct forum)
My 3 week old RBK735S 3 unit mesh drops WiFi daily for 2-3 minutes. Is anyone else working from home and noticing this random interruption daily? For me, I'm on video conferencing all day, plus my 2 kids are remote learning, so when it goes out, it's an impact to everyone in the house. Is this happening to other users of the 735's?
Details:
- At first, I assumed it was my ISP and my internet failing. But I have moved my SIP (Obihai) directly to my (ISP) Modem, so I can test Internet during these outages. The internet works fine during the outages. I can make and receive calls, while my Mac and my phone cannot ping 8.8.8.8.
- The Router and Satellite do not display a "ring" light during the outages. They are not showing any signs of rebooting relating to these outages
- Using the Orbi App on my phone, once I can get it to reconnect, it shows devices that should be connected as not connected when I click on "Devices" and drill down. The devices begin to reconnect at various rates after the 2-3 minutes, and I can then see them again.
- I am running the latest firmware on the Router and (2) Satellites (V3.2.18.1_1.4.14).
- I had opened a case with Netgear 10 days ago, and the only help they could provide was to have me upgrade firmware.
Help:
- Is this happening to anyone and if so, are there any settings I can make to stop or better manage when these drops occur?
- Do you think my RBK 735S set is defective and should I return (I have 1 week left to do so)?
- Is anyone aware of a defect where the mesh periodically drops all devices? Is this some sort of DHCP lease timeout and if so, how can I change the lease duration? I can see my Orbi Router has a 7 day DHCP lease from my ISP Modem (Arris) but do not see how to set DHCP lease times that the Orbi is vending.
- Arris Model: ARRIS DOCSIS 3.0 Touchstone Residential Gateway Model: DG2470A
Thanks for your assistance. This one is painful
All,
Thanks for your suggestions. As a follow-up to my note of 2021-04-22 04:22 PM, I made several changes which seem to have had some positive effects.
Per my other note, per suggestions on Reddit, I:
- Turned off Traffic Meter,
- Disconnected my one hard wired device from a Satellite
- Continued to add devices to Advanced -> Lan Setup -> "Address Reservations"
- Changed my NTP server. NTP was showing Dec, 2020
- I renewed my DHCP lease for the Router, to a time of day just before going to bed, with a 7 day renewal duration.
- I have also been running a ping command non-stop to 8.8.8.8 and logging the output (2 pings every 5 seconds).
That combination of changes has provided some stability over the past week. I suspect the root cause may have been with the Traffic Meter (#1) (many on Reddit seem to think so), but also (#4 and #5) might be better hiding the issue as it may be happening when I sleep now. I'm not totally convinced of this because while some ping drops occur, I no longer see 2-3 minutes of total network loss between the RBR and the Modem. There have also been no patches auto downloaded this week, which could also be the root cause for these interruptions.
Also worth mentioning, that on item #4, I was not able to provide ntp IP addresses for "Set your preferred NTP server". Rather I had to specify a A Record, which took me a while to figure out "time.nist.gov" did the trick.
I'll let you know if I have anything further to share.
21 Replies
What mode is your modem working in?Your ISP Modem already has a built in router and wifi. This would be a double NAT (two router) condition which isn't recommended. https://kb.netgear.com/30186/What-is-Double-NAT
https://kb.netgear.com/30187/How-to-fix-issues-with-Double-NAT
Couple of options,
1. Configure the modem for transparent bridge or modem only mode. Then use the Orbi router in router mode. You'll need to contact the ISP for help and information in regards to the modem being bridged correctly.
2. If you can't bridge the modem, disable ALL wifi radios on the modem, configure the modems DMZ/ExposedHost or IP Pass-Through for the IP address the Orbi router gets from the modem. Then you can use the Orbi router in Router mode.
3. Or disable all wifi radios on the modem and connect the Orbi router to the modem, configure AP mode on the Orbi router. https://kb.netgear.com/31218/How-do-I-configure-my-Orbi-router-to-act-as-an-access-point and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7LOcJ8GdDo&app=desktopWhat is the distance between the router and satellite(s)? 30 feet or more is recommended in between RBR and RBS to begin with depending upon building materials when wirelessly connected.
Thanks for your note.
Arris ISP Model has always had WiFi disabled, so I don't believe that is an issue.
I don't think I should have to go into bridge mode since ORBI works 23 hours and 55 minutes per day. Something else is going on here.
The issue occurred again this morning. Here is some additional debugging information:
- The Guest Network continued to work fine, and from the same location of my laptop.
- I switched my laptop from main network to Guest, and ping worked fine.
- I re-switched to the main network and ping failed (again)
- I re-switched to guest and ping worked (again)
- I re-switched to the main network and ping failed (again)
- I tested my phone (connected via ethernet / hardwire) to Arris Modem, worked fine throughout the incident
I am wondering if I have a defective Satellite. Why would the Guest network continue to work while the main network failed (same Satellite) for 5 straight minutes?
Last night I switch my laptop to a static IP address on the ORBI to try to rule out the DHCP lease variable (obviously made no difference).
When this occurs again, I will move the laptop to a different part of my house and try to connect to a different Satellite or the Router and see if the same behavior occurs.
What is the size of your home? Sq Ft?
What is the distance between the router and satellite(s)? 30 feet or more is recommended in between RBR and RBS to begin with depending upon building materials when wirelessly connected.
https://kb.netgear.com/31029/Where-should-I-place-my-Orbi-satelliteTry testing with out any RBS online. Then try test with 1 RBS then 2 RBS. Swap locations with the RBS to see if the problem follows.
Auto? Try setting manual channel 1, 6 or 11 on 2.4Ghz and 40 to 48 channel on 5Ghz.
Any Wifi Neighbors near by? If so, how many?Has a factory reset and setup from scratch been performed since last FW update?
Press the back reset button for 15 seconds then release.
https://kb.netgear.com/31486/How-do-I-reset-my-Orbi-system-to-factory-default-settings
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePZSc7vnRlQAnd here is some additional information....
So looking in the logs, I can see DHCP requests coming from devices shortly after the incident (because they were dropped from the ORBI satellite). What is really interesting is both ORBI Satellites made DHCP lease requests to the Router which implies that the Satellites themselves are being dropped and forced to re-request IP addresses from the Router. This explains a lot of what's going on here, I think.
I think the fact the guest network continued to work may have been a result of my laptop actually connecting directly to the Router instead of to the Satellite (it is close enough that it could do that) which also explains slower ping times and variability in those ping times.
In any event, this is bad news because I cannot manage DHCP leases in ORBI, other than to uncheck the box that says "Use Router as DHCP Server"
If I uncheck that box - what are the implications? How are devices going to obtain IP addresses and not collide? I cannot set a static IP address on every device, it's not possible.
Try testing with out any RBS online. Then try test with 1 RBS then 2 RBS. Swap locations with the RBS to see if the problem follows.
Disabling DHCP will cause devices to not get a IP address when they are Dynamic configured for IP addressing.
- The Guest Network continued to work fine, and from the same location of my laptop.
