NETGEAR is aware of a growing number of phone and online scams. To learn how to stay safe click here.
Forum Discussion
RBKE960 "Refused to Connect" after IP reservation changes
This is a report of a newly encountered issue with my Orbi RBKE963 (1 router + 2 satellites) running latest 7.2.7.15 firmware: After making IP reservation changes/additions and router rebooting, ...
The dreaded "192.168.0.1 refused to connect" browser message has returned, along with the Orbi phone app failing to connect to my RBRE960 router. Again, recovery involved hard resetting the router then restoring from a config backup file.
A bit more investigation has revealed this router "refusing to talk" issue correlating strongly with the Primary DNS server address (under Internet Setup) having been manually set to point to a Raspberry Pi box (192.168.0.5) running Pi-hole (network-wide ad blocker/DNS sinkhole) connected to the LAN side of the router. Apparently, setting a WAN side DNS server address to a LAN/local address will eventually make the router unhappy, even if the router manages to function normally for some time.
If a router backup was saved with the Primary DNS server address set for a LAN side device, once the router enters the "refuse to connect" mode, even a reset and restore from a backup file may not clear this condition! I discovered this the hard way.
What's interesting to note is that my router has managed to function normally with this DNS server set to a LAN side IP address for several weeks before getting into this "refused to connect" mode. No other router function in use was affected other than the router refusing to talk to a browser or connect with the Orbi phone app.
Ideally, the router has user configurable LAN side DNS server settings, and the Pi-hole box IP address would be set on the LAN side instead of the WAN side, but the RBRE960 router does not expose any LAN side DNS server settings! I'm therefore forced to make a choice of either continuing to use the Pi-hole in my home network and accept the router entering "refused to connect" mode after some random amount of time or give up on running Pi-hole completely in exchange for the router reliably connecting on demand.
I probably should explore replacing the router's DHCP server with one from the Pi-hole, but since I've made heavy use of the router's IP address reservation feature, I'll need the same capability from any replacement DHCP server.
If anyone knows how to get a Pi-hole to work with an Orbi router while maintaining a list of IP address reservations, I would greatly appreciate hearing about it.